James Starbuck

James Starbuck (March 13, 1912, Albuquerque, New Mexico – August 13, 1997, Beverly Hills, California) was an American choreographer, ballet dancer, musical theatre actor, and stage and television director. He studied modern dance with Martha Graham and ballet with Adolph Bolm, Edward Caton, Vera Nemtchinova, and Anatole Oboukhov. He was a principal dancer with first the San Francisco Opera Ballet from 1935-1938 and then the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo from 1938-1944. He was notably the first American man to dance with the latter company. He portrayed roles in the original productions of several Broadway musicals, including both Freddy and Tito in Song of Norway (1944), Ivan Petrofski in Musi…