September 20, 2025 • 30 mins
Suzanne Charny’s dance journey was anything but ordinary. From a childhood training path that veered far from the usual ballet–tap–jazz pipeline, to being personally chosen by Bob Fosse to lead Sweet Charity’s “Rich Man’s Frug” on film, her story is one of singular talent meeting the right moment.
In this episode of The Rest of the Story on the Hey, Dancer! podcast, you’ll hear how her unique training and early influences (Luigi, Mattox, Graham) shaped her into a dancer who could embody Fosse’s language like no one else. You’ll also discover why Fosse — and Gwen Verdon — fought for her, how Hollywood took notice, and how one number cemented her place in dance history.
For the first time ever in this series, I spoke directly with the subject herself. That means this episode is filled with never-before-seen photos and details from Suzanne’s own life — plus, in the outro, I’ll share my personal reflection on that conversation.
Her name may not be as instantly recognizable as Verdon or Reinking, but her contribution to dance is unforgettable. And this episode uncovers why.
Suzanne's sculpting website!
Check out my Return to Dance docuseries!
Support my Instagram — where I post daily dance inspo, insights and fun! @backtogreat
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(00:00):
She took Bob Fossi's language and danced it so completely that she remains one of the
(00:07):
most defining examples of his style on film.
Welcome to the rest of the story on my podcast, Hey Dancer.
I'm Miller Daurey and if you're new here, be sure to subscribe or follow so you never
miss an episode like, comment and share with anyone who loves dance.
I do really appreciate this support and I just want to thank you for being here and stay
(00:32):
tuned after the story because in the outro, I'll share something kind of fun.
For the first time ever, for this series, I actually spoke with the dance subject herself
as part of my research.
I'm so excited for you to hear.
Okay, let's get into it.
She was born on March 8, 1944.
(00:53):
Her childhood home was 1607 St. John's Place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Her dad, Harry, was a glacier.
He measured, cut and set plate glass for windows, storefronts and mirrors.
Her mom, Aida, assisted in the family business and was a seamstress.
She had an older sister, Diane.
(01:14):
They lived in a one bedroom.
Her parents had the bedroom.
The two sisters slept on a pull-out couch in the living room.
This living room would serve as a stage by day as the two girls loved to play Frankie Lane
and dance to their heart's content.
From an early age, she had a bit of an attention-seeking drive.
She wanted to be noticed, so she stole her dad's gimmick.
(01:37):
What he would do was a comic belly dancer routine,
rolling his stomach in waves, and he would bust out this party trick at family gatherings.
Well, this little girl copied him until she could ripple her torso on command too.
Her first trick, the thing she practiced, this undulating as she called it,
(01:58):
while other kids took tap dance.
Her ability to understand how to isolate her body, her muscles,
her movement at such a young age would set her apart in her future dance life.
In the summers, her family would head to the cat skills,
where she and her dad entered rumble contests.
And this father and daughter kept winning the Champaign top prize.
(02:20):
By four years old, she learned what applause felt like from inside the spotlight.
One day, on a Brooklyn block lined with produce stands,
brought to the neighborhood by the Italian American Grocers Association,
she pulled into a sidewalk crowd watching
Sammy Davis Jr. perform with his family.
She's mesmerized, and the influence is immediate.
(02:43):
She walks away wishing she could do something just like that.
And early, unmistakable, I want to entertain moment.
Soon, it turns into real glasses.
First stop is McClevy's in Yonkers.
She takes ballet, pink tights, strict positions,
and by the third or fourth class, they're telling her mother she's ready for point.
(03:05):
She's not yet six years old, they strap her into the shoes, and it feels wrong.
Awkward, uncomfortable, off in her gut.
They even give her a solo in a recital, but the day before the show,
she tells her mom, "I'm not doing it."
And that is that.
Then comes the place that changes everything.
(03:25):
Henry Street Settlement House.
Off the subway passed the rough edges,
homeless men, beer cans, even switch blades on the ground.
