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"Myrtle" going into her fan dance.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
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4 comments:
Thru fire, flood, famine and war Mrtyles fans went with her wherever she would go.
When Hoxie had her Rex had put together one of his vfamous routines of va 5 act with Mrytle in the lead, Suzie Q, Bonnie, old ranch herd Carrie and Beers Barnes Hazel. It was a marvel of Rex taking this miss fit group in an act, but he did it. He would even work them on horseback and Mrtyle was afraid of horses and in Hoxie's little rings Mrytle would make the first go around just outside the ring.
Now the next years I would be with Hoxies elephants and he took out the smaller Lewis Bros. as well and it called for a couple elephants, s0o I took Mrtle and the young Betty. Antonette Bass[cristiani] and husband were there[he as mgr.] and I put a routine together with Antonette and Hazel and sure enough in a corner in the bull truck were the fans. Pretty shabby from all the yeatrs, so the cue was to give Mrtyle the fans and yell,"dancem up" and she would go into the complicated routine, but being old she did it with just enough small token moves to get by.When I think of all the years and places from the 1930s and including held up in Venezuala for a period of time and all the shows someone always seemed to toss the bfans in the bull truck. Poor thing was sold to Guthrie where she ended up doing rides a various "chucky Cheese" places. This is "one for Mrytle" PS. She pulled alot of stuff out of the mud.
In the first comment I meant "put a routine together with MRYTLE, no hazel.
A lovely tribute to her Johnny
You bring history alive for us
I'm going to mention that cue
"dancem up" to a few Broadway
choreographers I know & I'll
bet they start using it
Back in the mid-1970s, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC did an article on the Hoxie Bros. Circus. As I recall, the cover featured a photo of the elephant truck with Myrtle looking out. Smokey Jones was quite indignant because the article didn’t mention that Myrtle did a fan dance (that was apparently was a source of annoyance to Sally Rand!) He even wrote to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC to complain about this oversight. (I don’t recall if he ever got a reply.)
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