Dance Marathons: Get on the Dance Floor, Forget Your Troubles, and Forget the American Dream

Dance Marathons:

Get On the Dance Floor, Forget Your Troubles, and Forget the American Dream

Barbara Krasner HIST 5990-60

Culture of the Great Depression Prof. G. Dewar MacLeod

May 8, 2015

Krasner, Dance Marathons, 2

Dance Marathons:

Get On the Dance Floor, Forget Your Troubles, and Forget the American Dream

By the time Anita Colton was fourteen in 1934, she had become “an avid fan of the

Walkathon, a twenty-four hour-a-day endurance contest.”1 At the Arcadia Gardens Ballroom just a

few blocks from her home on the north side of Chicago, she and her partner, George Beiber, won

first prize with their lindy on Amateur Night and second prize in the amateur elimination feature

called Dynamite Sprints. World champs Marion Kirk and Mike Gouvas sent tingles through her

scalp when they said, “Kid, you could do all right in these things.”2

They showed her a copy of Billboard, the Bible of small-time show business3. On a page

devoted to walkathons, promoters advertised to contestants, including two shows scheduled to open

in Muskegon, Michigan. One was to be promoted by Major General Hugh Talbott. Kirk and

Gouvas dashed off a recommendation about Anita to the major general. She went home and told

her mother she was too dumb to continue with school and she was going to enter the walkathon.

“They feed you seven times a day and see that you get free medical care. Even if I don’t win, I ain’t

gonna do bad with the money I’ll make dancing, singing and selling pictures of my partner and me.”4

1 Anita O’Day, with George Eells. High Times, Hard Times (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981), 33. 2 O’Day, High Times, 33. 3 At that time, The Billboard carried sections devoted to general news, radio, music, vaudeville, night clubs, burlesque, carnivals, circuses, fairs, expositions, parks, merchandising, and classifieds. Content included news, listings, and talent calls. The weekly started in 1894 in service to the bill posting and advertising industry. According to Carol Martin in “For No Good Reason,” (The Drama Review 31, No. 1 [Spring 1987], 52), promoters solicited contestants through The Billboard’s “Endurance Show” column. 4 O’Day, High Times, 33.


For two years Anita drifted around the Midwest as a professional walkathon contestant.

There were some 20,0005 people—promoters, emcees, floor judges, trainers, nurses, cooks, janitors,

cashiers, ticket-takers, publicity agents, promotion men, musicians, contestants, and even a lawyer—

whose main source of income came from “endurance shows.” It was a big adventure, and for Anita

it sure beat sitting at Senn Junior High.

Called walkathons, endurance shows, derbies, or marathons, dance marathons were

burlesque, night club, and dog show rolled into one. They combined the amateur with the staged.

They earned the epithets “Poor Man’s Night Club” and “An Innocent Jail.” 6 They were spectator

sport, recalling gladiators at the Roman Coliseum.

Yet very few scholars address these marathons and those who do tend to belong to the

academy of performing arts, not history. The sole definitive work, Dance Marathons: Performing

American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (1994), for example, comes from performance scholar Carol

Martin. Psychology scholar Frank Calabria produced an amateurish effort, Dance of the Sleepwalkers:

The Dance Marathon Fad (1993), published before Martin’s book but relying heavily on her research

documented in dance journal articles. Martin’s work reported on and analyzed information culled

from first-person interviews, correspondences, and other primary sources, such as scrapbooks. Both

books depend on secondary sources.

Memoirs such as Anita O’Day’s High Times, Hard Times (1981) and June Havoc’s Early Havoc

(1959) provide the insider’s view. Paul Sann’s interesting but non-scholarly work,7 American Panorama

5 Carol Martin, Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), xvi. 6 Both terms were coined by Esquire writer Arnold Gingrich. Frank M. Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalkers: The Dance Marathon Fad (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 2. 7 Sann provides no footnotes or any allusions to his sources.


(1980), profiles promoter Milton Crandall and contestant June Havoc. Novels of the period, most

notably that of former marathon bouncer Horace McCoy They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1935) and

James T. Farrell’s third book of the Studs Lonigan trilogy, Judgment Day (1935), present the action,

language, and tone of the marathons. Photos and ephemera from the scrapbooks of Lawrence

Matthews bear out the historical narratives.

To place Depression-era dance marathons in historical and cultural context is to place them

as the means to strive for the American Dream but never to truly attain it. As Dickstein writes:

Though poor economically, the decade created a vibrant culture rich in the production of popular fantasy and trenchant social criticism. This is the split personality of Depression culture: on one hand, the effort to grapple with unprecedented economic disaster, to explain and interpret it; on the other hand, the need to get away, to create art and entertainment to distract people from their trouble…8 For many, as Farrell maintains, the marathon was the road to better living.9 It attracted the

disenfranchised, the down-and-out person looking for community, fame, sustenance, and shelter.

Dance marathons take the stage

Anita O’Day followed in the tradition of many who preceded her. Marathons have their

roots in ancient Greece with the race between Marathon and Athens. They came to fame again in

the twentieth century, notably in the Roaring Twenties, in that era of novelty record-setting

endurance stunts like climbing flagpoles and eating goldfish as well as golfing and knitting

marathons. Dance marathons debuted in 1923. Victor Hindmarch established a nonstop world’s

record of twenty-five hours of continuous dancing in England in March of that year. His record did

not last. The following month, on the dance floor of New York City’s Audubon Ballroom, thirty-

two-year-old Audubon dance teacher Alma Cummings exhausted six partners in 27 hours in the

8 Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 4. 9 James T. Farrell, “The Dance Marathons,” MELUS 18, No. 1 (Spring 1993), 139.


foxtrot and the waltz. She attributed her success “in part to Texas and in part to nine years of

vegetarian diet.”10 Her twenty-year-old first partner was neither a Texan nor a vegetarian. He rested

for nine hours while Cummings carried on. Later that April, Cummings completed fifty hours and

left seven partners at the wayside while she whirled to a new world’s record. She told reporters, “I

have hung a new record and if there are any who think they can out-dance me I will meet them on

May 5. I’ll be rested up long before that time.”11 An orchestra at first played the music, but when its

members went home, friends kept up the beat with dance records. Cummings added the one-step to

her repertoire at this event. She ate tomato and vegetable soup, peanuts, and grapefruit juice. She

changed her shoes from “high-heeled French slippers” to “boudoir slippers.”12 She wore three pairs

of stockings: cotton, for the feel against her skin; wool for heat; and silk, for appearance. At least

fifteen spectators stayed through the night to watch. Others returned at daybreak. A crowded

ballroom looked on as Cummings received her loving cup and flowers.