This little girl carries a black velvet hat case with a shocking pink ballerina,
redly-edart pink tights, and walks into Donald McCale's modern class.
Donnie, as he's known, was a major Martha Graham company dancer and choreographer.
(03:50):
The language he's teaching grounded and musical, expressive, and human
clicks for her immediately.
It makes sense to her.
After class, McCale pulls her mother aside and tells her
that this little girl is a natural with incredible potential.
He'd love it if she could take the more advanced classes with the older kids.
(04:10):
So mom asks her, and yeah, she would love to stay.
So on Saturdays, this becomes her new home.
This child training with teenagers and adults,
McCale has her front row, his little protege,
and now she's on a path that fits.
The family then moves to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, when she's nearly seven.
(04:32):
There she finds a local dance studio.
Marjorie Maesia's school in Sheep's Head Bay.
Modern classes, not ballet.
Like Donald McCale, Marjorie was with Martha Graham's dance company,
and she was actually the first person outside of Martha Graham herself
to be allowed to teach the codified Graham technique.
Maesia also brought in guest teachers, including Merce Cunningham.
(04:56):
And this is where this little girl truly falls in love with dance.
She's fully immersed in modern, contraction, storytelling,
grounded musicality, and expressive character work.
It's certainly not the typical child dancer path of ballet, tap, and jazz.
She starts performing through Maesia's, charity shows, and hospitals, and other venues.
(05:19):
So the stage piece begins here.
At PS100 near Coney Island, Junior High was rough.
Dyslexia made the page hostile, and she didn't feel like she fit.
She set her heights on the high school of performing arts to be around people
who danced and loved music the way she did.
The audition required modern and ballet, plus a two to three-minute solo
(05:43):
eucoriographed yourself to a record.
Most girls wore black and brought classical or abstract instrumental records.
She wore a red leotard and pink tights, yep, still sporting those same colors, and brought a vocal record.
While many were stopped after about a minute of their solo,
they let her finish her whole number.
(06:06):
And after she danced, a faculty member pushed back her hair,
kissed her forehead, and praised her contractions.
A clear nod to her modern training.
Weeks later, the postcard arrived.
She got in. She was the first student at PS100 who was accepted to a specialty school,
and so they held an assembly in her honor.
(06:28):
At the high school of performing arts academics were aggrined.
She'd often skip morning classes, but never dance.
The afternoons were all hers.
Modern technique was her primary.
Ballet was required, and still very much not to her liking.
The faculty was formidable, and visiting teachers kept widening the scope,
(06:49):
introducing forms like flamenco and even katakali,
a traditional form of Indian classical dance,
with a tanned-and-eye precision that stuck with her.
In outside school, she trained with jazz dance pioneers,
Luigi and Matt Maddix.
In her telling, Luigi felt freer.
Maddix, whom she had a crush on, was more controlled and strict.
(07:12):
She also took classes with the Martha Graham, so there she is,
still in high school and training with master teachers who were the best to ever do it.
Then, the very first audition of her life.
She cut school, no surprise, and heads to Broadway's Wintergarden Theatre
(07:33):
to audition for West Side Story.
The line wraps the block.
Her number is around 500.
Before anyone can actually dance, they have to be approved based on their look.
She does not make the cut, but she refuses to accept that,
so she runs to the corner drugstore,
Slather's pancake makeup for a more ethnic look,
(07:56):
lets the hair fly, stuffs her ankle socks in her bra,
safety pins the leotard, and gets back on the line.
This time, she gets to dance.
They learn the combo to America from West Side Story.
She sells it hard and stands apart from the other dancers.
There's something extra in her movement.
(08:17):
Modern in her bones, Luigi's jazz in her phrasing,
the undulation she's drilled since childhood.
And when all is said and done, she makes all the cuts.
Down to the final three dancers out of thousands who auditioned.
And that is when Jerome Robbins himself tells her,
(08:38):
welcome to Australia.
