Eldergays, tell me about dance marathons

Usually there was a prize involved - money. Desperate people will do crazy things for some cash and these became a thing during the Depression. They were also marketed as entertainment - come watch these folks instead of a movie.

There were modern examples of dance marathons, like those endurance contests where folks stood around with their hands on a car... if you let go, you lost and last to let go won the car. Some of those contests went on for days.

I understand the incentive for participants, r1, but I don't see how human desperation on this scale qualifies as "entertainment"

Because humans are assholes.

People do weird shit for money.

R2: they used to crash trains into each other for entertainment. (not that often after the resulting steam explosion injured the audience)

The last one of these contests my old ass heard about was in the 90s.

I took part in a dance marathon one weekend during my junior year at Iowa State University back in the 1970's. It was meant to be a retro-styled event done as a fundraiser for a muscular dystrophy charitable organization. The dance marathon was a lot of fun so thanks for reminding me of the great time I had with numerous friends which was an event that I haven't thought about for many years! (We can't remember everything!) Now I'm wondering about the whereabouts of my dance partner who was a sweet girl from suburban Chicago and who lived in my coed-house in an on-campus dorm.

"Now I'm wondering about the whereabouts of my dance partner "

At your age, she's probably dead. Just playing the odds here.

Memory unlocked

It's not that different from people who do Ironmans as a status symbol.

A bump of Meth and a line of coke and I could dance all night 🤪

Actress June Havoc (sister of Gypsy Rose Lee and daughter of Mama Rose) wrote a couple of autobiographies, the first is called "Early Havoc" and focused on her teen years when she earned a living by entering marathon dances. It's a good book, and tells about the years when she was a homeless married teenager, trying to survive without her monstrous stage mother or useless husband, so she'd enter these dances because they meant she'd have food and a bed for as long as she could keep going, and the hope of prize money.

The dances were poorly attended at first, when the dancers were comparatively fresh, it wasn't until the contestants started to look like zombies and were staggering around trying to keep moving while one of them slept, that audiences really started to take an interest. It's been a while since I read the book, which is gripping and I recommend, and she thought that the audiences were mostly struggling people paying a few pennies to see someone worse off than themselves struggling to earn a pittance.

Thanks, r12! I will check it out

Thank you, R13, and I suspect the movie "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" used Havoc's book for background. I don't know of any other books about these horrific contests.

Havoc was about 14 when she started entering these contests, and she won enough of the things to make a reasonable living for a teen girl with no education, before she broke into legit acting. They seem to have vanished in the 1940s, when the wartime economy meant jobs were easier to find, and people didn't have to enter demeaning contests just to for the food and beds involved.

Google boxing or wrestling. It will blow your mind.

OP, here ya go.

Have you never seen "Survivor" or "Alone", OP?

I can't make out why people spend all those hours watching other people suffer either, but there it is.

WHAT? 900 hours - 37 days?

They clearly needed to add stuff like a bell lap where everyone has to run around the perimeter of the dance floor with the last couple finishing being eliminated.

It's not just about the "dance"...

it's a celebration of our wonderful Capitalist ideals!

Only the strong survive...

Based on the picture at OP, the early 1930s were not a high point for women's fashion.

Sorry about that, R21.

Ha! That’s where that selfish, spoiled brat Rory Gilmore got dumped by the baby-faced Jared.

They didn't have OnlyFans back then.

R21, the fashions of the early 1930s were very elegant, but elegant and fashionable people didn't enter dance marathons. People who needed food and a bed for a few weeks entered dance marathons!

I don't even know if the contestants had someone to do their laundry during the weeks of competition, they probably looked more dramatic if they looked grubby.

r12 I just started Early Havoc!

Just how old do you think these - how you say - eldergays are for christs sake? It was the 20s into the 30s.

r27 you must have missed the "Eldergays, what was life like in the days of Australopithecus afarensis?" thread.