Selects: Rockettes: Still Kicking After All These Years

Tune in to this classic episode to learn all about the legendary NYC Rockettes, who actually got their start in Missouri.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. I got a select for you.
This is Chuck here of the Stuff You Should Know
podcast introducing Rockettes Colon still kicking after all these years.
This one came out January first, twenty nineteen, and it's
about the Rocketts, and this is the time of year
to talk about the Rockets. I learned a lot about
this organization, organization, this dance troup and their storied history,

(00:25):
and I think you're gonna like it, So give it
a listen and please enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. Happy New Year.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
You are too tall to be a rocket, aren't you?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Just barely?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Jerry and I can be rockettes. That's a good than
you can't. No, it's true, which is a shame because
you have the.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
I do. Actually, I've got pretty decent legs, you know,
at least my calves are all right.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
What no thighs.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
They're a little tree trunky for my taste. Oh yeah, yeah,
I've got a bit of like a fertility idle thing
going on, like up toward the hips and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, well it's because of all those squats.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
I was not expecting to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
About your gams. Yeah, oh well, I'll talk about my
legs all day long.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Well, let's hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
They're shapely, Okay, they're they're not. I gain all my
weight between my waist and my chin. Aha, Like I don't.
If you looked at my legs in my arms, you'd
be like, thin guy weighs one hundred and sixty pounds
and then the rest of me comes along to bust
that myth step aside, still have a nice little fanny,

(01:54):
sure everybody knows that. Sorry listeners in the UK, Oh yeah,
that means something different over there, does It's just so
dainty and nice that a little little five year old kids.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Can say fanny in the United States.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
It's just the Brits who are sick ghos.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
But this isn't about our gambs. This is about a
dance troupe, A legendary dance troupe.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, about as legendary as a dance troup can possibly be.
Are the Rockets?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
I just said that sentence like Yoda, can you do
the voice no, no, no, not even going to try.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
But this totally surprised me digging into the research on
this to learn that the legendary Rockets of New York
City and Radio City Music Hall are not from New
York City.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
No, they're not. Where are they from? Chuck?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Did you know this?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Now, yeah, so shout out to Saint Louis.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah. They were founded in the nineteen twenties, nineteen twenty
five to be exacted in Saint Louis, Missouri as the Rockets,
the Saint Louis Rockets, which I think they were trying
to be a basketball team.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Maybe Saint Louis Rockets.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. There was a choreographer named Russell Markert, which is
I kept wanting to say market but that is an
r yep. And he founded them, like you said, in
nineteen twenty five, and he was he was inspired by
a British dance troupe named the Tiller Girls, which was
founded in the eighteen ninety four by John Tiller, and

(03:35):
it was kind of a similar idea. He saw these
Tiller Girls and he was like, I want a high kicking, glamorous,
theatrical dance troupe of my own. Yeah, so I'm gonna
rip it off.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
He did, actually, so. John Tillers is widely acknowledged as
the creator of what's called precision dance, which is where
you have a bunch of dancers who were really highly trained,
really athletic, and really precise in their movements that can
move in such unison. Yeah, that you take a number,

(04:12):
like a number of different dancers and they basically become
one thing that can do things that an individual dancer
can't do. That's precision dance technique. And John Tiller literally
invented it with I think four ten year old girls
in the eighteen nineties, and he came up with some
further refinements to it, like when you put your hand

(04:34):
around the waists of the people on either side of you,
it kind of lends to the unity of the whole thing.
And Russell Maker Markert saw this and was like, this
is amazing. If I can get some American girls with
longer legs to kick higher, it'll knock everybody's socks off.
That's a quote, by the way.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, and there's a there's something too that that synchronicity
of for me for movement and sound that just knocks
me out every time when I go and see a choir,
what's like one hundred people singing together and high kicking.
Or a symphony, just the not only the sound, but

(05:15):
the movement when you watch a symphony, that's a big
part of it for me. Forget a choral symphony. Like
I'm on the floor weeping if you take me to
a choral symphony. But there's something about that precision of
all these people together. It's just really like, I don't

(05:35):
know what it is about it. I mean, it's a
collective voice or collective movement, but it's that precision that
really just gets me every time for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Well that's what the Rockets are known for. It's their
trade is precision dance. They're as good as it gets
with it. Although the Tailor girls are definitely still around.
They still have Christmas specials themselves and they're doing their
thing for sure. So it's it's not just an offhand
thing to say the Rockets are as good as it comes,