She is shocked.
She thought she was auditioning for the Broadway production.
She tells Robbins she's only 15,
that she needs her parents permission.
He stares at her.
"You're what?" he told her.
"Give me your number.
"Go home.
"I want you to call me.
(08:58):
"If you don't call me by tomorrow morning, I'll call you.
"I need to know if you're coming,
"because I've got others on standby."
She goes home and blurtes it all out to her parents.
She's cut school.
She's auditioned for Jerry Robbins.
She's been offered West Side Story in Australia.
She needs permission.
The answer is immediate and firm.
(09:20):
No way.
Never absolutely not.
She is hysterical, pleading, begging, telling them
she's not a good student anyway.
This is her chance.
But the answer stays no.
She cries herself to sleep at 5 a.m.
She's up, swollen eyed.
Knowing she has to make the call to Robbins, she can't go.
(09:42):
And then all of a sudden her father walks in.
Well, he says, you're going.
The high school of performing arts
refused to let her keep her place
if she left for Australia.
So her parents enrolled her in Quintanos,
a professional children's school
that mailed lessons to working kids
so they could still earn a diploma.
(10:04):
She spent only two weeks there,
long enough to transfer her records
and feel the shock of leaving friends and teachers behind.
The show opened at the Princess Theater in Melbourne
for three months, then moved to the Tivoli Theater
in Sydney for another three.
She lived the full theatrical experience,
dancing, rehearsing, performing every night,
(10:26):
and watching as the American dancers around her
were slowly replaced with Australians to cut costs.
Eventually the pink slip came for her too.
And just like that, she was sent home.
16 back in Brooklyn, but not the same girl who had left.
She'd lived on her own,
(10:46):
flown halfway around the world, earned money
and been part of a Broadway show abroad.
She had a basically paid for high school diploma
and she was smack dab in the real world
of trying to make it as a working dancer in New York City.
Summerstock gave her her first American equity credits,
the King and I, where she played topsy,
(11:08):
"Destry Rides Again" and "The Mary Widow".
By 1963 she was back inside West Side Story.
This time, Summerstock in the States,
performing as a jet in Connecticut and Rhode Island,
working with Tony-nominated choreographer, Lee Theodore.
The following year, 1964, she danced in America,
(11:29):
being seated at the Louisiana Pavilion of the New York World's Fair,
built as a modern minstrel show with names like "Lugasit",
"May Barnes" and "Lola Fulana".
It was meant for Broadway, but fizzled fast at the fairgrounds.
And when Ron Lewis, already a powerhouse choreographer,
staged "Minsky's Follies" at Jack Silverman's
(11:51):
International Theater restaurant, she was in it.
Those nights gave her real stage chops in New York,
"Cabaret" and "Nightclub Dance".
In 1965, she auditioned for "Hullabaloo",
a new television variety show,
choreographed by David Winters.
She had just come back from visiting her sister in Florida,
(12:12):
and she was extra, extra tan.
Her hair was super long, hanging all the way down her back.
The audition included "The Jerk",
a dance considered "Rescue" at the time,
but she dove in and made it to the very last rounds.
She knew she had danced circles around everyone else,
and still, when it was over, the panel cut her with a flat,
(12:34):
thank you very much.
Angry, she started to change in the dressing room
when word came through.
Was she still there?
Winters wanted to see her.
He told her the truth,
"The producers didn't want her.
Too wild, too much like a hippie,
but he said, 'I'm hiring you anyway.
Just make sure they don't recognize you on the first day of rehearsal.
(12:56):
Do whatever you can to look different.'"
So her parents went all in.
Milk baths, creams, late-night face rituals,
even cutting her hair into awkward bangs.
She showed up on set looking all American enough
that even Winters himself didn't recognize her.
And suddenly, she was in.
She shot weekly in Manhattan, and sometimes at NBC in Brooklyn,
(13:20):
working alongside future dance stars, Donna McKecney,
and Michael Bennett.