Four days later in Cleveland, Helene Mayer established a new world record of fifty-two

hours. A reporter called it a “stunt” and referred to “the record hunters.”13 These stunts were rising

in popularity.

Already opposition was setting in. In a biting editorial, a New York Times columnist called the

dance marathons an epidemic.14 He noted marathons demonstrated the greater use of the human

body and the lesser use of the human brain. Cummings withdrew from the arena. She announced

she tried to gain fame so her husband, whom she oddly lost several years prior, could find her (The

10 “Girl Dances 27 Hours in Ballroom Here; Wins World’s Record, Wilting Six Partners,” The New York Times, April 2, 1923. 11 “Girl Dances 50 Hours, New World Record; Tires Out 7 Men and Feels Fine at Finish,” The New York Times, April 10, 1923. 12 Ibid. 13 “Eight Dancing in Cleveland,” The New York Times, April 15, 1923. 14 “By Products,” The New York Times, April 22, 1923.


New York Times revealed her real name, Stappenback, on April 2). The columnist quoted Cummings:

“It was all love with me. Any other motive is vulgar.”15 She now reviled the dance marathon.

Cummings stood in good company on that score. From the outset, legal and health

authorities kept a watchful eye on the marathon. In April 1923, The New York Times reported a dance

marathon leaving the Audubon Ballroom at 168th Street and Broadway into a van that took the

dancing couples to the Edgewater ferry, where they continued to dance on deck, got into another

vehicle, until they reached the floor of the Pekin16 dance hall in Fort Lee. The appearance of a New

York police sergeant prompted this activity. But there is more to the story of simply evading the

anti-marathon section of the criminal code17 and an official shut-down of the marathon: The

reporter’s stance demonstrates the zeal for the marathon. In his praise of the dancing heroes and

heroines, he wrote:

The upshot of it all was that if New York City was so brutal, so ununderstanding, so little animated by pride of achievement that it would throw away this brilliant opportunity to get new, [sic] laurels, the honor should go to New Jersey, where as everybody knows, there are no foolish laws and personal ambition is never inhibited (except sometimes on Sundays).18

The reporter’s optimism was short-lived. The Fort Lee mayor’s emissary informed the group that

“the quiet denizens of Fort Lee could not brook such an overdose of jazz.”19 The dancing was also

considered unhealthy and immoral. The marathon continued on to Connecticut.

Still, these early marathon events and their backlash sparked the development of rules to

govern dance and rest periods of this athletic but entertaining spectacle. Just within the period of

April to June 1923, rules dictating rest periods clearly showed evolution. The first mention of rest

15 Ibid. 16 Also referred to as Peek-In. 17 The sergeant escorted the dance hall proprietor, George Grundy, to Washington Heights court to face charges and the judge’s decision. The law is Section 832, Article 78, designed years before to crack down on bicycle marathons. According to the law, if contestants continued for twelve hours within a twenty-four hour period, the proprietor would be guilty of a misdemeanor. 18 “Dance into New Jersey to Evade Law Here,” The New York Times, April 16, 1923. 19 “Marathoners Dance on to Connecticut,” The New York Times, April 17, 1923.


periods appeared in an April 23, 1923 The New York Times article about Dallas marathon dancer R. J.

Newman: “Friends and admirers put him through a vigorous massage treatment at rest periods and

he goes back on the floor at the sound of the gong like a prize fighter.”20 He had fifteen-minute rest

periods every four hours.21 At an event in May at the East Youngstown (Ohio) Pavilion, the winning

local couple Frances Mayer and Harry Wagner rested for three minutes every eight hours. They set a

new world endurance record at 182 hours, 8 minutes.22

By the time of the “Dance Derby of the Century” 23 five years later, health and legal

authorities had not backed down. Pittsburgh promoter Milton D. Crandall posted the rules and

regulations for the event:24

Rules All of the entrants competing have been pronounced physically fit by the Official Medical Board who will be in attendance at all times throughout the contest. Teams may be backed by a City, Chamber of Commerce, Ballroom or business enterprise. Changes of wearing apparel will be allowed during the rest periods only. Contestants who do not keep fully dressed in accordance with the regulation are subject to disqualification. No changes of partners will be permitted. When one member of a team withdraws, the entry is withdrawn. Rules and regulations will be strictly enforced by the referee. Expert masseurs, masseuses, hairdressers, tonsorial artists, manicurists, chiropodists, and other attendants for the comfort of the dancers will be in attendance at all times. Contestants are required to dance one hour and rest fifteen minutes making a total of 60 minutes dancing and 15 minutes rest. The rest period must be taken simultaneously by all dancers desiring to take advantage of the rest period, but teams are permitted to dance on without taking a rest if they do desire; but if the entrants do not take the rest period this does not permit them to add to the elapsed time to their new rest period. Waltz, fox-trot, two-step, and smile five-minute sprints for cash prizes will be staged throughout the contest. Entrants, however, are not compelled to enter these sprints unless they so wish. The rules do not require entrants to be dancing, as long as they are in the dance position and moving. Should partners separate while on the floor, the floor manager is instructed to give them a ten-minute warning. Failure to then be in position will result in the team being eliminated.25

20 “Dances 102 ½ Hrs. for a New Record,” The New York Times, April 23, 1923. 21 Martin, Dance Marathons, 20. 22 “Couple Dance 182 Hours, a Record,” The New York Times, May 28, 1923. 23 “91 Couples Start in Dance Marathon,” The New York Times, June 11, 1928. 24 Each event had its own rules, according to Carol Martin, Dance Marathons, 33. 25 As quoted in Martin, Dance Marathons, 33. Martin quoted from a July 1961 Ballroom Dance Magazine article, “We Danced All Night—And All Day!” by Jimmy Scott, a participant in the Crandall event.