(06:04):
as good as they come in precision dance, because the
Tiller girls would probably say I would dispute that statement, but.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
They would say it with a British accent.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Right, I dispute that statement.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So they were not as tall. Back then, the original
height requirements were between five to two and five six
and a half. And now they went, we'll take your
tallest dancer and make them our shortest dancer, because I
guess it's just I don't know. I'm not sure why
they did that. But now it's between five six and

(06:39):
five ten and a half. And it is not because
they want to exclude people or any or discriminate against
people who are too tall or they feel too short,
but so they can just all look it's an optical illusion,
so they can all look the same height because they
take that five foot ten and a half inch dancer,

(07:00):
although they don't have to be that tall, but they
take whoever their tallest. Answer is put her right in
the middle and then just stagger it out from there
and in the end everyone looks. It's weird. Everyone looks
to be the same height even though they're not.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
I don't understand how this works. It's just I saw
so many different places that I'm convinced that it does work.
I just don't get the illusion of it. How it works.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Well, I think over four inches and thirty six women,
it's just so minute of differences as you scale down
that it would take I guess an extraordinary human to
be like that woman is an inch and a half
taller than the one five people away from her, right,

(07:44):
you know.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
I got you. Yeah, I guess that's true.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So you're just a normal person, is what I'm saying. Yeah,
you should feel good about that. I fall for that
optical illusion every time. Yeah, everybody should. So they started
with the Missouri Rockets with just sixteen women, and like
I said, now they have thirty six. And they debuted
in Saint Louis, but then went to New York to

(08:09):
perform Rain or Shine on Broadway. And that is where
a man named sl Roxy that was his nickname, Rothefel,
which is an interesting name. That's where he saw them
and said, hey, I gotta get in on this. This
is amazing.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah. So Russell Mamarkert took the idea from John Tiller,
and Roxy Rothafel said, Hey, I want in on this.
Cham So I'm going to grab a few of these
dancers from Saint Louis and bring them over to New
York City and we're going to have him start dancing there. Okay,

(08:49):
And I know, just the place for him. There's this
new venue that's opening up in nineteen thirty two, and
they're going to call it the Radio City Music Hall,
and I'm going to make sure that these dancers are
a to perform and we're going to call them the Roxyets.
How about that?

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Huh huh because of his nickname.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Right, And Markert said, that's fine, just make sure you
pay me some money for it.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Sure, And he did get paid and got paid until
nineteen seventy one. It's hard to believe, but he worked
for the Rockets or with the Rockets from nineteen thirty
two to or I guess even previous in Saint Louis.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, nineteen twenty five, all the way.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Until nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Really amazing.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah, it is pretty amazing. That's a pretty long career.
So they opened Radio City Music Hall. I think they
were part of a seventeen group act and that was
like such a hot ticket, something like one hundred thousand
people wanted in. But it's a sixty two hundred seat theater,
which I think it still remains the nation's largest indoor venue,

(09:54):
which is really saying something because I guess it'd just
be a like a theatrical venue, because obviously.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
The largest indoor venue sports venues.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Have it beat by quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
But oh, theatrical, Okay, I got you.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
It has to be. Yeah, it's either movie or theatrical
or something. But it's the largest venue of its kind
in the United States from what I see.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, and for many years they I mean they had
specials every now and then, but it was sort of
just a movie theater.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah, and here's the thing, you could go see the movies.
I think especially it started to take off in the fifties.
Like before, they would have premieres for movies and the
Rockets would like perform at the premiere. And then at
some point, I don't know if it was Russell Markert
or Roxy Rothafeller or somebody said, well, why just do
this once. How about every time somebody comes to see

(10:45):
a movie at the Radio City Music Hall, We'll have
the Rockets perform before the movie.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Can you imagine that?

