Review: Annamia van den Heever

Juliet Prowse: Born to Dance – The extraordinary life story of my aunt, by Juliet E Prowse (Prowse Media)

A red suitcase in her parents’ attic, brimful of articles and photographs, inspired “little Juliet” Prowse to write her first book – about the extraordinary life of her aunt, “big Juliet” and one of SA’s first superstar exports.

“If you are only going to have one aunt, I can tell you this is the one you want!” writes the Sea Point-based marketing consultant.

The book tells the personal story of the young dancer, Juliet, leaving school in the then Transvaal to become one of the top entertainers in London, Hollywood and Las Vegas more than 70 years ago.

Author Juliet Prowse with a picture of her impossibly long-legged aunty.

It is fast-paced, crammed with facts and delicious gossip, including the dancer’s complicated romantic relationships. She was briefly engaged to Frank Sinatra and had flings with Elvis Presley and, rumour has it, Warren Beatty (among many suitors).  She was said to have had the best legs in the dancing business.

Prowse writes about her aunt’s unsettled early years, born in India in 1936, moving to South Africa with her mother and brother after her father died when she was three.  Her mother remarried and the family settled in Vereeniging.

Prowse started ballet at four. At 12 she persuaded her parents she was worldly enough to take a 90-minute bus trip from Vereeniging to Johannesburg every week for ballet lessons. This showed her “absolute determination” to look after herself while becoming a dancer, the author says.

Accolades started coming in early. When she performed her first solo ballet role as Queen of the Wilis in Giselle at 14, The Star newspaper’s theatre critic wrote: “Juliet was absolutely magnificent.”

At 17, after having dropped out of school, the aspirant star was dancing in London; at 20 she was in Paris on her way to Italy and Spain and, by the time she was 23 she had arrived in Hollywood. During this time she was unwaveringly supported by her parents, especially her mother.

Initially, Prowse jun  wanted to know about her aunt’s experience of being a teenager in London, but this grew to her wanting to tell the story of how she became a “triple threat” (can dance, sing, and act) on the stage, screen and television for four decades. She became one of the highest paid dancers in the US in the 1970s.

She carved her own international career, taking on personal and professional challenges, and growing her lasting influence as a mentor to future generations of dancers. Her fellow artists were in awe of how hard she worked. For many she symbolised grace, power and elegance.

Her relationship with Sinatra started on the set of the movie Can-Can in 1959. It was her “first true, heart-wrenching love affair”. He was more than 20 years older.

When Sinatra proposed to her on the LA airport tarmac in January 1962 she accepted, but it was not to be. In the weeks that followed, he made it clear he did not want a working wife, nor any more children. “The more Frank demanded, the more Juliet felt bullied.”

She was not willing to give up her career and they announced the end of their engagement after fewer than six weeks.

In 1972 the dancer married actor John McCook, later of The Bold and the Beautiful fame. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979.  She died of cancer in 1996, days before her 60^th birthday.

Prowse jun says writing the book had stops and starts. Her research was interrupted by Covid and she lost confidence, trying to write something, then feeling like an imposter. Eventually she was able to visit the US in 2022, and her aunt’s last boyfriend handed her an apple box packed full of letters he had kept for 26 years.

“This was invaluable because suddenly I moved [from questioning] who I was to write this, because I had her words. I had the people who were there and their comments.”

The more than 1 000 letters and articles and interviews with over 20 people the dancer worked with ensured the authenticity of this fascinating story of SA’s longest-legged international star.