On June 10, 1928, 106 couples—from the United States, Germany, Italy, Poland, China, and

other countries—applied to enter a dance derby at Madison Square Garden in New York City, all

vying for a $5,000 prize. The New York Times covered the event in a series of daily articles. This event

set the stage for the next phase of marathons. Crandall figured prominently throughout Madison

Square Garden, a straw hat on his head and a cigar in his mouth. Whether he arranged for the press

coverage is unknown. On June 10, only ninety-one of the 106 couples tripped the light fantastic to

“Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Sweet Sue, I Love You,” after the “dance derby of the century”

commenced. By the following day, thirty-five couples had already dropped out. By June 21, the

derby continued with fourteen couples remaining. Meanwhile, a Pittsburgh contest broke a new

record with 303 hours, but the local police abruptly ended the event. New York City’s assistant

district attorney announced he believed the Madison Square Garden derby was illegal for providing

fewer than twelve hours rest in a twenty-four period, making the promoters liable. Still, the derby

endured. On June 23, it broke Pittsburgh’s record and garnered a crowd of some 8,000 spectators.

By then the Department of Health was investigating the marathon and the derby became the object

of $50,000 in wagers. Just past its 465th hour, the police delivered an injunction to stop the

marathon. At this time, nine couples remained. They went on to play in a burlesque show at the

Winter Garden and split the prize money.

Milton Crandall had a racket, defined by 1890s historian Kathy Peiss as a dance organized by

social clubs and amusement societies.26 Rackets offered two essentials: profit for the promoter and

opportunity for the participants. Crandall’s 1928 event brought marathons to a new level. They now

represented full-scale phenomena that included emcees, judges, orchestras, entertainers, nurses, food

26 Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 92.


providers, souvenir vendors, and spectators. They brought competition, drama, music, and

entertainment. Further, they brought spectator participation.27 Dance marathons became less known

as endurance contests and more as walkathons. They became pure show, characterized by celebrity

drop-ins, mock weddings and staged fights or planned specialty numbers among and by the

contestants. As Martin maintains, “Of course, the contestants experienced real exhaustion and pain,

but ultimately the contests were a unique kind of theater—a combination of gladiatorial display and

professional finesse.”28 That finesse encompassed dance innovation, too. As an example, the

“World’s Championship Colored Endurance Dancing Contest” in Harlem in 1928 introduced a new

breakaway dance, the “Lindbergh Hop,” a.k.a. “the Lindy,” demonstrated by George “Shorty”

Snowden29, champion dancer of Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom This dance was Swing’s precursor, the

mother of the “Jitterbug.”

Dance marathons married the reckless activities of the Twenties with the rise of public

dancing. In New York City for example, as Peiss points out, a network of commercial institutions

and societies, such as lodges, produced the structure of working-class dancing. The statistics around

the turn of the twentieth century bear out the rise in popularity: Peiss’ city directory research cites

130 halls in 1895 and 195 in 1910, an increase of fifty percent.30 The number is presumably

understated as it does not include private dance halls, such as those in saloons or other

establishments.

But by the second decade of the twentieth century, these halls were no longer sufficiently

large to accommodate dance space demands. This led to the opening of dance palaces, including the

famous Roseland Ballroom, and they attracted the working class for dances and other affairs, such as

27 Martin, Dance Marathons, xix. 28 Martin, Dance Marathons, xxi. 29 “5 Couples Quit Harlem Dance; 20 Start Third Day,” The World, June 20, 1928. Lindy expert Frankie Manning also reported Shorty’s development and naming of the Lindy in Frankie Manning and Cynthia R. Millman, Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 49-50. 30 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 93.


annual corporate gatherings, because they could hold up to some 3,000 people. Young women were

particularly encouraged to attend these dances; halls offered discounts to unescorted women, but

not because women were earning less money. The halls provided the allure of excitement and

romance. They also offered the opportunity to imitate the dance team of Irene and Vernon Castle

and Harlem exhibition dancers. Martin attests, “As early as 1910 urban dancing was seen as the

emblem of changing values and ways of life. American men and women gathered in public venues to

move their bodies to the new rhythms emerging from black culture.”31 Cabarets and clubs installed

dance floors so patrons could try to emulate their dancing idols.

By the Wall Street crash, dance had become a madness, a craze, an outlet. However, if a

study of The New York Times articles can be representative, marathons slowed considerably from

November 1929 to 1931. When they picked up again, they fulfilled a different promise. Gone were

the dance floors of novelty and gaiety. Beginning in 1931, dance marathons offered to both amateur

and professional the American Dream: the opportunity to be noticed, to win prize money, and to

have room and board—at least for a while. As Caroline Bird observed, “The mood of the marathon

was very similar to the aimless, endless movement of superfluous people around and around the

country in rickety cars or on freight trains.”32

Carol Martin categorizes dance marathons into three distinctive eras: (1) the explosion of

hourly dance contests beginning in the spring of 1923; (2) simultaneous endurance contests and

spectator events, 1923-1928; and (3) the full development of the simultaneous contest and event,

1928-1935. But these are arbitrary demarcations, because the discernible differences lay mostly

between a Jazz Age event and a Depression-era event. The events evolved from pure competition to

staged entertainment, from fun to desperation. Four periods could be classified as follows: (1) pure

31 Martin, Dance Marathons, 11. 32 Caroline Bird, The Invisible Scar (New York: David McKay, 1966), 66.


endurance shows, 1923-1924; (2) the marathon as entertainment until promoters ran out of cities for

their shows, 1926-192833; (3) an outbreak of renamed marathons as walkathons throughout the

country and abroad until laws shut them down, 1931-1935; and (4) post-state-law dance marathons

and their evolution into other forms of entertainment, including roller derbies, started by dance

marathon promoter Leo Seltzer.34 In his December 29, 1934 The Billboard article, Seltzer notes the

absence of activity after 1928 until 1931. His rationale for early marathons is compelling and takes

only the point of view of the promoter. He argues that no one thought about the future. But those

who were show men at heart saw the possibilities and birthed the second phase with an eye toward

showmanship and rules. During this phase, West Coast promoters innovated and combined

vaudeville with marathon. Marathons’ gain in popularity during the third phase, in the midst of the

Depression can be attributed to its sadistic entertainment value at low admission prices. Spectators

wanted to watch that rare combination of “gladiator and night-club entertainment.”35 Indeed, the

walkathons of the third period offered spectators a circus-like experience with hot dogs and peanuts,

albeit with a mob spirit, at low prices and no limit on how long they could stay.

