Juliet Prowse Obit. (Long)

[Robert J. Boyne]

Cut and Pasted from the London "Times".

JULIET PROWSE

Juliet Prowse, actress and dancer, died of cancer in Los Angeles on
September 14 aged 59. She was born in Bombay on September 25, 1936.

Juliet Prowse was a superb dancer and a fine actress and singer, whose
misfortune it was to be born 20 years too late for the big Hollywood
musical. Her legs, which bore just comparison to Betty Grable's, were
still a marvel in middle age, as were her high-energy dance routines.
Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, she could have complained with
some justification that it was the pictures that had got small, not
her talent. But complaining was never her style. She enjoyed every
twist of her long career, and approached her professional injuries
with brisk good humour. Her numerous love affairs, which included a
brief engagement to Frank Sinatra, were a subject of fevered
fascination for the British tabloid press.

Prowse appeared in few major Hollywood films, perhaps because
actresses like Shirley MacLaine beat her to those rare parts written
for women of her wide talents in the 1960s. Can Can, on the set of
which she met Frank Sinatra, was an exception. The film promised to
make her a star, not only because of her excellent performance, but
because Nikita Khrushchev, who was visiting America, had been invited
onto the set.

He appeared in good spirits while he watched Prowse high-kicking
through the dance routine, but afterwards decided that it would be
politic to express moral disapproval of this sort of American
debauchery, and described Prowse as "lascivious, disgusting and
immoral". Prowse, who admitted the dance was "not exactly Swan Lake",
laughed off what she immediately recognised as propaganda. The
following day her photograph appeared in every newspaper in America.

Prowse was born in Bombay where her father was the British manager for
Westinghouse. He died when she was three and the family moved to South
Africa, where Juliet studied dancing. She joined the Festival Ballet
in Johannesburg at 14, and became known as their "baby ballerina". But
a late growing spurt put paid to her classical career. Dancers tended
to be shorter in those days ­ the other girls were typicaly 5ft 3in.
At 5ft 7in, Prowse was beginning to dwarf some of the men,
particularly when she was on points.

Switching to modern dance, she came to London at 17 and found work in
the chorus line of Kismet and Mother Goose. Later she went to Paris,
where she appeared in a topless dance club. As she was considered to
be English, and therefore more modest than the French girls, the
management told her she could keep her top on. Engagements in Madrid
and Rome followed and it was there that she was spotted by Hermes Pan,
the choreographer of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Pan thought her
the best woman dancer he had ever seen. He was then working with Frank
Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine on Cole Porter's Can Can, the film of the
musical about a Parisian nightclub dancer in the 1890s who is sued for
performing the illegal dance. Prowse was persuaded by Pan to join the
cast and the film was released in 1960.

The publicity of Khrushchev's visit had made Prowse's elegant dancer's
body, soft red hair and green eyes familiar to every American who read
a newspaper. More intense publicity was to follow when it was leaked
that, not only was she having an affair with Frank Sinatra but also
with Elvis Presley, the star on her next film, GI Blues (also 1960),
in which she played a cabaret dancer to his guitar-playing army
gunner. At one point she was reputed to be seeing both of them at the
same time.

Prowse thought Presley adorable, in those days before the "poor dear",
as she referred to him, had problems. But the affair with Sinatra was
the more serious, and led to a six-week engagement. In retrospect, she
felt she had been as much flattered by, as in love with, him and was
convinced the marriage would not have worked. Sinatra was notorious
for a chauvinistic attitude towards his wives' careers ­ his marriages
to Ava Gardner and (later) Mia Farrow foundered on just that issue.
"He wanted a 24-hour wife," Prowse said, and she wanted to carry on
working.

More films followed in the 1960s: The Second Time Around (1961) with
Debbie Reynolds; and The Right Approach (also 1961), with Frankie
Vaughan. But by this time there were fewer musicals being made in
Hollywood, and the wise option, which Prowse chose, was to concentrate
on stage work. She starred in live shows in Las Vegas, and opened
Caesar's Palace with a performance in Sweet Charity in 1966, which she
also took to the Prince of Wales Theatre in London the following year.
(Shirley MacLaine landed the film role in 1969.)

By now Prowse had cut her strawberry blonde hair into a fashionable
urchin style and the British press showed no restraint in their
descriptions of her beauty. In 1969 she briefly took over from Ginger
Rogers in Mame at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. That year, after more
failed romances and engagements, she married the television actor John
McCook. But that marriage, too, ended in divorce, after she had given
birth to her only child, a son.

In the 1970s, though she was now over 40, she continued to develop as
a dancer. There was a show with Anthony Newley at the Palladium in
1979 in which Prowse, scantily clad, was hurled around stage by a
cohort of sharp-suited male dancers. She spent about four months a
year in Las Vegas and appeared on Broadway.

She stretched herself by taking on the occasional straight play, and
toured Canada, South Africa and Britain with I Do! I Do! opposite Rock
Hudson. After privately struggling for years with her weight (though
she never looked anything but slim when she performed), she settled
into a rigorous healthy regime which kept her at a constant nine
stone. She became expert in yoga. Her legs, which were her fortune,
were insured by Lloyd's for a million dollars and were still
spectacular enough in middle age to win her a contract to advertise
hosiery. She had also secretly been suffering from arthritis since
youth. Fortunately she found relief from this in middle age with the
coming of more sophisticated drugs.

While her film career had not lasted, her American television career
fared better. For the last ten years she hosted a championship
ballroom competition, and there were numerous other specials. One of
these, Circus Of The Stars in 1987, was nearly the cause of her death.
Prowse was rehearsing a routine with an 80lb trained leopard when the
animal pounced and bit her so badly on the neck that her carotid
artery was almost pierced. Not only did she survive, but she returned
to rehearsals, in true show-must-go-on tradition, as soon as she was
discharged from hospital.

She refused to blame the leopard and caressed its head in a courageous
act of public exoneration. Cancer was diagnosed two years ago but she
worked for as long as possible and was still teaching yoga classes
while she was undergoing chemotherapy.

She is survived by her son.

--
Robert J. Boyne, N.Vancouver, B.C.,Canada
(rjb...@direct.ca)
*****************************************
"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?"
Super-Tramp (1871-1940), British poet.

[Louis Epstein]

Robert J. Boyne (rjb...@direct.ca) wrote:
: Cut and Pasted from the London "Times".
:

I know you mean well,but do you have the permission of Times Newspapers
Limited to reprint their copyrighted material?

[Robert J. Boyne]

l...@put.com (Louis Epstein) wrote:

If you know I mean well, why ask.

Let me worry, just appreciate a superlative obit.

In the mean time thanks for your concern.