Biography

Arthur Freed discovered Lucille when she was working in a nightclub doing a specialty dance act, and decided to cast her as Rose Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, and began building up her career which never really took off despite being put in 3 big musical productions at MGM. When she married, she decided to retire.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: olebuttermilksky5@yahoo.com

A brief but beautiful little wave in the MGM musical pool during the mid-1940s was lovely, classy, red-headed Lucille Bremer. Her natural dancing talent, aristocratic manner and stately carriage dazzled film-goers briefly, like a shooting star, and then was gone. She was groomed by the studio for big things after Eleanor Powell retired and Bremer seemed more than ready to ascend the MGM pedestal. One major musical misfire, not to mention typical studio politics and modest acting ability, left her career floundering after only three years.

She was born in Amsterdam, New York (north of Albany) on February 21, 1917 (many reference books incorrectly list the year as 1923), but the family moved to Philadelphia while she was still quite young. She began taking ballet lessons at age 7 and before she was even a teenager, the promising dancer was accepted into the Philadelphia Opera Company. At age 16 she became a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York and toured with the girls throughout Europe.

She made her debut on Broadway as a "Pony Girl" chorine (along with two other up-and-coming hopefuls Vera-Ellen and June Allyson) in the Broadway musical "Panama Hattie" in 1940. She also served as an understudy. Shortly after she earned a featured part in the musical "Dancing in the Streets" but the show closed during out-of-town tryouts. The following year she nabbed the ingénue role in the Gertrude Lawrence musical "Lady in the Dark".

MGM producer Arthur Freed happened to discover the high-kicking Bremer dancing at a Versailles Restaurant floor show. He had her screen-tested and no less than Louis B. Mayer himself was taken by her, predicting a star-making career for her. Bremer, with no training at all, had an innate dramatic flair. After she and Cyd Charisse danced in the Stan Kenton musical short This Love of Mine (1944), she was given the featured role of Rose, the eldest Smith daughter, who yearns to become part of the snobby elite in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). While the movie obviously focused on younger sister Judy Garland, the camera still showed an appreciation for Bremer and MGM wasted no time in finding a proper star vehicle for her dancing talents.

This came in the form of the exotic and lavish Technicolor musical fantasy Yolanda and the Thief (1945), directed by Vincente Minnelli, in which she co-starred with Fred Astaire, who plays a conman with designs on the lovely Bremer, a naive, convent-bred heiress who takes him for a "guardian angel" of sorts. While this was an "A" vehicle for her, and the highly interpretive dance styles of Bremer and Astaire, particularly in "Will You Dance With Me?" and the "Coffee Time" finale, meshed beautifully together, the storyline had problems. Far too heady, adult and Freudian in nature to please weary, war-time audiences seeking escapism, the movie was deemed an expensive box-office failure. Astaire, however, was already a star and his career withstood the film's failure. Bremer, whose chilly beauty and demeanor was at times a negative, was not as lucky. Her MGM highlight actually came later with Astaire by her side once again in two dancing segments of Ziegfeld Follies (1945). The duo danced to the lovely ballet number "This Heart of Mine" and the scene-stealing "Limehouse Blues" sequence. She would also be among the illustrious roster of MGM musical talents in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), the fictionalized biography of songwriter and "Show Boat" composer Jerome Kern. Her singing was dubbed as she appeared alongside Van Johnson in the "I Won't Dance" segment, and the "One More Dance" and "The Land Where the Good Songs Go" numbers.

MGM and Freed quickly grew disenchanted with Bremer and her final MGM picture was a "B" film drama, Dark Delusion (1947). She again played a wealthy woman albeit with life-threatening health issues. Her final three pictures, all released in 1948, were on loan to "Poverty Row" studio Eagle-Lion. The budget-bare swashbuckler Adventures of Casanova (1948) emphasized her beauty, if nothing else, opposite the equally handsome Arturo de Córdova; the well-cast drama Ruthless (1948), which starred Zachary Scott, had her playing an aloof second fiddle to the antics of Southern tycoon "husband" Sydney Greenstreet; and Behind Locked Doors (1948), opposite Richard Carlson and Douglas Fowley, was a rather hodgepodge tale that involved a judge on the lam, a reporter who tracks him down, and an insane asylum. All came and went without much notice.

Bremer, seeing her career slipping away, wisely focused on her private life. While filming Adventures of Casanova (1948) on location, she met millionaire Abelardo Luis Rodriguez, son of a former interim president of Mexico. The couple married in July 1948 and she officially retired. There was infrequent talk of a "comeback", nothing materialized and she remained adamant about not returning to show business in any way, shape or form. The couple had two sons, Nicholas and Torre, and two daughters, Christina and Karen but divorced in 1963. Bremer eventually moved to La Jolla, California, where she later owned and operated a children's dress shop. She travelled extensively in her twilight years and died at a La Jolla hospital following a heart attack at age 79 in 1996.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh/ gr-home@pacbell.net