Speaker 3 (10:54):
It would be pretty cool? I mean, like imagine seeing
that and then being like, okay, now for the movie.
It's just it'd be a different experience for sure. Yeah,
But it was rough on the Rockets because not all
the movies were successes, so they would change the rockets
show for each movie. So if a movie came along

(11:15):
and it was just a terrible flop, this whole choreographed
routine that they'd learned would be out the door in
two days, and now all of a sudden they had
to learn a new one quick because there was a
new movie coming in to replace that one.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Oh, so they did a different routine for each film.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yes, interesting, Yeah, And sometimes they would have to learn
it in a matter of hours, like around midnight before
the next day's performances.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
I wonder if it was tied to the film.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Sometimes, I think, but not all the time. I think
it was. I think it was in some cases, but
I think more than anything, they would change the routine
just because the people coming to see a different film
would want to see a different routine.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Okay, I gotcha, Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
So in the nineteen forties they were one of the
first groups to sign up for the United Service Organization
and go and perform for the troops. And in the
nineteen fifties is when things really started to kind of
take their toll. Like they were performing sometimes up to
five times a day, and so they said they built

(12:17):
a dormitory there, which you know, they could live in.
I don't think they were required to, but it really
was to accommodate the fact that they were working almost
around the clock rather because learning these new routines, like
you said, and then performing up the five times a
day really grueling stuff.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
It was basically the prototype for Google. Yeah, just making
it so your employees didn't have to leave.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh interesting, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, just go
sleep in your pod.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
So the Rockets their fame started to grow pretty quickly,
and they made like a few steps I feel free
of the pun along the way that kind of cemented
them as as much a piece of America as apple
pie or baseball or moms or what have you. So

(13:11):
the fifties were also big for the Rockets too, because
they joined the Macy's Thanksgiving they prayed in nineteen fifty seven.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
I think, yeah, that was the big move.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, because they went from just a group that you
either had to go to New York or go off
to war to see to. While they're in my living
room now, these girls are high kicking on my television
and I'm just loving life, all right.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
So let's take a break to nineteen fifties. Good times
are ahead, and then dark times come in the seventies
because it's New York City in the seventies and everything
was kind of awful then. So we'll be back right
after this.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Okay, Hey, before we get started to check, I want
to say we put on a pretty good stage show ourselves.
We've been known to and we've got some coming up,
you know, plug plug.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, there's no high kicking involved.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
There could be if people demanded it. I would be
willing to do a little high kicking.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
So are we talking about some shows.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, let's do that real quick, all right.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
So we're going out west for our annual sojourn in
January where we go to Seattle, we go to Portland,
and then we end up at SF sketch Fest like
we always do in mid January.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, and I've got an End of the World live
show on Friday sketch Fest, and you have a movie
Crush on Saturday at sketch Fest, right.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I'm doing a matinee show at one o'clock on Saturday,
January nineteenth, with Busy Phillips as my guest.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Nice, and my show is Friday the eighteenth, at Cafe
Do Nord and I am my own guest, fine solo.
And then I have another one in Brooklyn on the
twenty fourth at the Bellhouse too.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh I thought you already did that one now huh.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
It got postponed to January twenty fourth. Oh great, yes,
so you haven't missed it. There's still time for you
to come.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Fantastic.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
So that is our little plug, how about that?

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah? And of course our big stuff you should know
show is at the Castro on what is that Thursday night?

Speaker 3 (15:42):
That is Thursday the seventeenth.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, so come see us at the More in Seattle,
Revolution Hall in Portland, at the Castro in San Francisco. Yeah,
check out. Our individual little shows are cute little individual shows.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
And there's plenty of information on SYSK live.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
That's right. So now it's the seventies. New York is
uh is suffering? Yehih is crazy. When you look at
pictures of New York City in the seventies and early eighties,
even just hard to believe how bad things were there.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah, it was pretty rough. And actually it's funny, like
you can thank Rudolph Giuliani for I guess cleaning up
the town. If you want to call it that.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Okay, have you ever heard that? What to thank Rudolph
Giuliani for cleaning up the town?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
Uh? Huh uh sure, okay.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Good for him. So I saw him in the park
one day.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
You did, what was he doing talking to a duck?

Speaker 2 (16:41):
No, he was. He was doing like a photo op.
But I had friends in from uh from another country even,
I think, and I said, hey, guys, that's the Mayor
of New York over there, and they were like, oh,
that's nice. I went, it's kind of a big deal
to just walk around and see the Mayor of.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
New York did they say, but they have a chalk.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
I think they're Australian.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Actually, oh that was my Australian impression.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Oh that was good.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Then, yeah, thank you, that's pretty that's a great story, Chuck.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, it's fine. But for them, they didn't understand fully
that the mayor of New York City is is it's
quite a big deal to see him just out and
about in the city.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
I have a similar story. I was watching one of
the first few seasons of Law and Order on my
television one day, and there was the Mayor of New
York City, ruly Rudy Giuliani. Interesting, but I knew it
was a big, a big deal.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
I got another story. Okay, did you know in the
Michael Bay film Pearl Harbor that they comped in Bruce
Willis's John McClain character from Diehard in one hospital scene.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
How just digitally? That's an anachronism. I know that doesn't
make any sense. Did they really do that?