The daily grind aimed to eliminate

By the time she was fourteen, actress June Havoc, once known on the vaudeville circuit as

Baby June and then Dainty June along with her sister, Louise Hovick (who went on to become

burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee), was near desperation. The Depression had killed vaudeville. In

1933, Havoc’s agent sent her to a dance marathon in San Francisco. Her job, for which she’d receive

five dollars, was to entertain the audience with her tap dancing during rest periods and to keep the

33 Further research is needed to determine the number and locations of dance marathons in 1929. Seltzer cites a gap from 1928 until 1931. 34 Frank M. Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalkers: The Dance Marathon Fad (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993), 35. 35 Leo Seltzer, “What Future—Walkathons,” The Billboard, December 29, 1934, 220.


crowd from leaving. But once there, she became fascinated with the event. She later wrote, “It was

like entering an amusement park or a skating rink. The aroma of popcorn really drove me crazy with

desire.”36 The promoter, Mr. Dankle, gave her an earful:

That audience ain’t gonna sit still for no squeaky amateur show. We got enough squeaks dancing right out there in the contest. We gotta give ‘em a contrast in between watchin’ the marathon. It’s gotta be ‘Oh, Christ! Ain’t it great that poor little bastard can still squeak out a song after all them hours dancin’ the skin offa their feet!’ Then…whoosh! The floor is empty because the poor bastards have to disappear to rest quarters for eleven lousy minutes…37

Dankle offered her a position as a professional. He gave her carfare to meet the troupe in

Massachusetts. She hitched instead to save the money. Once there, she filled out her application

with about one hundred other dancers. She gave her name as Jean Reed (she married Bobby Reed at

thirteen38) and her age as sixteen. She answered questions about body lice, mental illness, contagious

diseases, and proclivity toward fits. The application required a physical examination, too. She was in

for an adventure and a rude awakening. As the drummer told her, “Kill ‘em fast, honey, ‘cause

they’re waitin’ to kill you.”39 The marathon gave Havoc the opportunity to solve a problem: She

wanted to become someone other than Dainty Baby June. Through the marathon she could create a

new persona.

Contestants typically danced or walked for forty-five minutes. A bell clanged, signaling the

eleven-minute rest period. The contestants retreated to their rest quarters. The remaining four

minutes accounted for time to and from the dance floor. Dancers were mandated to take showers

every twelve hours. They ate twelve times every twenty-four hours. Dankle dangled the proverbial

and literal carrot to the desperate June Havoc:

36 June Havoc, Early Havoc (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959), 7. 37 Havoc, Early Havoc, 8. 38 Controversy exists over dates in June Havoc’s life. Her mother carried around five different birth certificates to challenge any claims of child labor law violation. Havoc gives her age as fourteen when she joined the marathon, but she could have been as senior as twenty-one or twenty-two. 39 Havoc, Early Havoc, 10.


Midnight: Soup and thick hot chocolate

3:00 am: Raw vegetables, crackers and cheese, milk, and hot chocolate

7:00 am: Grapefruit, ham and eggs, toast, and coffee

10:30 am: Fruit, cookies, fruit juices

1:30 pm: Full course dinner

3:30 pm: Full tea-time spread

6:30 pm: Big supper

10:00 pm: Snack

In between: Ice cream and cake

Dankle said, “They eat like real athletes, see?”40 Contestants ate standing up at makeshift

tables built upon sawhorses.

Orchestras provided the music, but canned music or phonographs were used during

intermissions. They played the “Tiger Rag,” a tune with a quick tempo, and “Hold That Tiger,”

among other songs. The band played “My Buddy” when a contestant left the show. Contestants

performed the fox trot, waltz, lindy, tango, and jitterbug. But popular dance steps gave way soon

enough to dragging each other around the dance floor, shifting weight from one foot to the other to

convince the floor judges they were moving.

Dankle served additional roles beyond promoter. He played the advisor to a newcomer like

Havoc. He told her, “Only the horses stay on for the grinds and sprints, but up in the early part of

the show, before it gets tough, those that can sing and dance make a boodle. Then they usually

scram before the rules get rough.”41 By horses, he meant the desperate ones, the ones with “no place

to go. They got no brains, so they got lots of guts. They can outlast the daintier ones easy.”42

40 Havoc, Early Havoc, 11. 41 Havoc, Early Havoc, 12. 42 Havoc, Early Havoc, 12.


He told her not to behave like a warhorse, however. Intentionally looking tired helped to

play the suckers. One of the dancers, a “small, shabby girl” whose thin voice eked out “Two Tickets

to Georgia,” picked up ten dollars a day. Havoc witnessed it herself. She recalled, “Coins clattered

onto the dance floor. There was an impressive shower of money.”43 Dancers appreciated the spray

of the silver shower—when spectators would throw coins on the dance floor in the direction of the

dancers they favored. In her play Marathon ’33, Havoc demonstrates the importance of the silver

shower from the perspective of the emcee, who wants to stop spectators from leaving the venue as

the marathoners succumb to the pressure of the Grind, an elimination feature that forced dancers to

refrain from talking and to dance or shuffle to a thrumming drumbeat: “And there is it ladies and

gentlemen…the end of a gallant fight. Out of the money. All these hours have gone for nothing

unless you dig down and make this a real silver shower.”44

As a promoter, Dankle also served as banker. He said, “I got all the kids’ loot in separate

boxes, all sanitary, see?...You get protection when you’re in my show.”45 Promoters like Dankle

shaped the marathon business. They decided, for example, on the mix of local amateur contestants

and “imported” professionals. Promoters served as ersatz fathers: They handled the police if one of

the dancers got into trouble or paid the bill if a dancer got into a financial bind. The promoter hired

marathon staff, including ex-marathoners, creating a “private collection of retired monkeys.”46 These

staff members served in the roles of trainer, nurse, cashier, cook, bouncer, and janitor. The trainers

held responsibility for keeping contestants in good physical condition and for keeping them awake.

Promoters sought out marquee entertainers, often advertising for them in the “Endurance Show”

columns in The Billboard or writing them directly.47 Such entertainers helped attract sponsors and

43 Havoc, Early Havoc, 13. 44 June Havoc, Marathon ’33 (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1969), 62. 45 Havoc, Early Havoc, 28. 46 Havoc, Early Havoc, 30. 47 Martin, Dance Marathons, 49.


spectators. Promoters also featured special attraction celebrity talent to draw people in. These

included Josephine Baker and Texas Guinan, a flashy nightclub queen.