During that year, the exposure was enormous.
Hullabaloo brought top musical acts every week,
the Supremes, Sunny and Cher.
And those dancers on the show became recognizable faces.
She couldn't walk around without someone asking,
(13:42):
"What was it like working with Sunny and Cher?"
It was a steady, full-time television job.
But the show was high stakes.
Dancers were hired and fired every week
as Winters rotated in favorites.
In the year she was there, she was the only one never fired,
but the fear of that pink slip nod at her.
(14:02):
And after a year, she did the unthinkable.
She quit on her own terms to work at the world's fair
for the second time, this time at the RCA Pavilion.
It was a job unlike anything she'd done before,
inside a glass pit with cameras projecting her performance
across the fairgrounds.
(14:23):
She threw herself into everything.
Medea, St. Joan, duets, solos,
even personality songs like "I Got a Crow."
She remembers it as a period of growth.
"I stretched myself," she said.
The whole experience opened her psyche, expanded her range
and reminded her she wasn't boxed in.
(14:43):
At the world's fair between monologues and musical numbers,
she wandered into the African Pavilion,
bought a Quinto,
and practiced those drums until her hands blistered.
And then, the opportunity to audition for a new Broadway show,
"Sweet Sherry" came along.
The first round was dance for Fossy.
(15:04):
And for her, it was the very first time moving in his style
where others struggled with the angular precision,
the isolations, she felt it land in her body immediately.
It just fit Fossy noticed.
And she got a callback.
He said to bring an instrument and a song.
She practiced her drums for a week until the callback.
(15:28):
She got through all the dancing,
and then it was time to sing and play her instrument.
She changed into a pink pleated skirt and a pink pleated top,
looking demure, but everyone else was famping.
Then she realized something.
She had missed her Fossy's direction.
She thought he wanted everyone looking demure at the callback.
(15:51):
Not the case.
She sang, "I'm just a girl who can't say no, playful, comic, innocent,
and she found herself wanting to cry."
But Gwen Verdon jumped on stage, told her
that was the very song she had once auditioned with
and soothed the moment.
Then came the drum solo,
two minutes on a Quinto perched on books,
(16:13):
and a thank you.
Weeks later, the phone rang.
It was Fossy himself, telling her she was in sweet charity.
Her first rehearsal, in her own words, "I was incredible."
Incredible.
In the show, she danced in the frug.
One of many bodies in Fossy's hypnotic spectacle
and held her place in the number big spender.
(16:36):
But she also carried an understudy assignment, Rosie,
the so-called Virgin of the Fandango Ballroom,
a small but juicy acting part.
During previews, the actress playing Rosie
sometimes chose to rest before big nights.
Gwen Verdon, watching closely,
felt more comfortable with the understudy in the role.
(16:58):
And so, on opening night, Bob Fossy and Gwen made the call.
The understudy would go on.
She didn't tell her parents when they were there
for opening night.
When they saw her on for Rosie, they almost passed out.
She called it an understudy's dream.
But the months wore on.
She loved sweet charity.
(17:19):
She really did, but the New York audiences were thinning
and she sensed the end was near.
So when she heard Fossy was setting up a new production of charity
at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas,
starring Juliette Prous, she made her move.
She asked Fossy if she could leave
the Broadway company and head west.
(17:40):
Vegas, she explained, was on the way to California,
where she eventually wanted to land, but she had one condition.
She wanted to do the rich man's fruit as the lead.
Fossy agreed.
And in Vegas, she did it all, Rosie, big spender and the fruit.
(18:00):
Opening night at Caesar's was a hit.
Vegas was glamorous.
The cast was strong and Juliette Prous was gracious.
When the stage show leapt to the screen,
there were talks of bringing in a bigger name
for the signature dance sequences.
Even Barry Chase was mentioned,
but Bob Fossy and Gwen Burton pushed back.
(18:21):
They knew the dancer they wanted.
The call came.
