IRENE CASTLE (1893-1969)
by Susan Marie Frontczak

As the 20th century dawned, Americans flocked to the cities for work.  Immigrants flooded across our borders. For the first time in American history, the urban population exceeded the rural. New music with syncopated or “ragged” rhythms traveled up the Mississippi and flourished with the expanding urban population. This new “rag-time” music inspired radically new forms of dance. By 1910 the establishment railed against the unsavory honky-tonk origins of the Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear, and the scandalous Bunny Hug (banned in many ballrooms).

Enter Vernon and Irene Castle, who made ragtime dancing not just socially acceptable but downright fashionable with their elegant grace. They took a dance form frowned upon by respectable society and transformed it into a most stylish hobby for rich and poor alike, for old and young. The Castles enchanted the nation: Here was a married couple who actually showed affection to one another in public! In these years before even the silent film industry had taken hold, the Castles laid the groundwork for public fascination with private romance.

In addition to changing the way Americans looked at and moved to music, the Castles influenced the way the world looked at America. Since Colonial times, culture and fashion had propagated west from Paris and London to America. Ragtime music, and ragtime dance, reversed this long-standing practice. In 1912 the Castles became the darlings of the Parisians and all the upper crust of Europe who spent time in the City of Lights – a dozen years before Josephine Baker would wow audiences there. Suddenly the continent of Europe wanted to emulate the United States. European fascination with American music and dance continues to this day. 

Meanwhile, back at home, the Castles broke molds in fashion, in the color barrier, and in humane treatment of animals.

Many associate “bobbed” hair with the 1920s. Few realize Irene Castle bobbed her hair in 1915. The first week after she appeared with shorn locks, two hundred and fifty women lined up for “Castle bobs” – the next week twenty-five hundred. Not wanting her short hair to fly around when dancing, Irene sewed a jeweled band to slip over her head. In no time “Castle bands” were all the rage.

One new dance, the “Half-and-half” in 5/4 time, required new music, created by their orchestra leader, James Europe. Irene wrote, “It was we who made colored orchestras the vogue of Fifth Avenue. We booked Jim Europe’s orchestra, the most famous of the colored bands. Jim Europe was a skilled musician and one of the first to take jazz out of the saloons and make it respectable.”

From their early Vaudeville days, Vernon and Irene recoiled at the abusive treatment of stage animals. This led to Irene’s most lasting legacy: working for the humane treatment of all animals owned or controlled by humans. While less glamorous than starring on Broadway, her animal shelter “Orphans of the Storm” continues to assist thousands of animals today, more than eight decades after its founding.

RECOMMENDED READING

Castle, Irene. Castles in the Air. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958.

Castle, Vernon and Irene. Modern Dancing. Harper & Brothers, 1914.

Golden, Eve. Ragtime Revolution. University Press of Kentucky, 2007.  A pro-Vernon, anti-Irene biography.

Wallace, Carol, et.al. Dance: A Very Social History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of  Art, 1986.

SUSAN MARIE FRONTCZAK

Susan Marie Frontczak first became acquainted with Irene Castle’s story when she began studying ragtime dance in 1990. Over the years Susan Marie has taught at Vintage Dance events across the country, including the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia Missouri, Cincinnati Dance Week, and Tea Dances in Denver and Boulder. Meanwhile, her Chautauqua presentations (Irene Castle, Marie Curie, Mary Shelley, and Eleanor Roosevelt) have taken her to 24 of the United States, Canada, and across Europe. Irene is her most amusing and audacious historical character, combining cheeky mischief with the boldness of naiveté. 

IRENE CASTLE

QUOTES about Irene Castle

“That these two, years ago, determined the course dancing should take is incontestable. Vernon Castle, it is possible, was the better dancer of the two; but if he were the greater, his finest creation was Irene – No one else has ever given exactly that sense of being freely perfect, of moving without effort and without will, in more than accord, in absolute identity with music. [They danced intuitively.]  There were no steps, no tricks, and no stunts. There was only dancing, and it was all that one ever dreamed of flight...” Contemporary critic Gilbert Seldes

“Irene Castle’s girlish charm and evident respectability made many frightening fashions – bobbed hair, slit skirts, the tango – seem positively reassuring.”  Dance: A Very Social History, pp 38-39

QUOTES by Irene Castle

“By the fall of 1913 America had gone absolutely dance-mad. … If [dancing] was a sin, half the population of the large cities was in danger.” Autobiography, Castles in the Air, p 85

“One of the first things we learned in the dancing business was never to keep the same dance in vogue over a long period of time. Once every so often we had to come up with something startlingly new and at the same time simple enough for the average dancer to learn easily.” Autobiography, Castles in the Air, p 113

“I, for one, could never see much difference between the Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear and the Bunny Hug… but it made people feel good to think they knew three different dances when they actually knew only one.” Autobiography, Castles in the Air, p 113

“It is because I am individual that the world copies my clothes. It is because I disregard styles that I set them. It is because I am slender that it has become fashionable to be slender.” Interview circa Dec 1915, Ragtime Revolution, p 145

“If I am remembered a hundred years from now, I hope it will not be as a dancer or as a style leader, for customs change from generation to generation, and the exponents of fashion eventually become footnotes in a book on a shelf. No, I think if my life has any lasting value, it is in the career I entered in 1928, when … I opened [the animal shelter] ‘Orphans of the Storm.’” Autobiography, Castles in the Air, p 225

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