Dorothy Kloss

INDIAN WELLS CENTER FOR HEALTHY LIVING AT EISENHOWER

By Murray Olderman

In the prim Grand Round of the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences on the Eisenhower hospital campus, Dorothy Dale Kloss laid out her life as a chorus girl.

Not the razzmatazz of rose corsages, stage door Johnnies and champagne suppers. Dorothy is, after all, 85 years old.

Rex Waggoner, a roving ambassador for the Palm Springs Follies, had stressed in his introduction in the Dining Room of the Annenberg Center that she "played in night clubs around the country when Franklin D. Roosevelt was President" and the Guinness Book of Records designated her as "the world's oldest still performing showgirl."

So with her silver-blond hair upswept, in a svelte black dress and a shawl-like red sweater, glasses dangling on her nose, Dorothy regaled a sell-out dinner audience of 162 devotees to Healthy Living magazine, lured from all reaches of the Coachella Valley, with the value of older living. Yet slimly looked and acted like a showgirl.

"If I had known I was going to live this long," she said sardonically, "I would have taken better care of myself." Then pointing to the "Eisenhower Medical Center" logo emblazoned on the podium, added archly, "If I should take a turn for the worse, I'm in the right place."

Next to her, a huge screen displayed a juxtaposition of the glamorous chorine in her gaudy, feathery finery of the Follies and a younger Dorothy in her 20's, in leggy dancing attire. Just before she spoke, a video clip was shown of her appearance on The Today Show, which included Dorothy high-kicking at 90 degrees and giving a tap lesson to the correspondent.

"I don't mind talking about age," said the grande dame of tap dancing, "but I don't live it. These are my best years." She has been a Palm Springs Follies "Long-Legged Lovely" for 14 years.

The octogenarian hoofer — vibrant, kinetic and with a touch of self-deprecation — told her mature audience at the Center for Healthy Living lecture series, "Everybody in the show has understudies except me." Adding slyly: "Because I'm so old."

She recalled her appearance last year at a symposium on aging co-sponsored by UCLA, and acclaimed geriatric psychiatrist Dr. Gary Small said, "Dorothy, I just don't understand, at your age, the energy you have, the way you perform. How do you do it?"

"Listen," she replied, "you're the doctor. I'm just a dancer. Maybe it's having a good outlook on life." Which she related to her ongoing dance career.

"The advantage of being in the Follies," she said, "is that when I get up in the morning, I know where I'm at, what I'm going to do the rest of the day. We have such a good time, it keeps you young." The eye glasses were already discarded.

This season, the theme of the show is "Get Your Kicks!" On Route 66, of course. And Dorothy remembered the family drives on that highway from Chicago to St. Louis, reading the Burma Shave signs with her brother and performing duos from song sheets of the day: "I'm a Million-Dollar-Baby,'" she warbled coquettishly, "from the five-and-ten-cent store . . .."

She described the rigorous routine of 12-to-13-hour days for nine shows a week and then reviewed her terpsichorean career that started with 50-cent lessons at the age of 4. She progressed to Miss Comerford's studio over a drug store on the north side of Chicago, then became a dance teacher at 13 and "Bobby Fosse was my student, (taking) his first tap lessons." (Fosse was later renowned as a great choreographer and Academy Award-winning musical film director.)

At 15, she won a tap contest and was booked into her dream venue, the Palmer House in Chicago, changing her name to Dorothy Dale (it was Hunn) and then touring the world with Eddy Duchin and other noted big bands. It all came round when, at 71, having overcome colon cancer, she was teaching a dance class in Pasadena and was talked into auditioning for the Follies.

"Give it the old soft shoe . . .," sang Dorothy, gliding into a simulated dance, and then with a final flourish, quoted Shirley MacLaine from an old movie: "I've had my good times and my bum times but, my dear, I'm still here!"