She would be the lead in the movie's showpiece,
the rich man's fruit.
For her, it was overwhelming,
carrying a number in her very first film
and under the direction of Fossy,
one of the most acclaimed and demanding choreographers
(18:42):
in the business, she was excited, terrified and determined.
And what a sequence it was.
Three distinct movements filmed at Universal,
each one a slice of Fossy's genius.
First, the aloof.
It begins as almost a sculpture.
The dancers arranged in rigid shapes, cool and detached,
(19:05):
faces blank body snapping from stillness into sudden precise movement.
At the front, she leads with indifference written across her face,
that Fossy mask of irony.
While her body moves with a mastery that makes it impossible to look anywhere else,
her carriage, her musicality, the isolations,
(19:26):
the stretch of her spine, sheer brilliance.
The work was grueling that heavy ponytail wig she wore,
left her scalp burned and infected,
but she never let it show.
Next, the heavyweight.
Also called the boxer.
Here, the temperature rises.
The men square off like prize fighters, fists, flying.
(19:48):
The women circling in rhythm, its witty physical combative,
a stylized match where every move lands with timing and force.
She hits each accent with precision,
even while carrying another secret pain.
Fossy had insisted she wear shoes a half size too small.
They were killing her feet, but she didn't say a word.
(20:10):
As she later put it, between my head and my feet,
I was an agony, but it's better to look marvelous than to feel comfortable.
And finally, the big finish.
Here, the ensemble breaks free.
The red backdrop, the silhouettes, the sudden bursts of wildness.
She is center stage, and even her costume tells a story.
(20:31):
Edith Head's original gown was rejected by Gwen Verden,
who said it looked like armor.
Gwen instead offered her own black norell sequined gown.
Cut to fit, and that is what she wore on film,
a piece of misverten shimmering on her body
as the number roared to its climax.
(20:51):
Together, the aloof, the heavyweight,
and the big finish form a masterclass in Fossy Style.
And in her very first film, right at the center of it all,
she delivered one of the most iconic dance performances in movie history.
At the Sweet Sharity premiere, Carrie Grant approached her at intermission
(21:11):
and told her, "You were marvelous, darling."
And she found herself dancing with Danny K,
captured in a Vogue magazine photograph.
For a dancer who had idolized him as a child,
it was the most Hollywood of moments.
When Sweet Sharity hit theaters, the reviews rolled in,
and she was the one consistently highlighted.
(21:32):
Universal recognized it immediately.
They sent her two dozen red roses
and a bonus check for $5,000.
Proof that her work on film had landed,
and with that recognition came new visibility.
Universal put her front and center,
even lining the studio commissary with her photos
before the movie was even released.
(21:54):
She was featured on a billboard for Sweet Sharity
on Sunset Boulevard that is literally just her dancing
with her name, Front and Center.
Soon, the king of late night came calling.
Johnny Carson.
He had her on the Tonight Show as a returning guest multiple times.
She guest starred and danced on the Delariche show.
(22:16):
Also multiple times, the momentum soon carried overseas.
Bob Hope had first spotted her on the Joey Bishop show,
and not long after, she found herself on tour with him.
In 1969, she went to Vietnam,
performing alongside Connie Stevens,
Neil Armstrong and others.
And from there, onto Berlin, Italy, Turkey, and Thailand.
(22:39):
She went back again in 1971 when Hope personally asked her to return.
This time, the soldiers already knew her.
They held up posters with her name on them.
Welcoming her back.
But as the years unfolded,
dance began to dissolve for her.
Acting had always been a dream,
and doors opened there too.
(23:00):
Television roles, film work,
and the one fans still talk about her turn as the vampire
on Kohlshack the Nightstalker.
Yet even though she stepped away from dance in her 20s,
what she left behind is timeless,
because in that one sequence from Sweet Sharity,
everything came together.
(23:20):
Her training, her mastery, her gifts.