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, you can look it up Pearl Harbor John McLain
And there's like screenshots of John McLain and his white
tank top just briefly for a blip in the background
of one of the hospital scenes in Pearl Harbor. It's
so weird.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
So you know, there's a nude woman in the window
of one of the buildings that the rescuers fly by.
Really the Disney movie from the sixties.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, all these weird movie easter eggs just board editors.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
I guess that's exactly what it hits because we're juvenile.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Editors, all right. So it's the nineteen seventies in New York.
None of this has happened yet that we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
The rescuers did.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
The rescuers did, but there was no Diehard, there was
no Pearl Harbor. Movie except for Tora Toro, Torah, But
no bad Pearl Harbor movie. Okay, No Rudy Giuliani. He
was alive, sure, but he was not in the mayor
of New York City in the nineteen seventies.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Not as far as we know. Who was at that
was Ed Koch, he was the eighties, I think was
he maybe late seventies.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
All right, we'll get that straightened out. Okay, But New
York City is going down the toilet, including, believe it
or not, the Great Radio City Music Hall, much like
our own legendary Fox Theater in Atlanta, was facing shut
down and demolition potentially.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, there was a rough transition from some of those
old movie palaces after people stopped well going to movie
palaces and moved out to the suburbs. A lot of
those beautiful places were left out in the cold, and
some of them didn't well, a lot of them didn't
make it, but some of them almost didn't make it.
Like you said, the Fox and Radio City, and apparently

(19:34):
it was going to be turned into a parking lot.
And Belushi himself got onto the news desk at Saturday
Night Live and was railing against the demise of radio
City Music Hall, and the Roquettes too had said hey, hey, hey, hey,
this is our home. This is an iconic place. Let
us help go raise awareness and funds to save this place.

(19:56):
And they did. They were successful. They got it put
on the National Historic Register of Historic Places and it
has a landmark designation, not just the building. There's twelve
hundred buildings in New York with the landmark designation, but
only one hundred and ten interiors have the landmark designation,
and Radio City Music Hall is one of them, which
means that its interior is so amazingly beautiful that it

(20:19):
is a protected landmark in the United States.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, I've never been in there.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
I haven't either.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
I've been to Carnegie Hall, but never Radio City. That's
on the list for sure. But it's interesting because they
tried to Their whole deal was is they wanted exclusive
movie bookings, like they were to be the only theater
in town that would be showing a particular movie, so
that limits their pool immediately, and then they really preferred

(20:48):
g rated movies. They had really strict screening criteria, so
that just it narrowed down their movie pool so small
that they would go weeks and weeks at a time
where nothing happened there.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, so they would just shut down because again, remember
like the Rockets are a dance troupe that you would
see before you saw a movie. So if they're not
showing movies, they're not showing the Rockets. And at this
time in the seventies, the Rockets said, Okay, we're our
talent is being wasted here. At least let us go
take the show on the road while you guys are
sitting around waiting for another movie to come along. And

(21:24):
they actually they gained that right because their union dancers.
We should say, we'll get into that a little more later,
but they managed to get the right to take the
show on the road and they really started to make
a name for themselves in the seventies in places like
Tahoe and Vegas. Apparently made a huge fan out of
Sammy Davis Junior, who would come see the same show

(21:44):
like night after night when they play in Vegas or
Tahoe or whatever. He was just fascinated by the Rockets.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I love that for sure, Little Sammy, what a great guy.
We should do a show on him.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Apparently he also, oh yeah, I'm down with that. He
also surprised them on stage once by joe them on
stage for a dance number, which apparently he knew because
he'd seen the show so many times. Wow, Which that's
a pretty sammy thing to do in Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
High kicking, Well, his his kicks weren't so high.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Run out on stage, unbidden, uninvited.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
He's a little guy, he was. He's the littlest rocket.
I imagine Wow that he was too. So they're doing
their show on the road here and there, they're making
ends meet. Radio City is struggling, even though it was
designated as a landmark. The eighties were not super kind
to Radio City either. They very famously appeared at the

