In 1928, Ethel and Marion Mann were jailed for speeding while traveling to a dance performance. According to a Denver newspaper report, the sisters “danced for the chief” and their fines were suspended. Their successful careers, however, were just early chapters in their lives before they settled down and raised their families in Boulder County.
The sisters’ journey to stardom on the vaudeville stage had begun in 1926, when Ethel, at the age of 17, won a dance contest. The prize was a year of dancing lessons in New York City. Ethel, her 18-year- old sister Marion, and their mother, Clara, all moved from Boulder to New York. After Ethel’s classes, she taught Marion everything she learned.
While in New York, Ethel and Marion attended rodeos in Madison Square Garden, where they learned rope tricks from fellow performer Will Rogers. Their mother, a seamstress, created their matching white-leather- sequined costumes. The sisters performed a precision act that combined tap dancing with rope twirls and high kicks.
Ethel and Marion also could sing and do rope tricks at the same time. Several of their routines included ballet. In some acts, they were accompanied by as many as 80 dancers and a full orchestra.
The sisters’ careers took them to the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and all over the eastern United States. They shared the stage with Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, and Bob Hope. They also performed on cruise ships that took Prohibition-era party-goers out of the country’s 3-mile limit.
In the summers, the sisters returned to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado. Back in their home town, they started the Mann Sisters Dance Studio at 14th and Pearl streets. Classes were for both adults and children, with kids as young as 2 years old performing in recitals held in the Chautauqua Auditorium.
One of the sisters’ specialties was the Charleston, a dance craze of the twenties. Ethel and Marion were friends of the Boulder Theater projectionist, who ran and reran a film, with dancers, until the sisters picked up the steps.
In 1934, both Ethel and Marion traded the stage for marriage. Ethel met Hiram Fullen when he published an advertisement for the dance studio in the Camera. They were married at, and then moved into, his family’s home (the Arnett-Fullen house) at 646 Pearl St.
Marion’s future husband, Robert Childers, taught ballroom dancing. They, too, were married at the Fullen home, then moved to Nederland, where they owned and operated the Nederland Supermarket. In addition, they ran the Fountain Restaurant in Eldora.
Ethel died in Boulder in 1986, and Marion followed in 1994. One of Marion’s daughters, the late Roberta Childers, worked for many years at the Camera as a news assistant.
The Mann sisters’ performance days lasted only a few years, but they often reflected on their vaudeville careers. According to a Camera article written in 1981, Ethel and Marion entertained their peers that year at the Boulder Senior Center. Dressed in matching pant suits, they treated their audience to a “sedate version” of the rope dance, as well as a “casual soft-shoe.”
Ethel, then 74, told a reporter, “It’s hard to jump now,” adding that she and Marion still had their western costumes but couldn’t quite get them zipped.
Carol Taylor and Silvia Pettem write about history for the Daily Camera. Email Carol at boulderhistorylibrarian@gmail.com, Silvia at pettem@earthlink.net or write to the Daily Camera, 2500 55th St., Suite 210, Boulder, 80301.
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