Through Fossi's vision, she gave the world
one of the most astonishing dance numbers
ever put on film.
She didn't just perform his style,
she embodied it.
She made it immortal.
One of the few benchmarks,
dancers still studied to understand Fossi's movement
(23:42):
and his language, her name, Susan Charney.
And now you know the rest of the story.
All right, Dance Fam, did you love it?
I hope you did.
I hope you felt inspired and you learned something.
You're entertained if you did, if you were.
Make sure you just take a second to leave a comment.
(24:04):
Tell me your thoughts, like the video,
share it with your dance family.
And if you aren't already,
please follow or subscribe to my podcast
and hit that notification bell on YouTube.
So you're always alerted when a new episode drops.
I publish at least once a week and I read all my comments
and I'm just grateful that you're here.
So as I alluded to in the intro,
(24:25):
I actually spoke with Susan in preparation for this episode.
I'll give you a quick backstory every week
when I dig deep into the research of these dance legends.
I'm always sort of mystified
even when the dance subject is famous, you know,
like Vera Ellen, Jean Nelson, legit movie stars also.
(24:49):
There is almost always nothing, nothing at all,
about their youth, their training.
That's the stuff that makes me really excited.
You know, that's the stuff that I want to know.
That stuff has arguably what I want to bring to you the most.
I think it's so fascinating.
What was involved in their training?
What shaped them as dancers?
How did they start pursuing the industry?
(25:11):
Those first dance jobs?
Which is probably why I spend the most time trying to unravel
these early years as part of my weekly research.
And so with Suzanne in particular,
it was even, there was just even less information.
Now I can certainly create a podcast no matter what.
I decided to do this episode on Suzanne and it was going to happen
(25:34):
even if I didn't have a whole bunch of the gaps filled.
But I mean, I wanted more.
All I could find even in interviews with her.
And I think that's a thing to when people interview dancers,
especially if it's a non-dance podcast and the dancer
like Ms. Charney went on to, you know, success and acting
and was always on the Johnny Carson show.
(25:54):
When people interview her, they almost never asked questions about,
you know, her training as a dancer growing up.
And so I just had so many gaps.
And so with a little bit of slew thing,
I was able to find her.
So first, I just want to thank her stepdaughter,
Trevor, who is someone that I just found in sleuthing online,
(26:17):
was connected to Suzanne.
And I reached out to Trevor among others.
And Trevor got back to me with contact information.
And long story short, I was on the phone with Ms. Charney
for over an hour.
And I asked her the most probing, deep in her recesses,
questions about dance, her training,
(26:38):
and she couldn't have been lovelier.
Now, my podcast, as you can probably tell,
is not an interview-based podcast.
So that interview, if you will, is not meant to, you know,
be played publicly.
It was just almost a biographical,
me just kind of trying to fill in the timeline.
And anyway, she just couldn't have been more gracious and more kind.
(26:59):
And it was just an honor to speak with somebody who, in my opinion,
truly, in many dancers' opinions,
truly holds this, I don't know, magnificent place
in the world of dance, you know, as truly being the embodiment
of Fasi's style.
I also want to thank her daughter, Lee,
who Suzanne put me in touch with,
who sent me a plethora of pictures.
(27:21):
I asked Suzanne.
I said, "I don't know if you have any pictures.
I don't want it to be a burden."
And I'll even push back the release date of this podcast
because obviously pictures do help tell the story.
If I don't have them, I can still do it.
But as you can see by watching, if you watched on YouTube or Spotify,
my gosh, all the incredible pictures,
so many of which, of course, have never been seen before.
(27:43):
And it's just an honor that I get to tell Suzanne's story,
really, for the first time, the full-true dance story of her life.
Now, onto a little bit about Suzanne's acting,
as I always say, this is a dance-centered podcast,
but Suzanne definitely did some acting work.
And I wanted to address that very quickly.
It really had always been a part of her dream, you know,
(28:06):
acting.
And after sweet charity, as you can tell,
she shifted her focus.
