Vera Zorina.

Vera Zorina, a dancer, actress, and Hollywood star of the late 1930s and 1950s, died at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on April 9, 2003.

Born Eva Brigitta Hartwig in Berlin in 1917, she studied ballet with Evgenia Eduardova and Victor Gsovsky, appearing as a teenager in Max Reinhardt's celebrated production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Moving to London in 1933, she was discovered by Aaron Dolin, who cast her in Ballerina, her first West End success. The following year she was snapped up by Leonide Massine for Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes and changed her name.

In 1936, after a romance with Massine, she left the de Basil company to star in the London production of On Your Toes, the hit Broadway musical choreographed by George Balanchine. Balanchine fell in love with her and in 1938 married her. Exotic, glamorous, and witty, she became the muse of his years as a popular song-and-dance man. He choreographed nearly a dozen shows and movies for her, including I Married an Angel (1938), which made her the toast of Broadway, and The Goldwyn Follies (1938) and On Your Toes (1939), which made her a Hollywood star. She danced briefly with Ballet Theatre, appearing in a revival of Apollo, and in 1982 performed the title role in the Stravinsky-Gide oratorio Persephone for the New York City Ballet. She directed opera productions and in 1986 published an engaging memoir, Zorina.

In 1946, after divorcing Balanchine, she married Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records, with whom she had two sons. After Lieberson's death in 1977, she married harpsichordist Paul Wolfe. She is survived by Wolfe; her son Peter Lieberson, a composer; and three grandchildren.