The publicist was the front man, selecting marathon location and soliciting local businesses

for sponsorship. He was also responsible for understanding the local laws governing the event. If he

thought a site looked good, he communicated that to the promoter so a date could be set for the

show’s opening. The main objective was to find an audience sympathetic to the dancers.

In some ways, the dancers mimicked professional wrestlers.48 Tensions brewed among them

in their performance of victim and villain roles, staged to evoke spectator emotional and economic

investment. Contestants were constantly sent to the “hospital,” cots located directly on the dance

floor for public viewing, especially during “Cot Night.” Some contestants gave in to the lunacy of

the event and lost mental ability. This “squirrely” state receives reference in the marathon theme

song, “Marathon Memories,” found in the Lawrence Matthews scrapbook: “You will laugh when

someone goes “squirrelly” / and starts picking flowers from the air.49 It was common for one

exhausted marathoner to hold onto his or her sleeping partner. Up to four hours of sleep could be

gained on the dance floor.50 Rest periods were rarely restful.

James T. Farrell’s excellent 1931 treatise on “fatigue contests” presents the marathoner in

pursuit of the American Dream: for the poor or members of the petite bourgeoisie, the dance

marathon “is a highly desirable institution. It provides a larger arena, in which one can become

something of a public figure, and impulses for fame, fortune and success, which can receive only a

vicarious satisfaction in the movies, or a temporary easement in a dance hall, can here find actual

and concrete success.”51 However, he observes the marathoners are at the mercy of the promoter. If

48 Professional wrestling grew out of the traveling carnival strongman, challenging anyone to beat him, and solidified into the National Wrestling Association in 1901. 49 Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalkers, 54-55. 50 Havoc, Early Havoc, 37. 51 Farrell, “The Dance Marathons,” 134.


the promoter deems he is losing money, he can shortchange food, rest, even ventilation to hasten

the end of the event or to provoke spectator attention. Ultimately, Farrell finds marathons stupid

and degrading. He writes, “They stumble and flounder, they twist, they bump, they crumble, they

start, pause, flounder, waver. Most of them look like perennial drunks who are started off by a

glass.”52 In the third book of his Studs Lonigan trilogy, Lonigan asks, “’When is something going to

happen?’…’Damn fools, wasting their health. Look at the blonde trying to keep number eight on his

feet.’”53

As a newcomer to the circuit, Havoc had to navigate her way, not knowing whom to believe

or trust. The experienced dancers intentionally gave her bad advice, such as taping silver dollars to

the arches of her feet, a gesture that only aggravated her pain. It was a clear attempt to force Havoc

out of the marathon. When questioned, Havoc did not divulge the identity of the dancer who had

told her to do this. Still, Dankle dramatized the injury further by announcing it to the audience in an

attempt to garner sympathy for Havoc. While the maneuver did not help Havoc’s position with the

other dancers, it worked well with the crowd. Its cheers wrapped Havoc in a blanket of affection.

She wrote, “I felt loved, warmed, wanted. I wept openly. I forgot the hurt in my feet. I forgot

everything. I thought they really loved me.”54

Pros never shared their trade secrets with the amateurs. To get past the first five hundred

hours was a rite of passage, evidenced by calluses on the feet. Dankle equated these hours to a bad

hangover.55 The dance marathon environment was cutthroat. As Havoc remembered, “You just

hope [the amateur] falls out quickly and quietly. If he doesn’t, and you don’t get caught at it, you, as

a pro, are only too happy to help him – o-u-t.”56 Professionals were paid to convince the audience

52 Farrell, “The Dance Marathons,” 136. 53 James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy Comprising Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Judgment Day (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 716. 54 Havoc, Early Havoc, 56. 55 Havoc, Early Havoc, 86. 56 Havoc, Early Havoc, 57.


their behavior was authentic. They learned and demonstrated skill to compete against each other

with their rehearsed spiels, their roles to play, whether a villain, a sweet young thing, or a buffoon.

Some marathoners had become celebrities in their own right. Havoc’s partner, Patsy, for instance,

had developed a following by dancing in some fifty-five marathons.

Crowds were the largest between 8:00 pm and midnight. To Havoc, the marathon mimicked

vaudeville. Spectators stayed for hours and sometimes for days. She recalled:

They neglected home, children, work. Breeding, religion, culture—or the lack of it—could not explain the avid interest of the spectators. Their behavior becomes significant only as a sign of the times. They were drawn to us by the climate of cruelty in the world. Our degradation was entertainment; sadism was sexy; masochism was talent. The passion they spilled over us lit up an entire city. The local radio station, along with the newspapers, created a $200,000 racket out of a five-cent roller-coaster ride.57

As Martin maintains, the ideology holding dance marathons together was audience

involvement.58 To the spectator, the dance marathon was like watching a real-time soap opera.

Audiences encouraged romances and break-ups, but most of all endurance. Wes Gehring, Red

Skelton’s biographer, contends the payoff for the audience was the “periodic collapse of a

competitor and the funny/sad attempts of the partner to keep them both upright.”59

It was the job of the emcee to keep the audience riveted. Often this meant the emcee had to

think and speak fast. He had to know each hero and heroine’s background and condition. Red

Skelton worked as an emcee and comic, with little distinction between the two. He received about

$75 a week until Edna, a dance contestant until she married him in 1931, intervened and negotiated

his salary up to $500 a week. When they married he was seventeen and she was fifteen. Although the

57 Havoc, Early Havoc, 42. 58 Martin, Dance Marathons, 68. 59 Wes D. Gehring, Seeing Red: The Skelton in Hollywood’s Closet: An Analytical Biography (Davenport: Robin Vincent Publishing, 2001), 28.


Depression cut Skelton’s vaudeville career, its dance marathons catapulted him to greater

opportunities.

To stimulate the audience, promoters like Dankle resorted to special elimination tricks. Chief

among these were sprints, grinds, derbies, and dead-stop treadmill jaunts. For the sprint, the floor

was marked with four corner posts with ropes in between, much like a boxing ring. Each team had

to move in perfect rhythm and in alignment with the pacesetting team. They had to gallop, making

one complete turn at each corner. Typically, the inability to make the turn would cause a pile-up.

Anyone who collapsed was immediately eliminated. For this special contest, the dance period

extended to two hours, twenty-four hours a day.

The grind was termed “one of the most excruciating tests of human endurance”60 and was

performed to a constant drumbeat—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Dancers could not

talk; they used pantomime. All they heard was the sound of their feet shuffling and that drumming.