Her first television role came in 1970 on that girl with Mar-Low Thomas.
She went on to appear in "Brakens World,"
even circling in Emmy nomination,
and had film work like the "Steagall."
She worked steadily across television in the '70s.
(28:26):
Oh my gosh, so many credits.
Emergency Ironside, Marcus Welby, "Star-Skin Hutch," the Bionic Woman,
Fantasy Island, and the Incredible Hook.
So she really was a fixture on television.
But as I mentioned in the main script,
the role fans never forgot was her turn as the vampire
in "Colshack the Nightstalker."
(28:47):
She didn't have a lot of dialogue in that, actually,
but she delivered such a striking performance
that she still receives fan letters for that today.
And even beyond the stage and screen,
her life as an artist kept evolving really through the decades.
She turned to sculpture.
Oh my god, her website is extraordinary.
I'll leave all the links below.
There'll be a little title on the screen here
(29:08):
so you can check out her website also,
where she really channeled her dancer's eye
into clay, bronze, and resin.
For her, the human body was always the center of expression.
She once said she tried to capture not just a shape,
but the energy that continues even when the body stills.
Many of her works, which I think is so cool,
(29:29):
feature dancers like Martha Graham, Carmen D'Alavalod,
stylized, powerful, almost larger than life.
It was another way of celebrating movement
for her, another way of leaving her mark.
All right, dance fam, that's all I got.
I'll see you next time.
[MUSIC]
(29:55):
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
She took Bob Fossi's language and danced it so completely that she remains one of the
(00:07):
most defining examples of his style on film.
Welcome to the rest of the story on my podcast, Hey Dancer.
I'm Miller Daurey and if you're new here, be sure to subscribe or follow so you never
miss an episode like, comment and share with anyone who loves dance.
I do really appreciate this support and I just want to thank you for being here and stay
(00:32):
tuned after the story because in the outro, I'll share something kind of fun.
For the first time ever, for this series, I actually spoke with the dance subject herself
as part of my research.
I'm so excited for you to hear.
Okay, let's get into it.
She was born on March 8, 1944.
(00:53):
Her childhood home was 1607 St. John's Place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Her dad, Harry, was a glacier.
He measured, cut and set plate glass for windows, storefronts and mirrors.
Her mom, Aida, assisted in the family business and was a seamstress.
She had an older sister, Diane.
(01:14):
They lived in a one bedroom.
Her parents had the bedroom.
The two sisters slept on a pull-out couch in the living room.
This living room would serve as a stage by day as the two girls loved to play Frankie Lane
and dance to their heart's content.
From an early age, she had a bit of an attention-seeking drive.
She wanted to be noticed, so she stole her dad's gimmick.
(01:37):
What he would do was a comic belly dancer routine,
rolling his stomach in waves, and he would bust out this party trick at family gatherings.
Well, this little girl copied him until she could ripple her torso on command too.
Her first trick, the thing she practiced, this undulating as she called it,
(01:58):
while other kids took tap dance.
Her ability to understand how to isolate her body, her muscles,
her movement at such a young age would set her apart in her future dance life.
In the summers, her family would head to the cat skills,
where she and her dad entered rumble contests.
And this father and daughter kept winning the Champaign top prize.
(02:20):
By four years old, she learned what applause felt like from inside the spotlight.
One day, on a Brooklyn block lined with produce stands,
brought to the neighborhood by the Italian American Grocers Association,
she pulled into a sidewalk crowd watching
Sammy Davis Jr. perform with his family.
She's mesmerized, and the influence is immediate.
(02:43):
She walks away wishing she could do something just like that.
And early, unmistakable, I want to entertain moment.
Soon, it turns into real glasses.
First stop is McClevy's in Yonkers.
She takes ballet, pink tights, strict positions,
and by the third or fourth class, they're telling her mother she's ready for point.
(03:05):
She's not yet six years old, they strap her into the shoes, and it feels wrong.
