Jeanette Heller,97; Canada's original Rockette -- Showgirl from Paris, Ont., who longed to dance went to New York in 1930 and ended up in the chorus line at Radio City Music Hall.
Hyfler/Rosner
Canada's original Rockette 'did everything but the circus'
Showgirl from Paris, Ont., who longed to dance went to New
York in 1930 and ended up in the chorus line at Radio City
Music Hall. 'I always worked in the line. I was never a solo
artist'
SANDRA MARTIN
October 17, 2008
The population is aging - that's a fact not a complaint -
but Jeanette Heller was somebody who refused to give in to
sagging flesh or creaky joints. The oldest living Canadian
Rockette, she was as supple as a woman one-third her age, as
she did pliés in her kitchen while she was waiting for the
bread in her toaster to brown in the mornings. "Time goes
very fast," she said in The Limelighters, a documentary made
by David Hansen and aired on Global TV earlier this year.
"When I turned around and I realized I was 95, I didn't
believe it myself."
Having danced with the original Rockettes in the thirties in
New York, she made her final public performance as a dancer
more than 75 years later when she joined a band of current
Rockettes and more than 1,500 amateurs outside the
Hummingbird Centre (now the Sony Centre for the Performing
Arts) on a chilly morning in Toronto in November, 2006. The
Toronto line, which linked arms and kicked right and then
left for more than five minutes, beat the previous Guinness
World Record (established in Germany in 2004 with 1,150
participants) by more than 500 high-stepping and
enthusiastic amateurs.
"It was fun," insisted Ms. Heller, who was wearing a
sweatshirt and black pants tucked into cowboy boots and
showed no signs of breaking a sweat after her five-minute
workout. Even her mascara was intact as she gave an
interview to local media saying, "Toronto needed this."
A career woman who never married or had children, Ms. Heller
lived her life "her way," with grease paint and curtain
calls. "I always worked in the line. I was never a solo
artist, but I enjoyed what I did and I travelled all over
the world. I loved dancing," she told Mr. Hansen for his
documentary. "I did everything but the circus."
Jeanette Heller was born in Paris, Ont., a year before the
Titanic sank off Newfoundland. She was the only girl in a
family of seven children born to Samuel Heller, an immigrant
from Lithuania who worked in the scrap metal business, and
his Canadian-born wife Lena (Davis) Heller.
By the time Jeanette was 10, her family had moved to Toronto
and she was already dreaming of becoming a dancer. Four
years later she was earning enough money at part-time jobs
to pay for dancing lessons. She left school at 16 and found
small parts in pantomime and vaudeville shows at the Royal
Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. She relished the excitement
and attention. "My family never paid any interest in me, I
was not a special person in the family," she told her
great-nephew Aron Heller for an article he wrote last year
in the quarterly Guilt and Pleasure. "Nobody ever said that
they loved us or told us that we were pretty when we were
kids."
When she was 19, she packed her suitcase and moved to New
York. She quickly became a "Roxyette," a line of precision
and synchronized dancers following the tradition that
impresario Flo Ziegfeld had established with his Ziegfeld
Follies before the First World War. Under the direction of
Samuel Lionel (Roxy) Rothafel, the Roxyettes danced at the
Roxy Theatre and then moved to Radio City Music Hall, where
they made their debut on Dec. 27, 1932. Two years later, Mr.
Rothafel changed their name to the Rockettes.
According to Ms. Heller, the line was arranged from the
tallest in the middle to the shortest on the ends. At 5 feet
4 inches, she was three inches shorter than the tallest
dancers - today the minimum height is 5 feet 6 inches. For
the next eight years, she travelled with the Rockettes
across North America, appearing on the same stage as
celebrities such as Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong and Gene
Autry. Everything changed after the Second World War
erupted. Several of her brothers were overseas with the
Canadian military and she was needed in Toronto to care for
her mother.
From about 1941 until peace came in 1945, she worked in the
circulation department and the mailing room at The Globe and
Mail, restraining her show-business tendencies in those grey
and treacherous times to organizing the annual Christmas
show for her fellow employees.
She made it into the editorial pages of the newspaper in
January, 1944, when she became the source for a column
titled "Cruelty to Jews seen in Toronto" by J.V. McAree. "My
father served in the last war; my brother is a navigator in
the air force overseas. I am a dancer by profession, and am
now doing office work because wartime restrictions prevent
my continuing my work in the United States," a woman, who is
identified only as J.H, says. She goes on to describe how
she tried to take lessons at a local skating club, but was
rejected when she revealed she was Jewish on her
application. "Night after night, I have danced at canteens
and entertainments for the boys in the service - without
pay, of course - and worked all day at the office. Probably
some of those boys are sons and brothers of members of this
same skating club," she said in an interview for the
article. Justifiably outraged on Ms. Heller's behalf, the
editorialist argues that from "disliking the Jews to hating
the Jews to murdering the Jews represents two short steps
that were taken in Germany to the horror of the whole world.