(22:35):
halftime show of the Super Bowl in eighty eight. They're
trying to change with the times. They're dancing it in
the nineties at different places, and they're always doing their
Christmas deal throughout all this after you know, they started
doing that. And what was that fifty seven two? Oh
they did the Macy's Prayed in thirty two.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Oh no, I'm sorry, I thought you meant the Christmas Spectacular. Yeah,
Macy's Prayed was the Thanksgiving Parade was fifty seven.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, So they've got their their holiday stuff, their Easter specials,
their Christmas specials. They're dancing inaugurations for George W. Bush.
In fact, they came under fire for dancing at Trump's inauguration.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
Well, the dance troupe almost was split asunder over whether
they wanted to do that or not.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, it was a big deal.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
It was a huge deal actually, And they had revived
the Easter Extravaganza they renamed it the New York Spring
Spectacular the year before, and they said they took a
year off and I don't think they ever went back
to it because of all the controversy over twenty sixteen.
In the inauguration, it was just such an unusual experience
for the Rockets, like they're just like America personified, and

(23:48):
for there to be a huge national conversation about, you know,
them performing at an inauguration. It was a big deal
for the organization for sure, especially for the dancers who
are like career rockets.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, exactly, should we talk a little bit about just
being a rocket?

Speaker 3 (24:04):
I think we should, man, because we've done it. We have.
I mean there was a brief time although we've basically
entered Dinah Lohan territory now who's that Lindsay Lohan's mom.
She very famously lied about being a rock cat. Oh
really Yeah, she said that she has a background in

(24:24):
show business. She was a rocket for a while, and
some journalists went and dug around and they found out
that she was definitely They had no record whatsoever of
her under any name, maiden or married, ever being a
rock cat.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
It's always amazing to me when very provable or disprovable
public lies are told by people like that, or like
politicians who say that, you know, like they've fought in
a war when they didn't, like that's happened. Yeah, It's
just I don't know why people say things like that.
It's like, no, we kind of can go check that
really easily.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yeah, but even without like you know, the check ability
of it, to just like, you know, lie in an
interview to puff yourself up, I guess it's yeah, Like
I don't understand the psychology of it. Is it just
because you don't feel like you're given the interviewer enough
of what they need or do they did they lay
some sort of trick that led you into it, or

(25:21):
I don't understand it either.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah. I wonder if people start to believe these lies.
Like if you make up a story about yourself and
you just stick with it for so long, it's weird.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Psychology, Yes, human psychology is indeed quite weird.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Did you have a web show called Psychology is Weird?

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Nuts?

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Psychology is nuts?

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Well, little short lived video thing.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, go check that out. Everyone. Oh, we'll take a break.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
Stop I am, We're back.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yes, So we were gonna tell everyone about our experience
as rockets because we're Dinah Lohan.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
So here's the thing. If you're a rocket and you've
been doing this for ten years, you're a pretty long
lived rocket. Although I think I saw one woman who
is a rocket, And if I'm talking weird all of
a sudden, it's because I am stalling everybody looking for

(26:47):
her name and I'm not finding it. But I think
it's Lindsay Howe. I'm just positive her name's Lindsay Howe.
I believe she has been a rocket for fourteen years.
That's a long time. That's a very long time to
be a rocket because, as you will see learn, being
a roquette is extremely difficult and very demanding, and inside
of show business and out they're widely seen as probably

(27:09):
some of the best professional dancers in the business and
certainly some of the most disciplined professional dancers in the
business as well. But it's really hard to do for
a really long time. And one of the main reasons
why is because their work schedule is extremely grueling. But
with Lindsey Howe, she would make the same amount of

(27:32):
money that a first year roquette would make because they're
all paid the same, they work the same hours, they
do the same work. Some of them are kind of
promoted as like the faces of the Rockets the company.
I think the Madison Square Garden company that owns Radio
City Music Hall, and the Roquettes are really protective of
their image and like they aren't free to just kind

(27:56):
of talk to the media whatever. There's some that are
kind of like you and you and you you're the Rockets,
hear the face of the Rockets. But other than that,
everyone does the same amount of work, same amount of hours,
same amount of pay. And one of the reasons they
do that is because the point of the Rockets is
not to have standouts. It's not like other dance troops
or other Broadway troops or anything like that. There's not
meant to be stars. The rockets are the star and

(28:18):
they're meant to be one single unit that moves and
works and lives together.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, and they're they're unionized, so they make there. They
make most of their money over the holiday season. So
they walk out after a couple of months with about
forty grand in their pocket, which isn't bad, you know,
for a couple of months work. But it is, like
you said, super grueling. If you want to become a rocket,

