The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Still Sparkling: Willow Glen resident Alvina Casucci, 88, dazzled audiences as a Broadway dancer during the Depression years.

Former Ziegfeld Girl still has show business in her blood

Glenite Alvina Casucci performed with the likes of Ginger Rogers and Milton Berle

By Christine Frey

Wearing a sequined blouse and hat, 88-year-old Alvina Casucci is as much the showgirl as ever. Although the former Ziegfeld Girl left the glamour of Broadway more than 50 years ago and now resides in the Lincoln Glen Manor retirement community, her pink nail polish and matching lipstick are indicators that her flare has not faded.

"I don't know who wrote that song 'There's No Business Like Show Business,' but it's true. It's true," she says, singing the tune.

For nearly a decade, Casucci graced the stages of New York, dancing with such stars as Milton Berle and Jimmy Durante. While with the 1931 Ziegfeld Follies, George White Scandals, Earl Carroll Vanities and Artists and Models, Casucci did "anything the show required," even performing in the nude.

During a production of the Under Sea Ballet for Artists and Models, Casucci and her two younger sisters posed nude as mermaids. While the three Carson sisters were masked by a scrim--a semitransparent curtain--Casucci's sister, Lilly, modestly covered herself with her long hair. Casucci laughs, recalling that her own hair was too short to do the same.

However, she was not as bold off stage. "Show business girls are not what people used to think they were--a run-around and things like that. I went home to Mama and my sisters," she says.

Casucci began her dancing career at age 9 with her first public performance at the local Episcopal church. Her sisters took lessons as well and proved to be equally talented: Violette was named "Miss Broadway" in 1930, and Lilly stared in Crazy Girl with Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman.

After graduating from high school, 17-year-old Casucci left her hometown of Patterson, N.J., for Broadway. Two years later, the Depression struck. However, the stock market crash of '29 did not affect her job; she continued to earn $50 a week. "It's almost a shame to say it because there were no jobs," she says.

"People seemed to always have a little bit of money to be able to go to the movies and the theater," she says. "I didn't think of it at the time, but now I think that they used to spend 10 cents to go to the movies to see Shirley Temple and they were happy. They could have bought a loaf of bread for 10 cents at that time, but Shirley Temple made them happy."

Entertainment not only let people forget their misfortune but also provided some with work. During the spring of 1935--one of the worst periods of the Depression--3,000 girls auditioned for Billy Rose's production of Jumbo.

Casucci and her sister, Violette, were two of the 32 girls he chose for the musical circus. Violette later told Casucci that she overheard a conversation between Rose and his right-hand man, John Murray Anderson, regarding her. "My sister would not lie to me. She would not lie to me. ... She said John Murray Anderson said to Billy Rose, 'Who is that beautiful girl over there?' That's the God's honest truth. It was me," she says proudly.

Casucci was also noted for her dancing ability, particularly by Ken Murray, the star of the Earl Carroll Vanities. "He invited me up to his room one day, and he had the other star with him because he heard that I could dance. Not dance like a chorus girl, but that I could dance more than that. So he wanted me to do the routine in the bedroom, so I did it," Casucci remembers.

Murray was so impressed with her dance that he allowed her to perform a solo routine in the show. His autographed photo, in which he calls her "a swell dancer, and pretty, too," is now kept in her photo album.

The album illustrates Casucci's career. The pages are filled with black-and-white photographs of scantily clad women performing a fan dance; the cast of a live-action Betty Boop movie in which Casucci appeared; and movie stars such as actress Estelle Taylor.

Other memorabilia, including a letter from Milton Berle, are placed between the album pages. After receiving a picture of Casucci, Berle wrote, "Such a pleasant surprise to hear from an old Ziegfeld Follies Girl. Alvina, your pictures show you still have that special Ziegfeld charm ... and a great pair of legs."

In 1937 Casucci left the stage to marry. She and her husband, Carmine, moved to Mt. Vernon, N.Y., where she was a school secretary for 18 years. They later retired in Florida, and Casucci returned to the spotlight.

At the age of 66, she joined the Ziegfeld Dancers of the Ziegfeld Girls of Florida Inc., an organization for retired showgirls. She danced until she was 77 years old. "It [the theater] was not only our living, but it was part of our life," Casucci says of her fellow Ziegfeld Girls. She also served on the organization's board of directors.

After her husband of 50 years died in 1987, Casucci moved to California. Today Casucci, mother of two and grandmother of five, resides in Willow Glen, surrounded by the photographs of her show days. Looking at them she says, "I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I thought for one minute, 'Am I gonna forget anything?' Never. It never occurred to me. That would be the downfall of any dancer."

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