Posted on 03/23/2011 4:43:49 PM PDT by smokingfrog
TINTON FALLS, N.J (AP) -- Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and an accomplished dancer, has died. She was 103.
Young's death was announced Wednesday by Drew University, where she was a prominent donor and patron of the arts. Drew spokesman Dave Muha said Young died Sunday at her home in a Tinton Falls, N.J., retirement community.
Young joined Houdini's company as a 17-year-old after attending an open casting call during a family trip to New York. She initially sat in the back because she was too shy to step forward, but Houdini and his manager soon noticed her and asked her to dance the Charleston. They signed her to a contract, and she eventually persuaded her parents to let her join the stage show.
During her year with Houdini in the mid-1920s, she gained recognition for playing the role of Radio Girl of 1950, emerging from a large mock-up of a radio and performing a dance routine. She also performed other roles during the tour, which proved to be Houdini's last in the United States before he died in October 1926, two months after she had left the show.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
She had legs!
Wow...that is all I have to say. Well that and I hope Joeprobono can dig in and find more photos. Thx for posting.
He made her live to 103??? Hey, the guy was a heckuva magician.
she knows how to use them...
How did Houdini dress? Sharp?
Quite a career
PBS 1999 American Experience interview
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/houdini/filmmore/reference/interview/dorothyyoung06.html
What’s she been doing for the last 85 years?
Probably - but did he use it like a schoolboy would?
103 and she still died Young!
HARRY HOUDINI (center) pictured with his show dancers including Dorothy Young and Julie Sawyer (far left) , on last year of his tour in 1926.
Amazing...
Good for her. Rest in Peace.
Yeah, except for the rhinestones shades and cheap sunglasses.
Ping
Wonder if she had a pocket full of change.
Wow - what a lady. God bless.
But she wrote a book that was Made Into a Movie.
Not sure why, but I have always been fascinated by the early 20th Century...lots of ‘larger than life’ figures walking the earth back then...
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