(28:45):
you're not required to, but there is something called the
Rocket Summer Intensive Dance Program where you can go, you
can enroll, you can spend six hours a day learning,
learning everything over the course of a week, all the choreography,
how to get in that shape, stay in that shape,
how to prevent injuries, and sort of the business of

(29:09):
it all. And like I said, you don't have to
do that, but they do place a lot of Rockets
if you attend that intensive dance program.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Well some I saw out of a thousand that have
taken it, sixty have gone on to actually become rockets. Yeah,
because it's very tough to become a rocket too.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, And I mean I get the feeling that has
less to do with the program than just how hard
it is to make that cut.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Right right exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
So not only do you have to be fit enough
to kick those famous kicks up to twelve hundred times
a day through all these shows, but there's one there's
one clothing change. You got to do all these costume changes,
but there's one in particular in between the Parade of

(29:56):
the Wooden Soldiers in New York at Christmas that you
have to be complete changed out in seventy eight seconds.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Seventy eight seconds, And these costumes are not like super
easy to take off, the Wooden Soldier one in particular
pretty complex, So seventy eight seconds probably goes by extremely fast.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, and there's thirty six rockettes total performing on stage,
but there are eighty certified roquettes total. Overall. You have
a morning cast and afternoon cast, and then you have
for each of those shows, you have four swings or
extras per so like if someone's like I just twisted

(30:37):
my ankle, I can't do this, they have four women
waiting in the wings for each of those morning and
afternoon shows.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah. So the thing is, though, is they're working six
days a week, or the rockettes are performing six days
a week. If you have two casts rather than all
work both casts six days a week. They'll alternate to
give one another a day off, and they'll do that
on days sometimes where there's four performances in a day,

(31:06):
which means that if you are a rocket, there are
days and I've seen also sometimes they're back to back
days where you're doing four performances in a single day,
four ninety minute performances. And that's when those twelve hundred
kicks that you mentioned, Chuck comes in, because some of
those shows have three hundred high kicks, and we're talking
eye level kicks, and if you do four of them

(31:27):
in a day, you've just kicked at eye level twelve
hundred times in a day. And from some of the
articles I've read, that is about as much as your
body can possibly take.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, I mean they all in the interviews I saw.
There was that great New York Times article where they
really sort of dive into a day in the life
of a rocket during the holiday season, and they all
kind of are like, there's no way to prepare your
body for this, Like we are in the best shape
that a dancer can be in, and it just destroys
us to the point where, like one of said that

(32:00):
just taking their stockings off at the end of the
night is laborious, and you know, with their commute, depending
on where they come from, some of them are awake
and either commuting or rehearsing or performing twenty hours in
a day, just grueling, grueling stuff. But across the board,
they also all say that it's the only job that

(32:23):
they want. It is a great sorority and sisterhood and
an honor to be one of these. Over the years,
three thousand women who have made that cut, right, you know,
never we're like, well, it's really not worth it in
the end.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, no, the I mean, at least the ones who
are allowed to speak to the media certainly have a
lot of positive things to say about being a Rocket
and like how familial it is and how you're just
hanging out with your best friends. And it is a
great gig for a dancer, especially as one of these
articles pointed out, if you're a dancer who doesn't sing.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, that's a rare thing to get that kind of
a gig. I think it's one of the few for
jazz and tap banters where singing's not involved.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
But also not just like a good gig, a good
paying gig too, like forty grand for a couple of
months of performances. A lot of the Roquets they don't
live in New York. They'll come live in New York
during the season when they need to rehearse and then
do the Christmas spectacular, and then they go home, so
they might live in New York from September to the

(33:28):
end of December, and then they go back home. And
wherever home is, forty grand probably goes a lot further
than it does in New York, unless they live in
San Francisco, in which case it is probably it goes
even faster. But it's a really good paying gig. They
also have benefits because their union and their contract workers,
they have year round benefits and forty gran so they

(33:52):
can go work as pilates, instructors, as nutritionists, as all
the other stuff that they do during the year normally,
and then they come back and they they're a rocket.
But something I thought was pretty cool was even if
you're say a tenth year rocket, you get invited back,
like once you're a roquette, you're in as a roquette,
but you still have to audition in April like everybody else. Yeah,

(34:15):
so you audition in April and if you make the cut,
you start to go get in shape, and then rehearsals
I think start in September, and rehearsals are six hours,
six days a week for basically the six weeks leading
up to the performances, which run from mid November till
I saw December thirty first. I also saw tickets available

