You Big Fat Slob

Lenore Peters and Hazel Davis perform "Cricket Dance," 1915.

Last month I discussed Lenore Peters, chorus girl with The Tik-Tok Man of Oz in 1913-14. Lenore Peters was good friends with Hazel Davis, also a chorus girl in The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. They auditioned for the show together, joined the chorus together, and traveled North America with the show until Davis left The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, as Peters explains in her autobiography, Looking Back While Surging Forward:

“One of the girls in the show, Hazel Davis, left us in Chicago to spend some time in New York with her Aunt Lutie. While there, she took lessons from a highly recommended ballet teacher named Madame Zain. Everybody ‘took’ from Mme. Zain. When Hazel came home to San Francisco she regaled us with imitations of her teacher.

“The first day, she said, while trying hard to please at the barre, the teacher remarked aloud to the pianist, ‘She ain’t no backbender, Miss Steiner.’ When coaching Hazel in a dance accompanied by a beat and a song, she would say—you won’t believe this—‘One, two, bend your knees, you big fat slob.’ . . . And after performing in a series of difficult steps ending with an elaborate gesture, she’d say, ‘You ask for applause.’ Then with a different gesture, ‘You don’t get it.’ . . . Quite a character, no?”

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