Anthony Nellé

In 1997, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center presented the exhibition, Anthony Nellé: Art Deco Stage Designs to Anti-Nazi Posters. The wildly popular exhibition featured Nellé’s original stage designs and World War II poster designs, as well as costumes, furniture, and other objects from Western New York collections that represent the sleek, sophisticated style known as Art Deco. The following biography is a synopsis from Nellé, a 128-page, illustrated book compiled and edited by Sanford Shire, with text by Sanford Shire, Marjorie Luesebrink, and Rachel Chodorov, published by Rizzoli in 1981.

Born in Warsaw, Poland on July 21, 1894, Zdislaw Antoni Nellé was the son of Stanislau Nellé, who was a conductor of the Russian Imperial Opera Orchestra, and Florentyna Kuklinska Nellé, who was a dancer. Together, they exposed him to theater and ballet, so in 1905 Antoni enrolled in the Russian Imperial School of the Theatre in Warsaw. He graduated in 1913 and danced in a Bolshoi program in Swan Lake and in a Georgian folk dance called Lizkinka in celebration of the royal Romanoff family’s 300th Year Jubilee. He became a premier dancer for the Warsaw Imperial Opera, then moved to Odessa to direct and dance in their opera company. He married the prima donna in 1915, but tragically she died six weeks later. He returned to Warsaw but when the Germans invaded in 1916, he was drafted into the Russian Imperial Air Corps and assigned to a motorcycle reconnaissance patrol.

After his military service, Nellé toured Russia with the Zon Theatre Corporation as a choreographer, director, and dancer in operettas, ballets, and comic operas. He gained notoriety and in 1921 was invited to join the legendary Anna Pavlova’s ballet company in England, which resulted in a tour from London to Canada and the United States.

Inspired by jazz and his own more modern interpretations for dance, he stayed in the U.S. and joined the Greenwich Village Follies touring company in 1922. Erté designed costumes for Nellé and his duet partner, Russian ballerina Anna Nurova. After that tour, they joined a Sol Hurok production, Night of Love, that traveled to Mexico.

Priorities began to shift and Nellé increasingly concentrated his energies on choreography and stage design. His next dance partners were Ardath De Sales, followed by Margaret Donaldson. They occasionally danced in live stage “prologues” performed in large theaters to precede silent films. Anthony and Margaret married on May 20, 1929, at her parents’ home in Gowanda, New York—thus beginning his connection to Western New York. They lived in New York City, moved to Hollywood, and Nellé produced stage presentations and prologues. Once “talkies” began to replace silent films, the couple traveled to Warsaw in 1931 where they were treated as celebrities. A poor economy compelled them to move to Paris in 1933, and shortly afterwards to Blackpool, England. The Prince of Wales Theatre in London welcomed their Folies Bergère style productions.

In 1935, after a summer trip to Gowanda, they relocated to Berlin. Nellé kept his criticism of the growing Nazi regime modest and staged dances and designed sets for Scala Girls revues through 1937. During 1938 and 1939, Nellé surreptitiously created stage set miniatures that were models of underground artillery emplacements, hangars, and underwater submarine pens to secretly communicate anti-Nazi information. They left Germany in 1939 to resettle in Gowanda.

After meagre success living in New York City teaching and choreographing, Nellé joined the American war effort. He shared his drawings of German war installations with military authorities in December 1941 and earned letters of commendation for his patriotic contribution from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General George Marshall. His unique “Top Secret” blueprints designed for the Army, Navy, and Air Force for a “Permanent Invisible Submarine Base” was rejected as unfeasible to produce. He tried to work as a camouflage artist but was denied because he was not an American citizen. He designed anti-Nazi posters, which helped secure a job as a draftsman and illustrator at Bell Aircraft in Niagara Falls, New York. In 1943, Nellé became an American citizen.

In 1944 and after the war ended, Nellé returned to theater in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, New York, New Jersey, and Chicago. He and Margaret retired to Gowanda in 1956 after her mother died, but still made trips to Buffalo and New York until their health declined. Anthony Nellé died on December 31, 1977, at the age of 83 and Margaret passed away fourteen months later.

The final paragraph in the 1981 book, Nellé, concludes: “During his long and prolific career, Anthony Nellé staged over 100 classical ballets, 200 ballet tableaux, 160 jazz dance numbers, 28 opera ballets, 250 operettas, and 180 dance numbers for revues, cabarets, and films. These achievements from a substantial realization of Nellé’s lifetime goals. The rhumbas, operas, and ballets are gone, but, fortunately for us, the renderings exist. Looking at them, we are able to recreate the reality of Nellé’s artistic vision.”