Havoc characterized it as a kind of Chinese torture.61

Horace McCoy presents the derby dramatically in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. The emcee,

Rocky, explains to the audience: “’The kids will race around the track for fifteen minutes, the boys

heeling and toeing, the girls trotting or running as they see fit. There is no prize for the winner, but

if some of you ladies and gentlemen want to send up some prize money to encourage the kids, I

know they will appreciate it.”62 If one of them enters the pit, the center of floor where the iron cots

are, the remaining partner has to make two laps to count for one. The last couple each night is

disqualified. As one of the promoters, Socks, points out to the dancers, “’I guarantee that’ll bring in

the crowds.’”63 He also promises the dancers it will be more fun for them because there will be more

60 Havoc, Early Havoc, 115. 61 Havoc, Early Havoc, 164. 62 Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1935), 54. 63 McCoy, They Shoot Horses, 23.


people to watch them, including Hollywood celebrities. He issues the dancers special uniforms for

the derby race: white sweatshirts, white shorts, and tennis shoes. The boys receive black leather belts

with handles for the girls to hang on to as they race around the curves.

The dead-stop treadmill involved walking fast and then coming to a dead halt. Other

elimination tactics included zombie treadmills, back-to-back struggles, hurdles, circle hotshots, heel

and toe races, duck waddles, and bombshells. In zombie treadmills, dancers wore blindfolds under

dimmed lights. Failure to jump the hurdles meant they had to run extra laps.64

At 1,200 hours in Havoc’s first marathon, new rules were posted. Contestants now had to

wear dog collars, but not around their necks. The dog collars connected dance partners by their

wrists with a six-foot-long leash. If one partner fell asleep, he or she could not wander far. The

contestants had to wear these collars for a twelve-hour period, from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am.

Desperation for business often called for additional measures. These included mock

weddings, staged fights, and specialty numbers. Farrell describes other stunts: on-stage teeth

extraction, tonsillectomies, and razor-blade ingestion.65 Expenses ran high in marathons. Capital

investments could run from $3,000 to $10,000. Groceries and labor alone for one show could total

$60,000.66 An eye on profit drove promoters. As Carol Martin writes, “[the promoter] took

advantage of [the dancers] and made lots of money off them.”67

Other revenue-producing ventures included the manufacture of picture postcards, which

netted a dancing couple income from ten cents to a dollar each. Many teams received local

sponsorship; they wore the names of their sponsors on their clothing. Emcees proudly announced

64 Martin, Dance Marathons, 55. 65 Farrell, “The Dance Marathons,” 137. 66 Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalkers, 59. 67 Martin, Dance Marathons, 47.


new sponsorships, thereby promoting the sponsors as well, not just to the local spectators but also

to the radio audience as well.

Signs were posted in the hall, announcing the number of hours danced thus far and the

number of couples remaining. The sign asked, “HOW LONG WILL THEY LAST?”68

A special mimeographed “dope sheet,” or daily bulletin, Marathon News, circulated for a fee

among the spectators by the marathon’s publicity machine. Patterned after horse-racing news, it

conveyed the day’s activities, profiled each dancer’s background, current condition, and chances of

survival. It was also a vehicle for advertising, for example: “We take the bows for the contestants’

well-groomed appearances. E-Z QUIK LAUNDRY COMPANY.” Always in bold print, the daily

posed the question: “HOW LONG CAN THEY LAST?”69

Prizes continued to provide the motivation to endure. By the end of the event, nearly 2,000

hours of dancing, Havoc received $52.72. The outcome had been fixed all along. Prize winners were

then billed for their expenses, never bringing home the prize. As Havoc wrote, “I’m in the middle of

a pretty ethical bunch of crooks.”70 The only real economic winner was the promoter.

Despite the grind, Havoc joined the next marathon on Dankle’s circuit. Marathons took

place, typically for about a month, across the country, in cities and small towns. According to

Calabria, Billboard listed forty-four sites in the “endurance column” between 1934 and 193871,

representing 32 states72:

Asbury Park, NJ East Dubuque, IL Waterbury, CT Great Falls, MT

Spokane, WA Danville, VA North Platte, NE Enid, OK

68 Havoc, Early Havoc, 115. 69 Havoc, Early Havoc, 157. 70 Havoc, Early Havoc, 158. 71 The dates here go beyond those Carol Martin outlines in Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture in the 1920s and 1930s, indicating the weakness in her classification of phases. 72 Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalkers, 19-20.


Somers Point, NJ Ocean City, MD Tampa, FL Williamsport, PA

Lynchburg, VA Minneapolis, MN Green Bay, WI Charleston, SC

Battle Creek, MI Flint, MI High Point, NC Yankton, SD

Detroit, MI Long Beach, CA Frankfort, KY Washington, DC

New York, NY Miami, FL Wichita, KS Cleveland, OH

Chicago, IL Marion, IN Birmingham, AL Swawnee, OK

Knoxville, TN Manitou, CO Macon, GA Union City, TN

Fort Smith, AR Huntington, WV Portsmouth, RI Cheyenne, WY

Avon, MA Shreveport, LA Freeport, IL Corpus Christi, TX

The dance marathon scrapbooks of Lawrence Matthews also depict marathons in Highland Park,

Bayonne, Newark, Atlantic City, Somers Point, and Keansburg, New Jersey; Staten Island, New

York; Lake Milton, Ohio; Old Orchard Beach, Maine; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Stamford,

Connecticut.73 Gehring notes walkathons in Kansas City and St. Louis.74

If contestants traveled the circuit, they got to see America. Many contestants only

participated once.75 However, promoters believed that repeat shows, that is, bringing a show to a

venue used before, was not good business practice.

The introduction of regulation

In 1929, Dr. Everett Perlman and G.W. Nelson published a ten-chapter Marathon Guide. This

book outlined sample menus. Perlman, then a medical student, addressed the effects of marathon

73 Lawrence Matthews, Photographic Scrapbook: Dance Marathons (Special Collections, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 74 Gehring, Seeing Red, 28 and 31. 75 Martin, Dance Marathons, 125.


dancing on the heart, circulation, posture, stomach, upper respiratory system, and other body

functions. He noted lack of sleep could produce “strange symptoms,” including rambling and

incoherent speech and hallucinations.76 He attributed the demonstration of picking daisies as a result

of the silver showers. As Martin states, picking daisies became a favorite way for performers to feign

delirium.77 Perlman also discussed states of goofiness and marathonitis. The latter described an

obsession with marathons, whether that involved training, performing, or watching.