(34:36):
for a January first show, so I don't know if
they extended it or not.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah, and it's it's funny like it's forty grand sounds
like a lot of money over a couple of months,
and it is. But when you break it down per show,
it it breaks down to about one hundred and thirty
five bucks a show. Yeah, which all of a sudden,
it doesn't seem like great money.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
No, but that's what you make as a standard cast
member for a Broadway Union day answer, yeah, or actor
or variety performer I think is the union they're part of.
So no, it doesn't seem like much. But that's another
reason why the Roquet gig is so good. You get
overtime on those days when you do a third and
fourth show, you're getting overtime pay, and there's multiple shows

(35:18):
on multiple days, so you can I mean another actor
at a different gig, working the same days over the
same period would not make that amount of money, that
forty grand, because they wouldn't have any overtime, they wouldn't
have that many shows.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, and I don't think anyone like dreams of going
to Broadway to become rich and wealthy, like part of
the allure Broadway as you're with the best of the best.
And you can say I danced, or I saying or
I acted.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
On Broadway with Brian Cranston.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I saw him on Broadway.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yeah. I saw Michael McKeon on Broadway. Oh yeah, an accomplice.
The audience was the accomplice. That was the big twist.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Oh well, you just ruined that one.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Wasn't good? It was great. It was one of the
greatest stage performances I've ever seen. I saw Lenny live
on stage.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Derek Saint Hubbins.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Yeah, this is before I knew him as anything but Lenny.
I was like eight.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh, so this is a while ago. Cranston is in
something new on Broadway now, I think too. The network, right,
Oh man, I want to see that. Sure, I bet
that's good.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
I saw that it was described as get this, Chuck,
get ready for this? Oh boy, electrifying.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Really, the Broadway show described as electrifying.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
His performance was electrifying.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
I don't think I've ever heard that word used for
the theater. So another thing though about the Rockets. Even
though they do make most of their money over those
couple of months and then they have the rest of
the year or two and in a lot of cases
be like a dance instructor or something like that, or
a fitness instructor, they increasingly are working more and more

(37:04):
and more months out of the year, whether it's as
ambassadors for the Rockets or doing like video things for YouTube.
They are increasingly called on to do other things.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Yeah, a lot. So I what is the woman who
came along as the league choreographer and director and really
kind of punched it up even further. Her name is
Linda Haberman, and she took over I think in like
the mid two thousands, maybe two thousand and eight, and
she kind of brought like this whole new not new,

(37:38):
it's not a whole new thing. She just kind of
she made it a little more pro feminist, a little
more like you go girl kind of vibe to the
Rockets than they had before they were seen, you know,
rehearsing in the rehearsal gear rather than like full costume,
and it was just kind of like the intent I
get was to make them more people. Yes, yes, because

(38:02):
one of the great criticisms of the Rockets is that
they're nothing but like teeth and legs, just a bunch
of women, yeah, out there kicking, like forming one large
uber woman who can kick her legs amazingly high and
has like the whitest, gleamingest teeth ever you've ever seen,
and that it was really kind of just objectification of

(38:25):
women like to like by definition. And Linda Hammerman like
really kind of took that and tried to unravel it
quite a bit, and she also took the show. So
we should talk a little bit about the show. It's
a depending on who you are, it's either like just
beloved traditional Americana, KITCHI offensively sexists. Who knows, but I

(38:50):
think the first two are kind of the predominant views
of it. It's kitchen and sweet, or it's it's you know,
endearing Americana, and Linda Haman kind of took that and
tried to punch it up into the twenty first century
a little more, and there's like way more visual effects
than there were before. There's like a three D component.

(39:10):
I think to this year's show or recent year shows
like the Whole The whole theme is like a girl
wants a video game and her mom is kind of
showing her. You know why, that's not so great because
it's a violent video game. There's there's a lot of
kind of updating that's that the Rockets have undergone in
the last few years. And that was largely from what
I understand Linda Haberman's doing.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
I think she was the one that digitally inserted John
McLean from Diehard.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
She was he swoops in in the New York Follies section.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Now, I'm glad they updated things because this was a
prime case of like a belooved American tradition that could
use some refreshing. And you can't highlight them as humans
and individuals and still you can have both, you know,
and you can still have that desired effect of uniformity
and precision that they're known for, you know, right exactly,

