'Mary Poppins' choreographer Marc Breaux dies

When Dick Van Dyke got the role of Bert in the 1964 movie musical "Mary Poppins," Walt Disney asked him if he had a recommendation for a choreographer. Van Dyke recalled working with the team of Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood, who had created a number for the Jack Benny television show.

"I'm not really a dancer," Van Dyke said. "I could move a little and I was what you call an eccentric dancer -- loose limbed and light on my feet. But they took what I could do and made the most of it. I was just thrilled."

The married duo created one of the best-known live-action dances in the history of the studio -- the chimney sweep number to the song "Step In Time."

"Mary Poppins" led them to work on the 1965 film version of "The Sound of Music." And in the 1970s -- when TV variety shows were popular -- Breaux and Wood created dances for more than 200 episodes.

Breaux, 89, died Tuesday in Mesa, Ariz.

Working with performers who were not primarily dancers became a Breaux and Wood hallmark. It was a situation they faced often on shows that featured singers and comedians in dance numbers.

"You try to put them with good dancers who can haul them around if you had to," Breaux said in a 1999 interview. "So you would just say, 'Do you know what your left foot is?' And they would usually say 'yes.' And I would say, 'Well, we're going to stamp the left foot twice and then we're going to stamp the right foot once.' You had to be very specific with what you told them."

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Marc Breaux was born in Carencro, La. He studied dance before serving in the Navy as a pilot during World War II. After the war he became a premed student, but that changed when he went to a friend's modern dance class in New York.

In 1948 he was cast as a dancer in his first Broadway show, and performed on television shows, including one on which he and Wood met. They married in 1955 but later divorced.

For "The Sound of Music," Breaux played an important, unseen role in the opening sequence of aerial shots that finally come upon Julie Andrews spinning around on a hilltop before breaking into the title song. To get the timing right, Breaux was hidden in nearby bushes.

"He watched for the helicopter coming over the mountains," Wood said, "and at the right moment he had a bullhorn and yelled to her, 'OK, Julie! Turn!' "