Juliet Prowse

Juliet Prowse
Juliet Prowse
Background information
Birth name	Juliet Anne Prowse
Born	Sep 25, 1936 Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Died	Sep 14, 1996 - age  59 Los Angeles, Calif, USA Pancreatic cancer
Height	6' 0" (1.83m)
Weight	125 lbs (57 kg)
Occupation	Actress and dancer
Spouse(s)	Eddie Frazier (1969-1970) John McCook (1972-1979), one child

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This article is about a Movie Star

Juliet Prowse (born: Juliet Anne Prowse, September 25, 1936 – September 14, 1996) was born in Bombay and raised in South Africa. Her four decade career included stage, television and film but dancing remained her true love. She was known for her striking beauty, sultry smile and famous long legs.

Early life

Juliet Prowse, whose father was a British manager for Westinghouse (who died when she was 3) was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in South Africa. Prowse began studying dance at the age of four. She was such a skilled dancer that at 14 she was the baby ballerina star of the Festival Ballet in Johannesburg.

In her early twenties she was dancing at a celebrated topless dance club in Paris, but Miss Prowse was not allowed to appear uncovered.

“

I was considered English, she later said. In those shows, nudity was the guarded right of the French and German girls.

”

She was spotted by a talent agent and eventually signed to play the part of "Claudine" in the 1960 Walter Lang film, Can-Can.

Her dancing labeled "immoral" by Nikita Khrushchev

It was during the filming of "Can-Can" in 1959 that she captured the international spotlight. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the set of the film and after Prowse performed a rather saucy can-can for the Russian leader, he proclaimed her dance "immoral." Little did Khrushchev know that he was a great press agent, because the publicity brought Prowse considerable attention in the United States. From there, her career took off. Although Miss Prowse was an accomplished dancer who had been trained in classical ballet in London and South Africa and had had a successful career in Europe before being discovered in Italy by the choreographer Hermes Pan, Miss Prowse was an unknown in the United States when Mr. Pan recruited her to appear with Mr. Sinatra and Shirley Maclaine in the movie-musical Can-Can.

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Then came the day in 1959 when Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, visited the Can-Can set in Hollywood during a celebrated state visit to the United States and pronounced the entertainment immoral. Within hours Miss Prowse's scantily-clad image was in virtually every newspaper in America and she was being hailed by Hollywood as another Betty Grable. Miss Prowse, who knew propaganda when she heard it translated (Khrushchev had been all smiles during the visit, she said), was nonplused. Let's face it, she said. the cancan is a pretty raucous number. It's not exactly 'Swan Lake.'

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Film and television career

She met Frank Sinatra on the set of Can-Can. Time magazine did not care for the movie but said the beautiful young dancer was the best thing in it: "In fact, the only thing really worth seeing is Juliet Prowse, a young South African hoofer who puts some twinkle in the stub-toed choreography. And the only thing really worth hearing is the crack that Frank flips back at Juliet when she whips a redoubtable hip in his direction. "Don't point," he gasps. "It's rude." She would go on to appear with him and other notable guests such as Ella Fitzgerald, Peter Lawford, Hermione Gingold, The Hi-Lo's, Red Norvo, Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra on the 1959, Frank Sinatra Show. She at times would sing in the chorus with other guests or Sinatra would adoringly sing to her.

Sinatra and Prowse announced their engagement in 1962. Soon afterwards, they called it quits. They broke up, according to publicity handouts, because Prowse wanted to concentrate on her career. Actually, she admitted: "I was as much flattered as I was in love. He (Sinatra) was a complex person, and after a few drinks he could be very difficult.

Prowse went on to co-star alongside Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues. During shooting of the film they had a short and intense fling. "Elvis and I had an affair.... We had a sexual attraction like two healthy young people, but he was already a victim of his fans. We always met in his room and never went out."

She starred in her own NBC sitcom for one season: 1965's Mona McCluskey, which was produced by George Burns. She also did other feature films, including The Fiercest Heart (1961) and Who Killed Teddy Bear? with Sal Mineo (1965).

Although her film and television career did not make her as big a star as predicted, Prowse had a rather philosophical way of looking at it. "Things generally happen for the best...I never worry about what happens in my career, because I can always do something else." Prowse would later go on to headline successful Las Vegas shows, commanding a very high salary. Stating that Las Vegas was the most demanding place she ever worked, she won Entertainer of the Year for the Vegas run of Sweet Charity. She would later show off her famous dancer's legs in a series of lucrative nationwide commercials for L’eggs.

Juliet Prowse was the first guest on The Muppet Show.

In the late '80s, she was mauled by an 80-pound leopard - twice. Once, while filming a scene for Circus of the Stars in 1989 and later that same year during a promotional stint, when the same leopard attacked her. The latter attack was more serious, requiring upwards of 20 stitches to reattach her ear.

Throughout the mid 1980's and 1990's, Prowse hosted the Championship Ballroom Dance Competition on PBS.

Battle with cancer and death

In 1994, Prowse was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 1995, she went into remission and was well enough to tour with Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies. Unfortunately, the cancer returned, and she succumbed to the disease on September 14, 1996, just two weeks short of her sixtieth birthday.

She was survived by her son and her mother. Her ex-husband, TV actor John McCook, who is the father of her only child, reconciled with her shortly before she died after many years of acrimony.

Information from Starpulse.com website Updated: 2001

A striking beauty, famed for her long, slender and well-formed legs, dancer/actress Juliet Prowse was at the peak of her popularity as a film and television actress during the 1960s. After that, she made her name on stage and in Las Vegas. Born in Bombay, and raised in South Africa, she studied to be a dancer from the age of 4. Prowse was accepted for the Festival Ballet of Johannesburg at age 14, but at a height of 6 feet she was much too large for the rather strict requirements of the ballet world. A less prestigious but likely more lucrative engagement followed when Juliet signed on as a chorus dancer for the London Palladium. She went to dance at a Parisian nightclub, then toured Europe as a member of a modern dance troupe.

External links

• Starpulse.com
• Juliet Prowse at the Internet Movie Database

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