JANE SHERMAN BELOIT WISCONSIN FAMOUS DANCER LEGS

Jane Sherman    ATTENTION SHARED FROM WIKIPEDIA   

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jane Sherman (June 14, 1908 – March 16, 2010) was an American writer, performer, composer, and one-time dancer and member of the Rockettes the famed in-house dance troupe of Radio City Music Hall. She was a former member and authority of Denishawn, the eclectic company, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in 1915. She performed with companies ranging from modern-dance groups to the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

Sherman was born in Beloit, Wisconsin on June 14, 1908 to Horace Humphrey Sherman, an advertising writer, and Florentine St. Clair, an opera singer. The family moved to New York City in 1921, where Jane began studying dancing, after she saw a St. Denisprogram that included “Brahms Waltz and Liebesträume”, a solo that inspired her to study at the New York Denishawn School.

From 1927 to 1928, she joined the Ziegfeld Follies and toured with the troupe, and later returned to modern dance as a member of theHumphrey-Weidman Company in 1928. She also appeared in Broadway revues and was a Rockette in 1934 and 1935.

After her dance career ended, she became a fiction editor at Seventeen magazine in the 1940s.

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In 1940, Jane Sherman married Ned Lehac, a high school science teacher who was also a composer and lyricist for revues, contributing material to 14 shows from 1930 to 1942. In the 1990s they moved together to the Lillian Booth Actors Home, run by theActors Fund, where he died in 1999, aged 99.

In 2003, Jane began publishing poems, gathering them into little books, some of which commented on aging. In a poem from her self-published book “Songs of Senescence”.

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On March 16, 2010, Sherman died at the age of 101.   My dad would tell me stories about her when we watched the Rockettes on TV

He use to love the Jackie Gleason dancers in the kaleidoscope  performance. My sister Julie and I would follow the routines on the floor when we were kids. The next Jane Sherman he would say. 

THOUGHTS WHILE SHAVING MY LEGS

i first shave in Pagosa Springs Colorado. We my mom and all of us kids were on our annual summer  trek to every state west of the Mississippi. Her summer work load included putting on each state final pageant Miss Utah Teenager, Miss California Teenager , Miss Idaho Teenager etc through every state. She also made stops along the way to tryout possible Texas Cowgirls and Harlem Queens for my parents upcoming barnstorm seasons for their professional women's basketball teams that toured playing against men.

I stayed behind with some of my other siblings in Pagosa with our cousins. The movie The Cowboys was being filmed with John Wayne and Bruce Dern in town. The annual carnival, rodeo, horseback riding, fishing and my cousin Bobby's band jams kept us busy.Camping out with stories of the 3 legged geysers that ran the mountains scared us in the tent each night in the back yard, we fell for it every time. I was in my earliest teen year. My mom had always taught me that wearing makeup was not necessary if you had good skin I have never put foundation on my face. She also taught me that once I shaved my legs I had to shave for eternity.

It was a coming of age summer for me .  I asked my cousin Bobby for his razor which he obliged to once, and then took me to the five and dime to get my own after he cut himself shaving from the demise I tolled on his blade. My theory was that dancers had silky legs like Jane and the Rockettes and the Gleason dancer's. Later learning that tights were worn to give them the glow and lift. There was no turning back. Shaving  I was full of cuts , cotton balls and band aids for some time to come. I moved on to Nair and shaved for decades more. As an adult living in the Midwest sub zero winters shaving took a back seat to avoid stingy legs in the winter covered in pants or tights. Date nights, events that required nylons were the only reason to shave. The old joke amongst women of once you have kids who has time to sleep let alone shave is a reality sorry men. Many husbands got use to the reality that shaving meant getting ready for some action. My legs were scarred form mini bike wipe outs, horse back riding accidents, and general tomboy activities.  I have a feeling Jane's legs never had such scars. That she had lady legs her entire life . But hen again straight razors were the only shaving devices available at the turn of the century, so maybe not.