Jimmy Scott, one of the dancers in the 1928 “Dance Derby of the Century,” published an

article in The Billboard in April 1934. In it he poses the question: How long would the “genre” of

dance marathons last? Promoters wondered, too. The article sparked debate about marathon

regulation, and birthed The National Endurance Amusement Association (NEAA). Up to this point,

promoters had been developing and enforcing their own rules. Many of them were inexperienced.

Scott argued that this lack of knowledge created an unmanageable group of contestants and

disinterested patrons. The Billboard became the central clearinghouse for all things dance marathon.

In January 1934, just a few months prior to the article, it began running ads soliciting contestants.

In February, the “Endurance Shows” column debuted, bearing a subtitle “Danceathons—

Walkathons—Speedathons.”78 Information for the column came from promoters’ publicists.

Scott believed marathons could be and should be a legitimate business and operate as such.

Marathon manager and emcee Eddie Gilmartin agreed with Scott and said so in his article published

in The Billboard. Promoter Hal J. Ross soon entered the debate and referred to an article he published

in Esquire the year before that named marathons as the “family man’s night club.”79 The cruelty of

the marathons, Ross argued, proved to the down-and-out that someone had it worse than they did.

76 Martin, Dance Marathons, 60. 77 Martin, Dance Marathons, 60. 78 Martin, Dance Marathons, 112. 79 As quoted in Martin, Dance Marathons, 114. Both Martin and Calabria refer to an Autumn 1933 Esquire article published by Arnold Gingrich in which Gingrich uses the term “poor man’s night club.” See note 2.


Ross wanted to rid the industry of racketeers, chiselers, and the inexperienced. He called for the use

of contracts. This brought attorney Richard S. Kaplan into the debate. In an October 1934 issue of

The Billboard, Kaplan contributed ten points for promoters that stressed protection against liability

and rule-setting regarding contestant eligibility, hours, and prize money.

Scott, Gilmartin, Kaplan, and promoter Leo Seltzer all agreed that inexperienced promoters,

“hotel marathoners,”80 and the movie industry threatened the continuation of marathons. By early

1935, this new NEAA offered membership with benefits of legal advice, free contracts, and

elimination of racketeers. It encouraged promoters to join for an initiation fee of $100.

The NEAA did not stand a chance at being effective. The force of the laws against

marathons became too powerful to fight and the organization could not generate sufficient financial

support. The NEAA disappeared as quickly as it arose.

Perhaps the greatest source of a drive to regulation could have been the dancers. They could

have formed some sort of labor group, but they never did. Further, the “work force” was comprised

of both professional and amateur factions, which would make banding together toward a common

cause more challenging. Irrespective of the status, contestants were not employees and dancing in a

contest was not a job.

Dance marathons limp out of fashion

From as early as 1923, health officials were wary of the dance marathon and took action,

often bringing the shows to an abrupt stop. In his novel, McCoy alludes to the Mothers’ League for

Good Morals which wages war against the marathon and implores the city council to shut it down.

80 “Hotel marathoners” traveled from event to event without any real intention of competing. Rather, their goal was to simply sponge off the promoter as long as possible.


Each town that hosted a marathon seemed to have at least one organization that had a moral or

safety problem with the event.

Marathon health and legal concerns only grew as time went on. By October 1935, twenty-

four states banned endurance contests. Fear stood at the roots of the increase in legislation: fear of

transients by municipal authorities; competitive fear by movie theaters; fear of death and illness by

health organizations such as the American Social Hygiene Association. As Martin contends, “On the

whole local communities feared and loathed outsiders who came in and, especially during hard

times, extracted good money from local residents. Such visitors were felt to be flimflam artists,

carpetbaggers, or crooks. These outsiders seduced and corrupted local youth, especially young

women.”81 Farrell calls marathons tasteless, degrading, uncivilized, unwholesome, animalistic, and

disgusting.82

When the endurance dance shows debuted in the Twenties, they represented a fun factor.

Promoters and contestants were encouraged to fly in the face of the health and legal authorities. The

public wanted marathoners to keep dancing despite the odds. Although some promoters sought to

abide by the law and generate rules and regulations for protection, the more unethical promoters did

not. During the Depression, fun on the dance floor transformed to the struggle for survival. The

growth of gnawing fear among municipal leaders, health authorities, lawmakers, and movie theaters

outweighed the pleasure audiences gained. Movie theaters lobbied lawmakers to ban dance

marathons. Few people protested. By 1939, Billboard lost interest, too.

81 Martin, Dance Marathons, 132. 82 Farrell, “The Dance Marathons,” 143.


The legacy

Endurance dancing of the “they-shoot-horses” variety may have ended in the mid-thirties,

but it spawned a number of other sports, including roller derbies, and speed or steeplechase derbies.

They were hugely modified versions of the dance marathon. However, today charity dance

marathons honor the legacy of the Thirties, without the flimflam promoters, the used-car-salesman

emcees, and the extreme exhaustion.

Even Ann Wagner, writing about adversaries of dance, admits to the group of marathon

participants—promoters, emcees, and professional contestants—whose careers benefited. These

included Red Skelton, June Havoc, Betty Hutton, singer Anita O’Day, singer Frankie Laine, and

many others. Havoc publicized her experiences through memoir and her play, performed at the

Anta Theatre in 1963 by the Actors Studio Theatre featuring Julie Harris.

Dance marathons and shared authority

Calabria bequeaths to the historian the final judgment about the worth, value, and impact of

marathons.83 No historian has yet to fulfill this role, but debates among historians in related arenas

can bear scholarly fruit.

One of these debates concerns the role of producer and audience in popular culture.

