Tag: dance crazes

Shake a Tail Feather

shake a tail feather headline

October 15, 1927 the charleston
Hollywood

Sheiks and Shebas…the Kinkajou and the Charleston are dead! Long live the Rooster Flap! The newest dance craze to take Hollywood by storm debuted at a dinner dance hosted by actress Molly O’Day. A rustic cousin of the Black Bottom, the Rooster Flap is danced to a tune reminiscent of “Turkey in the Straw”. Following a lively dance lesson, O’Day’s tinseltown friends were ready to greet the dawn with a cock-a-doodle-doo and a shimmy and a shake.

See YOU on the dance floor!

Robber Queen

Robber Queen Headline

September 24, 1927 Patricia Sullivan
Los Angeles

What’s wrong with the dames in this town? When they aren’t powdering and painting their faces, they’re at petting parties, drinking in blind pigs, or dancing the night away doing the black bottom or the kinkajou. Now it seems that they are also morphing into gun molls. According to police, several female stick-up artists are currently menacing Los Angeles residents, and at least two of them are red-heads.

With so many women bandits prowling the streets and preying on the unwary, competition for the title of Robber Queen is fierce…the most recent contender for the crown is Patricia Sullivan, aged 23. Miss Sullivan and a male companion were taken into custody by Officers Reid and Garner in front of her apartment building at Tenth and Western.

Patricia was transported to the county jail where she was booked on suspicion of robbery. Her accomplice has been identified as 27 year old shoe salesman, Alvarado Contreras, of 1132 West Thirty-First Street. The two have avowed their innocence but Miss Sullivan closely resembles the description of the lady crook given to police, from her toes right up to her auburn tresses.

Detective Lieutenant Smith and Captain Kallmeyer of Wilshire Division are arranging for the victims of Her Royal Heistness to come to down to the station to positively identify her as the woman who terrorized them.

Patricia’s reign as Robber Queen was short-lived…she was only Queen for a Day.

Can You Do the Kinkajou?

ernesteryan
Los Angeles dance instructor Ernest E. Ryan has seen the future of dance, and it is the Kinkajou.

After attending the 1927 annual convention of the Dance Masters of America, Ryan told the Los Angeles Times that he expected a Kinkajou craze to overtake California by winter, and that he would be teaching the steps in his studio at 1500 S. Figueroa.

The Kinkajou was created by Edna Passpae, inspired by a song and dance number from the 1927 Ziegfield musical Rio Rita that included the lyrics, "When you do the Kinkajou, you dance before you think."  She debuted it at the DMA convention where it won first prize, beating out new steps like the Dixie Stomp and the Lindbergh Glide.

It was said that the Kinkajou would "be the dance to replace the Charleston and the Black Bottom."  Sadly, the Kinkajou’s moment in the sun was brief.  Rio Rita, however, went on to become an early talkie hit for RKO, starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles, and marking the film debut of comedy team Wheeler and Woolsey.