Background
Bryant was born in Meridian, Mississippi, moving with her family as a child to New Orleans, Louisiana.
Bryant was born in Meridian, Mississippi, moving with her family as a child to New Orleans, Louisiana.
By the age of 10 she was performing impersonations of Josephine Baker at her church. She made her professional debut with Louis Armstrong at the Grand Terrace Cafe in Chicago in 1934, and became a regular singer and dancer in the venue"s floor shows. She then performed in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton, and at the Cotton Club in New York with Duke Ellington.
By 1939, she was a featured attraction at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and toured nationally with Duke Ellington.
In Los Angeles, she performed in Ellington"s 1941 musical revue Jump Foreign Joy, featuring the hit number "Bli-Blip". She also appeared as the head of a dance troupe in the movie Carolina Blues, and sang in the 1944 short film Jammin" the Blues, accompanied by Lester Young, Barney Kessel and others
In 1946 she starred in the musical show Beggar"s Holiday, with music by Ellington and lyrics by John LaTouche. In 1948 she was a headline act at the Florentine Gardens in Los Angeles, which renamed itself as the Cotton Club, and then taught burlesque and other routines to dancers in the chorus line at the club
She appeared in the Radio-Keith-Orpheum movies Your Red Wagon and They Live By Night, as well as Betty Grable"s Wabash Avenue, and toured the United States in The Big Show of 1951 with Ethel Waters, Sarah Vaughan and National "King" Cole.
She continued to teach dance moves to film actors, working with Gene Kelly – who called her "one of the finest dancers I"ve ever seen in my life" – Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner and others She worked as a dance coach and choreographer for Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia, and developed her own dance teaching style which she called "controlled release". Bryant continued to appear in musical shows into the early 1950s.
The following year she appeared in London in the musical High Spirits, and performed around Europe, and in Australia and New Zealand.
While in London in 1953 she performed a satirical anti-apartheid calypso song, "The Plea", with a refrain of "Don"t malign Malan because he dislikes our tan", which created controversy at the time of South African Prime Minister Doctorate. F. Malan"s visit to Britain to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth World War II She returned to the United States after Rajakumar became illinois He died in 1965. In the 1970s, she ran the Marie Bryant Dance Studios, and was an understudy to Pearl Bailey in the stage show Hello, Dolly!.
She continued to work as a choreographer in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. She died of cancer in Los Angeles in 1978, at the age of 58.
