Terese Rudolph – Doing the “Shrapnel Swing” in 30s Shanghai: war, quakes, cholera, no clothes, nothing defeated Miss Rudolph
Posted: December 10th, 2016 | 2 Comments »Terese Rudolph was a dancer, showgirl and world traveller. In 1937 she was working in Shanghai, dancing in nightclubs – she was a trained ballerina, tap dancer and all round entertainer originally from Chicago. she was working in the Cathay around the time the bombs fell outside the hotel in August 1937 (“Bloody Saturday”) and her mother was worried enough to inquire after her – thereby getting her picture in the paper Stateside. She was OK and carried on dancing in Shanghai for a while…but there’s more to Terese than just August 1937 in Shanghai….
So here’s her story – Terese was born in 1913 in Budapest and came to America with her family when she was twelve years old. they settled in Chicago.She studied dance with Laurent Novikowf, who had once partnered Anna Pavlova. Apparently she never lost her Hungarian accent. At 17, she became a ballerina with the Chicago Civic Opera Company. In the early 1930s she appeared in various cabarets, nightclubs and reviews in the US and Canada as a “premiere danseuse” or “Hungarian Dancer” act. She was a smash all across the country – ballet, traditional Hungarian folk dancing and a little acrobatics thrown in for entertainment.
Somehow she travelled out to Shanghai and got a gig as the feature act at the Cathay Hotel. Her mum must have been wise to show business. She told the press in August 1937 she was concerned for her 21-year-old daughter in war-torn Shanghai – touching; Terese was over 24 by then. Here she is in her Cathay show…
When the bombs fell on the Cathay apparently Terese had hopped a steamer to Manila. But when she got there the city was paralysed by an earthquake so she hopped another steamer and sailed for Hong Kong – arriving right in the middle of a cholera epidemic. so she got a boat back to Shanghai. So she decided to use her last few dollars to get a ticket home to America. first all her trunks were left on the Bund and then she was left her ride home, the President Hoover, was accidentally strafed and bombed by the Chinese air force, though thankfully wasn’t sunk. however, one of her shapely dancers legs was scratched by glass from a smashed porthole. She got back to San Francisco on September 14th finally, took a train to Chicago and went straight to her mother’s house (also called Terese) on East 61st Street. I think we can all agree though that despite war, bombs, earthquakes, cholera and three weeks at sea Terese looked fantastic when she hit the dock at San Fran…and still with a sense of humour – Terese told the newsboys she’d invented a new dance in Shanghai, the “Shrapnel Swing”.
After Shanghai Terese was soon back in the swing dancing again in American nightclubs in 1938 and up till the start of WW2. Terese (who I think was known as “Teri” to her friends) joined the American United Service Organizations entertaining the troops during WW2. She appeared in America alongside an act called the Gloria Lee Girls. She was in Paris for the city’s liberation.
After the war she returned to America. In 1947 she appeared at the Copacabana in Miami Beach and danced in a review at the Rio Cabana Club in Chicago in 1947, where Billboard magazine noted her as the star of the show. She then went to run the American Army owned Casa Carioca in Garmisch, Germany, around 1949. The Casa Carioca had an ice skating rink attached and she helped train the ice skaters in dance to improve their shows (though she didn’t skate herself); the skaters were from all over – America, Scotland, Germany. Terese stayed in Garmisch till 1971. Terese Rudolph died of a heart attack at 92 in 2005.
Dear Paul: I’ve been quite interested to see various details which you’ve successfully managed to find regarding Terese Rudolph’s life at places other than Shanghai.
My archive (the Upton Sino-Foreign Archive, in Manchester, NH, USA) includes an extensive scrapbook from the late 1930s which had belonged to Terese Rudolph. It consists of numerous clippings (from many newspapers and magazines) about her experiences at Shanghai and her dance performances there and in the U.S., along with promotional materials, press photos of her, interview materials, and instructions for performing her Shanghai-inspired dance (which had several several names, and some variations in the names of the parts of it).
Materials in the scrapbook (some of which are in Hungarian) indicate that Terese was a vigorous self-promoter who never let the actual facts get in the way of telling a much more lively and compelling story about her Shanghai experiences.
I have no doubt that she was a dancer at places in Shanghai, including the Cathay Hotel, but a considerable amount of what she reportedly said about her bombing-related experiences at Shanghai and on the ship ‘President Hoover’ should be viewed skeptically. There are substantial inconsistencies. omissions, and probable distortions/exaggerations in her reported statements.
On your next visit to the United States, you may find it interesting to make arrangements to see Terese’s scrapbook.