(40:02):
But they don't have to be just like faceless and nameless,
you know.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Now, And I read a few like feminist critiques of
the Rockets, and they seem to have been kind of outdated.
Like I really feel like Linda Haberman she did a
good job at like Tate. Yeah, she kind of took
those those critiques and changed them in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
One of the other criticisms is that it wasn't until
nineteen eighty five that the Rockets are their first woman
of color as a member of their cast, of their troop.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
The first woman of color was a Japanese woman named
Setsuko Mara Hashi, and in nineteen eighty five she joined.
In nineteen eighty eight, the first African American woman joined.
Her name was Jennifer Jones. And the reasoning, apparently it
was Mark Markert who was like, no, from all I saw,

(40:56):
it had nothing to do with racism. It was the
idea that it was going to disrupt the visual unity
of the dance line if there were, you know, differing
skin colors in this dance line. And apparently he was
so nutso about it, like you would get in trouble
if you had a son tan like that. That's how

(41:17):
he wanted everything to be homogenous in Unison. Well, regardless
in the twenty first century. In the late twentieth century,
that sentiment didn't hold up. And I guess shortly after
he died is when they started adding women of color
more to the Rockets troop.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, and then they saw people of color in that
same dance line and they went, oh, it's still awesome
and synchronized and looks great exactly, and from his grave
he went no.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
He started rolling around in it.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
Oh goodness.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
So you haven't seen a Rocket's Christmas Spectacular.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Huh you mean live in person? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (41:53):
I have not. I have not either. Are we going
to go now?

Speaker 2 (41:56):
I think we should. I want to know if any
Rockets listen to the show. Yeah, that would make me
super super happy.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
It would for me as well.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
And the only other small tid bet I have is
they have microphones in their heels of their shoes.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
I saw that too. They used to They used to
play recordings of their tapping, right.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Oh, I don't know, and that does not surprise me.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Yeah, and then they figured out how to do the
actual like broadcast the actual tamping. So we're going to
go one day, Chuck, We're going to go see the
Christmas Spectacular. We're going to go through the live Nativity
with the real camel and donkeys and the wooden toy
soldier march where they fall down like a domino and
slow motion. It's pretty amazing stuff. And if you want

(42:42):
to know more about the Rockets, then go to Radio
City Music Hall and find them there.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
How about that that sounds great?

Speaker 3 (42:49):
Well? Since I said that, then it's time for a
listener mail.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I'm calling this. I was a search and rescue victim volunteer.
So this guy, his dad. I'm gonna summarize at the
beginning of it because it's kind of long, but his
dad lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is
a member of the local SAAR team, And so they
were like, we need someone to play the victim here,

(43:15):
and he was like, I'll do it. This guy's son.
So here's what happened. He set off into the heavily
wooded area. He said, I did everything I could to
think of to try and fool the dog in the handler.
I ran in circles, went back over my own trail.
I threw off my hat. I even found some garbage
and rolled around in it to mask my scent. Once

(43:36):
I had done everything I could think of to try
and fool the dog and handler that would be tracking me.
I found a nice comfy spot up in a bush
on a hill where I could just watch the dog
in the handler try and track me. I thought I
had done a pretty good job, but once I called
the handler and let him know I was in position,
was all over very quickly. I sat back, and everyone

(43:57):
was shocked to watch the dog basically retrace my trail
step by step, every move I made, all those circles,
finding my hat, even that I'd thrown off, even getting
into that pile of garbage that I'd rolled around in.
I love that this dog is just basically making a
fool of poor Ryan up there in the mountains, so

(44:18):
he said. Needless to say, the dog found me in
short order. Gave him lots of praise for the great
job he had done. Thankfully, I was never in any
real danger, so my experience was a lot more enjoyable,
obviously than when people are in real need of search
and rescue.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Dog.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Thanks for the great episodes, guys, keep me company on
overnight shifts and make it all go by quicker. So
if you read this on the show, can I get
a shout out to my girlfriend Taren. She would be
thrilled to hear her name get called out on the show.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
I think that just happened.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yep, so that is from Ryan. I like the gusto
that Ryan put into trying to.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Fool this dog rolling in garbage, and I.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Equally love that this dog was like whatever. So thank
you Ryan, thank you Taran.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
For listening, and thank you to the star dog, sure Scruffy.
If you want to get in touch of this, you
can go to our website, stuff youshould Know dot com.
You can find all of our social links there, and
you can send an email to Chuck jerrym Me at
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,