Hungarian Dezső Guttmann (1899-1969) was a dance director who worked both in Hollywood and on Broadway.
Information about Gould’s early life is scant, though it appears he worked as a dancer in vaudeville from a young age. By the time he was thirty, he was choreographing Hello Yourself!!!! on Broadway. He went to Hollywood in 1933 to stage dances in RKO’s Melody Cruise, directed by Mark Sandrich. In the same year, and for the same director, he worked on Flying Down to Rio (1933), and later on The Gay Divorcée (1934), where he was instrumental in introducing Fred Astaire to his long-time collaborator, Hermes Pan.
By 1945, Gould had acted as dance director on over forty feature films, though without great distinction. It appears he choreographed within camera moves and staging decided by others, rather than personally influencing the style of the number. Gould also directed dozens of Soundies. These were three-minute musical shorts played on the coin-operated Panoram jukebox.
Gould’s first picture for MGM was Hollywood Party, where he was one of several dance directors. He worked four times with Eleanor Powell, on Broadway Melody of 1936 (winning the short-lived Oscar for Dance Direction for ‘I Gotta Feeling You’re Fooling’), Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938 and Rosalie. He was also the dance director on A Day at the Races and Everybody Sing. In the mid-thirties, Gould set up a dance school on the MGM lot for the studio’s contract players.
As with his early life, information about the last twenty years of Gould’s life is hard to track down.
