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Picture from the Past
Three Los Gatans recognized on 'Life' magazine's cover pages
By John S. Baggerly
Not one, not two, but three beautiful local women have appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
First to gain the honor was ballerina Nana Ruth Gollner. The others were Los Gatos High School students Chris von Saltza and Lynn Burke. Both swimmers, they won gold medals in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Von Saltza won gold in the 100-meter freestyle match and both girls won gold medals as part of the United States' victorious medley relay team.
To reach Olympian status, the two girls at the Santa Clara Swim Club took on strenuous work that developed muscular "bull necks." Apparently it wasn't permanent, as Burke went on to model on television in New York and her neck was graceful and swanlike.
As for Gollner, her fellow dancer and longtime friend Elizabeth Heinz Neuman said: "It was like reincarnation. Like she already knew how to dance. It was as though she learned her techniques in another time."
That tiny Gollner danced at all was a miracle. Born in the mid-1910s in El Paso, Texas, the only child of a construction engineer--a typical Texan from high-heeled cowboy boots to his 10-gallon hat--Gollner developed polio at the age of 2 that attacked her ankles. Her doctor, offering some hope, suggested that she might learn to walk in sand.
Her father responded in the grand manner. He sent all the way to California for a carload of fine Monterey sand and had it dumped on his Texas property.
Every day little Nana, who eventually reached a height of 5 feet 2 inches, played in the sand and by age 7 could walk almost as well as a normal child. Her feet were also beginning to look normal.
Next, her doctor recommended dancing.
After the Gollners moved to Edelen Avenue in Los Gatos, Gollner came under the tutelage of neighbor Vivian Amet Johnson, who taught classes at the Los Gatos History Club and the Vendome Hotel in San Jose. Ted Fletcher, a 1935 Los Gatos High School graduate, recalls that at the old University Avenue School, Gollner danced in school shows and impressed her schoolmates. Few had ever seen anyone, much less a fellow student, on toe.
Next she enrolled in a San Francisco dance class offered by Theodore Kosloff, an expatriated alum of the Russian Imperial Ballet. By now, Gollner knew she wanted to be a ballerina.
When Kosloff moved his school from San Francisco to Hollywood, the Gollners followed. In Hollywood, Max Reubgardt presented A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl and Gollner was selected for the part of the First Fairy. It was her first professional part. At 15, Gollner was becoming a premiere danseuse. It was in Southern California that Gollner became a lifelong friend of Elizabeth Heinz Neuman.
Longtime Los Gatos dance teacher Betty McClendon recalls that Gollner danced with her partner and husband, Paul Petroff, with theAmerican Ballet Company and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Her work took her and her husband to South Africa and South America. However, McClendon continued, Gollner returned to Los Gatos and partook in a Paul Curtis dance class production. More next week.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
Ballerina Nana Ruth Gollner was the first of three local women to have their photographs on the cover of 'Life' magazine.
