"Gossip doesn't worry me - I'm an open person. I've mixed around in this business long enough not to be embarrassed by anything pertaining to sex."
"My really big disappointment was being told I was too tall for the ballet. When I got on my toes, some of those male partners were way down there."
Miss Juliet Prowse - star of the high-kicking movie Can-Can, as well as innumerable television variety shows and Vegas-style spectaculars, would have been eighty years old today.
Facts:
- Miss Prowse was the very first guest star on The Muppet Show.
- She had affairs with both Frank Sinatra (to whom she was briefly engaged) and Elvis Presley - at the same time.
- Born in Bombay, India, her British family relocated to South Africa when she was 3; it was here, as a teenager, that she became a championship dancer.
- In 1987 she was mauled - twice - by an 80-pound leopard while rehearsing for television shows; afterwards she restricted such appearances in future to animals "no bigger than an alley cat."
- Her brother is Dave Prowse, who played "Darth Vader" in Star Wars and was the "Green Cross Code Man" in children's safety campaign TV ads in the 1970s.
More of the delightful Miss Prowse here and here.