Sincerely, Steve Upton
Dear Paul: I’ve just finished preparing a description of the scrapbook formerly owned by Terese Rudolph which is in my archive (the Upton Sino-Foreign Archive, in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA). My description includes a number of hitherto little-known details which I think will be of great interest to you (and probably also some of your readers) about Terese at Shanghai and in the United States, and about her Shrapnel Swing dance.
Here is my description:
Large old scrapbook which had belonged to dancer Terese Rudolph, consisting primarily of clippings from numerous late 1930s newspapers and magazines (as well as some late 1930s promotional materials) regarding her life while working as a dancer at Shanghai, China, her return to the United States from Shanghai on the SS President Hoover, and her dance performances at various places in the United States after returning from Shanghai. The scrapbook also includes two loose press photos of Terese which she had saved, plus two additional loose press photos of her which I have added to the scrapbook (as a matter of convenience). These four press photos show four different views of Terese. According to author Paul French. Terese had been born in Budapest [in Austria-Hungary] in 1913 and moved to the United States with her family when she was twelve. She became a dancer with the Chicago Civic Opera in the early 1930s. At some point she went to Shanghai and worked as a dancer in floor shows there. She was a dancer at Shanghai’s Park Hotel in June, !937, and was a dancer at Shanghai’s Cathay Hotel in August, 1937. She said that she was rehearsing in the mezzanine of the Cathay Hotel on August 14, 1937 [“Bloody Saturday”], when the destruction occurred [poorly aimed Chinese aerial bombs damaged the Cathay Hotel and the nearby Palace Hotel and killed and injured an extremely large number of people in the vicinity]. She claimed that she fainted, wandered the streets with temporary amnesia, was rescued, and later awakened in the Park Hotel [a very tall building], at which she had a view of additional bombing going on in the city. She at some point took some photos with her Leica camera regarding the destruction in the city, and later sold them to a Chicago newspaper (none of the photos which she took are in the scrapbook). She reportedly picked up a little piece of shrapnel in Shanghai and still had it with her, as a good-luck souvenir, after she arrived back in the United States. She left Shanghai on the SS President Hoover at the end of August, en route to San Francisco, and later claimed (according to Paul French) that one of her legs was scratched by flying broken glass when another mistakenly dropped Chinese aerial bomb struck [but did not disable] that ship as it was leaving. In the clippings in her scrapbook, I don’t see any reference to her scratched leg, but she did mention people who were injured on the ship. According to Paul French, after Bloody Saturday. Terese made very brief trips to Manila and Hong Kong before returning to Shanghai and boarding the SS President Hoover. Clippings in the scrapbook indicate that Terese regularly omitted the Manila and Hong Kong trips from what she told American reporters and promoters about her experiences. When she arrived at San Francisco, she was greeted by Fred Kislingsbury, Publicity Manager for the Sir Francis Drake Hotel there, who persuaded her to sign a contract to dance at the hotel, and created with her a “hot cha-cha” dance which initially was called the “Shrapnel Strut,” about her experiences in the Shanghai bombing. The name of the dance very soon was changed to “Shrapnel Swing” (a less common name for it was “Shrapnel Dance”). A very early typed choreography for the “Shrapnel Strut,” with thirteen numbered parts, is in the scrapbook. The dance, which she later revised, received nationwide attention in the United States. Articles about Terese and her Shrapnel Swing appeared in major U.S. magazines, including LIFE and TIME. LIFE included photos of Terese performing various parts of this dance. She performed it in shows at many U.S. locations in the late 1930s. She also performed dances for which her Hungarian backgound was the inspiration. In 1939, she claimed that she was one of the three best dancers on the American stage, and in support of that statement, showed a reporter in Atlanta a “bulging book of newspaper clippings” about her [perhaps this was the scrapbook which is now in my archive]. There are more than 195 clippings and other items in the scrapbook in my archive, not including the two press photos which I have added. A few of the items are in Hungarian rather than English. One clipping in the scrapbook is much later than the others. It is from 1948, and indicates that Terese at that time soon would be teaching ballet at the Chadwick Dance Studio in Augusta, Georgia; that she previously had her own dance studio in Chicago; that she had performed in opera ballet not only in Chicago, but also with the Metropolitan Opera in New York; that she had traveled with a USO troupe during World War II, entertaining American soldiers in Greenland, Iceland, Labrador and “various points in the European theatre”; and that she still was serving as dance director for the Canadian International Screen Production Company. A fairly small and narrow strip is missing from the back cover of the scrapbook,near the spine.
—Best regards, Steve Upton