That is one of the reasons we are fighting this war. Are
there citizens of Toronto who would betray this cause?"
After her brothers came back from overseas, she relinquished
her mother's care and returned to the U.S., where she took
out citizenship, according to her youngest brother, Mickey
Heller, and resumed her career as a dancer. Working mostly
on contracts, she performed around the U.S. and travelled
extensively, especially when she went to Japan as part of a
United Service Organizations (USO) troupe to entertain the
occupation forces, and then to Korea during the Korean War
in the early fifties. Later, she danced in Scandinavia, the
Middle East, Cuba - before the revolution - and in various
European capitals. "What other Yiddish girl met royalty back
then?" she asked her nephew Aron rhetorically.
She stopped dancing professionally in the late fifties, but
remained in New York and began a second career in wardrobe
and show production. She worked for the American Ballet
Theatre, fashion shows at the Waldorf-Astoria, and Broadway
shows such as Guys and Dolls and The King and I. She
eventually got into TV as well, working on soap operas such
as All My Children and One Life To Live, as well as The Dick
Cavett Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. She was even involved
in the production of Sesame Street.
She finally moved back to Toronto in 1975, at 64, to be
closer to her extended family. Winters were something else,
so she spent them in Florida, working as a wardrobe manager
on shows that probably catered to many of her fellow
Canadians who had also fled the snow for sunshine. Ms.
Heller finally retired at 82, after having worked behind the
scenes in the Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami Beach for
close to 20 years.
About a decade ago, she moved into the Performing Arts Lodge
in downtown Toronto where she enjoyed a lively retirement,
socializing with other artists and performers, keeping fit
with yoga and aerobics and reliving highlights of a
wide-ranging career that included ballet, drama, musical
comedy, fashion shows, movies and the early days of live
television.
JEANETTE HELLER
Jeanette Heller was born April 14, 1911, in Paris, Ont. She
died yesterday, Oct. 16, 2008, of kidney failure in the
palliative care unit of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.
She was 97. Ms. Heller is survived by her youngest brother,
Mickey Heller, four nephews, three nieces, and her extended
family.
La N
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:gda42u$8ac$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> JEANETTE HELLER, 97: DANCER
>
< snip >
>
> She finally moved back to Toronto in 1975, at 64, to be closer to her
> extended family. Winters were something else, so she spent them in
> Florida, working as a wardrobe manager on shows that probably catered to
> many of her fellow Canadians who had also fled the snow for sunshine. Ms.
> Heller finally retired at 82, after having worked behind the scenes in the
> Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami Beach for close to 20 years.
>
< snip >
Awwwww ... I love these Globe & Mail obits.
Speaking of wardrobe managers, my daughter was telling me the other day
about one of her jobs working in a [brand name] clothing store in
Vancouver - a/k/a "Hollywood North". She told me that wardrobe people for
the various TV and film productions would pick up a couple thousand dollars
worth of clothing to take back to the set. They would pay cash with the
proviso that what didn't "work" could be returned. She says that usually,
most everything but a few items would be returned, the wardrobe person for
the production company would be reimbursed the whole amount for the
"rejects", but the return items would end up on the discount tables in the
store. A money losing proposition, IOW. But, I guess good p.r. in some way
or another.
- nilita
Hyfler/Rosner
"La N" <nilita20...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Zc2Kk.2188$%%2.946@edtnps82...
>
> Awwwww ... I love these Globe & Mail obits.
>
> Speaking of wardrobe managers, my daughter was telling me
> the other day about one of her jobs working in a [brand
> name] clothing store in Vancouver - a/k/a "Hollywood
> North". She told me that wardrobe people for the various
> TV and film productions would pick up a couple thousand
> dollars worth of clothing to take back to the set. They
> would pay cash with the proviso that what didn't "work"
> could be returned. She says that usually, most everything
> but a few items would be returned, the wardrobe person for
> the production company would be reimbursed the whole
> amount for the "rejects", but the return items would end
> up on the discount tables in the store. A money losing
> proposition, IOW. But, I guess good p.r. in some way or
> another.
>
> - nilita
Um, then there are the clients who have extra clothing in
their luggage when they leave. I'm not naming names or
nothing. Seriously, you have trucks full of the stuff just
in case you need it. So 99% of it is not even lightly used.
No reason to put it on a reject pile. Hey, I just spent a
month there. What store does she work in?
La N
She gives me insider info that I'm sure she wouldn't want made public. btw,
I don't mean to be cryptic, but the nature of Usenet has become such that I
prefer to protect the identities of my friends and loved ones. But, you can
write me in private, Amelia, and I'll tell you.
btw, last year I was at a housewarming party in Vancouver which was attended
by many Indie filmmakers, actors, and peripheral players. One of the
attendees was a fella who absolutely *loved* shopping for clothes for the
various actresses. That was his job. I called him a "wardrobe mistress",
and he didn't mind.
- nilita