Calabria concludes that American audiences contributed as much to “this lamentable form of

entertainment” as show personnel. Here, then, T.J. Jackson Lears wins the debate over Lawrence

Levine about the culpability of producer vis-à-vis audience, oddly bearing out Levine’s James Joyce

epigram, “My consumers, are they not my producers?”84 Without the audience, marathons would

not have become popular. Promoters and their staffs manipulated that audience through

83 Calabria, Dance of the Sleepwalker, 197. 84 Lawrence W. Levine, “The Folklore of Industrial Society: Popular Culture and Its Audiences,” American Historical Review 97, No. 5 (December 1992), 1369.


performance, publicity, and broadcasting. But promoters also relied on audience reaction. As Lears

writes, “Just as the producers bring more than market analysis to this process, the audiences bring

more than coping skills. They bring historically conditioned prejudices, fantasies, inhibitions,

ideologies, archetypes—scripts for the pageant of life.”85 He obliquely suggests, for dance

marathons, the play was the thing. Producers counted on audience “baggage” so spectators could

pick their favorites, cheer them on, and scream when elimination occurred. The audience witnessed

the inherent drama; their responses and reactions then strengthened dramatic appeal. As audiences

thinned out, so did the economic opportunity for the marathon.

But the role of producer, of course, was not restricted to the promoter. The contestant

produced as well. Calabria contends the shows satisfied the need for escapism during unsettling

times. This is a debatable point. For example, Havoc’s experience could demonstrate the opposite.

She needed a place to go to, a place where she could be someone else. Martin’s assessment maintains

both local amateurs and professionals said they joined the shows, “For no good reason.”86 They

joined for the hope of winning the prize money, to get a roof over their heads, and to eat. Further,

as Dickstein points out, escapism conveyed the channeling and neutralizing of people’s concerns.

“spinning out problems to show they could somehow be worked out.”87 Dance marathons provided

entertainment and diversion, much like radio soap operas. They did not provide the means to work

out problems. In fact, they often created more problems.

Dance marathons and mobility

The dance marathon provided a “mobile home” for professional contestants. The event’s

mobile aspect, traipsing from town to town, state to state, on the promoter’s dime, alleviated the

85 T. J. Jackson Lears, “Making Fun of Popular Culture,” American Historical Review 97, No. 5 (December 1992), 1426. 86 Martin, Dance Marathons, 49. 87 Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark, 8.


sense of instability, fear, and even shame. Cultural historian Warren Susman attributes the fear and

insecurity to geographical instability and during the 1930s, these sensations intensified.88 The

marathon then satisfied a need among performers.

But out on the dance floor, the freedom of movement was elusive. Once the marathon was

well underway, movement became physically limited by exhaustion. In Dancing in the Dark, Dickstein

alludes to choreography as mobile freedom.89 That may have worked well for Fred and Ginger, but

it had limited application for marathoners, where the fox trot and lindy gave way to merely shifting

weight from one foot to the other. But more informative and useful is his discussion of mobility in

his article, “Depression Culture: The Dream of Mobility,” where he writes, “the real dream of the

expressive culture of the 1930s was not money and success, not even elegance and sophistication,

but mobility, with its thrust toward the future.”90 It is this “looking forward” meaning of mobility

that applies here, a way to relieve sameness. From big cities to small towns to waterfront resorts,

marathons provided a way to survive, even if just barely. Despite the physical and mental challenges

of her first marathon in Massachusetts, Havoc still chose to sign up again, agreeing to meet up with

Dankle again in Florida.

Dance marathons and the American Dream

To achieve the American Dream meant to achieve success. Dickstein discusses the

relationship between the American Dream and Depression-era arts and the fascination with success

and failure.91 As a performing art, dance fits into this category. The dance marathons exhibited this

fascination from within and without. Contestants sought success, no matter the odds, no matter

88 Susman, Culture as History, Location 3963-3970. 89 Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark, 359. 90 Morris Dickstein, “Depression Culture: The Dream of Mobility,” in Radical Revisions: Rereading 1930s Culture, ed. Bill Mullen and Sherry Lee Linkon (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1996), 239. 91 Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark, xxi.


their particular backgrounds. Promoters and emcees, radio broadcasters, reporters, and audiences

highlighted successes and failures. The nature of the competition was dancing as a duo; one’s

success depended upon the performance of his or her partner. Dickstein claims the marathon,

especially that depicted in McCoy’s novel, is a metaphor for the Depression era.92 For Susman,

dance marathons were “not just foolish ways out of the rat race, but rather alternative (if socially

marginal) patterns duplicating in structure what institutionalized society demanded and normally

assumed it could provide.”93

If it were true that marathons are metaphors for the Depression, it is only due to Sydney

Pollack’s 1969 film adaptation of the McCoy novel. If Dickstein’s statement were true, one must

wonder why no cultural historian has ever produced a book-length analysis of it.

That said, the concept of endurance does befit the Depression. To get through a dance

marathon could mean the winning couple could beat tough times. However, dancers were insulated

by the shows’ Mazlovian underpinnings. They received food and shelter. They received the attention

and care of a staff of trainers, massage therapists, and nurses.

It is ironic that the term “endurance” to characterize these shows fell out of favor by the

Depression and was replaced predominantly with “walkathon.” Endurance shows did not endure.

In the end, dance marathons duped the public and contestants alike. Photographs were

staged for publicity. The movement of the contestants on the dance floor did not suggest genuine

freedom. For marathoners, movement earned sustenance and shelter. For some, as noted above, the

marathon created a foundation for future success. For most, self-reliance was insufficient. Instead,

92 Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark, 385. 93 Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon,

1973 and 1984), Kindle Edition, location 3321.


performers relied on the promoter, who according to Gehring, had a predilection for walking

themselves, leaving contestants and emcees with nothing.94

The American Dream remained a dream.

94 Gehring, 31.


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“Endurance Dance Loses 35 Couples.” The New York Times, June 12, 1928. “Enright Orders Police to Stop Dancers in Marathons of More Than Twelve Hours.” The New York

Times, April 24, 1923.

“Harlem Dancers Dwindle.” The New York Times, July 3, 1928. “Harlem’s Dance Derby On.” The New York Times, June 18, 1928. “Marathoners Dance on to Connecticut.” The New York Times, April 17, 1923. “’Mutiny’ Quelled in Dance Marathon.” The New York Times, June 27, 1928. “’Pale Faces’ Excel Runners in Dance.” The New York Times, June 17, 1928.


“Promoter of Dance Invited to Court.” The New York Times, June 22, 1928. “Singers at Dance Derby.” The New York Times, July 9, 1928. “Six More Dancers Drop Out Asleep.” The New York Times, June 18, 1928. “Winners of Derby Shun Long Sleep.” The New York Times, July 2, 1928.

Dance Marathons: Get on the Dance Floor, Forget Your Troubles, and Forget the American Dream

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Transcript of Dance Marathons: Get on the Dance Floor, Forget Your Troubles, and Forget the American Dream