Miriam LaVelle 1944 Flipping in Heels in Color

At the end of the song, she does back to back no hands flips in heels that are crazy and scary looking.

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Excellent ,although it looks more like the 30’s to me.

It seems that Miriam had a short but eventful and rewarding career in the 1940’s before sustaining a head injury which resulted in retirement, obscurity and an early death at the age of 31.

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I’m missing this part from reading the article. Did she injure her head while performing? Was the kidney failure related to the head injury?

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Information is spread over several websites:

http://www.miriamlavelle.com/Home.htm

Miriam LaVelle is one of the many entertainers who’ve been re-discovered decades after they faded from view, and who’ve now acquired an enthusiastic fan-base - all thanks to YouTube.

Known as a speciality/acrobatic dancer, Ms LaVelle performed at theatres and nightclubs in America, her home patch being New York City. She also made brief appearances in several mainstream films between 1943 and 1944, and her fabulous dancing was showcased in a 1946 VodVil short.

In her heyday, Miriam LaVelle was well rated by Billboard magazine, though with variety acts in abundance, she was one of a vast number of entertainers providing standard fare of the time. But what a lovely, talented young lady. And what a shame so few examples of her dancing appear to have been captured on film. Even photos of Miriam LaVelle are rare, many comprising murky half-tone images from newspaper archives.

Researching the Internet has yielded references to Ms LaVelle spanning 1941 through 1950. On 3rd July, 1950, Miriam sustained a serious gash to her head whilst rehearsing for a television show, and the indications are that she didn’t perform again after that incident. She was only 24 years old.

Miriam LaVelle, a home-grown American girl from Chester, Pennsylvania achieved fame as a ‘speciality’ dancer throughout the 1940s. Pretty, with thick, billowing auburn hair, and a lithe, athletic figure, she never failed to garner good reviews from the variety critics. Her acts comprised sequences of beautifully choreographed acrobatic moves executed to music in a way that was totally unique. Essentially a cabaret artiste, she also featured in several films and television shows.

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So sad. :frowning: Seemed like a dangerous profession watching it, and it was. A life cut too short.

Thanks for the research.

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Well, I’d never seen anything like those successive flips and Miriam’s “disappearance” intrigued me … :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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That’s sad .Her routine did look risky.

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