Awkward, uncomfortable, off in her gut.
They even give her a solo in a recital, but the day before the show,
she tells her mom, "I'm not doing it."
And that is that.
Then comes the place that changes everything.
(03:25):
Henry Street Settlement House.
Off the subway passed the rough edges,
homeless men, beer cans, even switch blades on the ground.
This little girl carries a black velvet hat case with a shocking pink ballerina,
redly-edart pink tights, and walks into Donald McCale's modern class.
Donnie, as he's known, was a major Martha Graham company dancer and choreographer.
(03:50):
The language he's teaching grounded and musical, expressive, and human
clicks for her immediately.
It makes sense to her.
After class, McCale pulls her mother aside and tells her
that this little girl is a natural with incredible potential.
He'd love it if she could take the more advanced classes with the older kids.
(04:10):
So mom asks her, and yeah, she would love to stay.
So on Saturdays, this becomes her new home.
This child training with teenagers and adults,
McCale has her front row, his little protege,
and now she's on a path that fits.
The family then moves to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, when she's nearly seven.
(04:32):
There she finds a local dance studio.
Marjorie Maesia's school in Sheep's Head Bay.
Modern classes, not ballet.
Like Donald McCale, Marjorie was with Martha Graham's dance company,
and she was actually the first person outside of Martha Graham herself
to be allowed to teach the codified Graham technique.
Maesia also brought in guest teachers, including Merce Cunningham.
(04:56):
And this is where this little girl truly falls in love with dance.
She's fully immersed in modern, contraction, storytelling,
grounded musicality, and expressive character work.
It's certainly not the typical child dancer path of ballet, tap, and jazz.
She starts performing through Maesia's, charity shows, and hospitals, and other venues.
(05:19):
So the stage piece begins here.
At PS100 near Coney Island, Junior High was rough.
Dyslexia made the page hostile, and she didn't feel like she fit.
She set her heights on the high school of performing arts to be around people
who danced and loved music the way she did.
The audition required modern and ballet, plus a two to three-minute solo
(05:43):
eucoriographed yourself to a record.
Most girls wore black and brought classical or abstract instrumental records.
She wore a red leotard and pink tights, yep, still sporting those same colors, and brought a vocal record.
While many were stopped after about a minute of their solo,
they let her finish her whole number.
(06:06):
And after she danced, a faculty member pushed back her hair,
kissed her forehead, and praised her contractions.
A clear nod to her modern training.
Weeks later, the postcard arrived.
She got in. She was the first student at PS100 who was accepted to a specialty school,
and so they held an assembly in her honor.
(06:28):
At the high school of performing arts academics were aggrined.
She'd often skip morning classes, but never dance.
The afternoons were all hers.
Modern technique was her primary.
Ballet was required, and still very much not to her liking.
The faculty was formidable, and visiting teachers kept widening the scope,
(06:49):
introducing forms like flamenco and even katakali,
a traditional form of Indian classical dance,
with a tanned-and-eye precision that stuck with her.
In outside school, she trained with jazz dance pioneers,
Luigi and Matt Maddix.
In her telling, Luigi felt freer.
Maddix, whom she had a crush on, was more controlled and strict.
(07:12):
She also took classes with the Martha Graham, so there she is,
still in high school and training with master teachers who were the best to ever do it.
Then, the very first audition of her life.
She cut school, no surprise, and heads to Broadway's Wintergarden Theatre
(07:33):
to audition for West Side Story.
The line wraps the block.
Her number is around 500.
Before anyone can actually dance, they have to be approved based on their look.
She does not make the cut, but she refuses to accept that,
so she runs to the corner drugstore,
Slather's pancake makeup for a more ethnic look,
(07:56):
lets the hair fly, stuffs her ankle socks in her bra,
safety pins the leotard, and gets back on the line.
This time, she gets to dance.
They learn the combo to America from West Side Story.
She sells it hard and stands apart from the other dancers.
There's something extra in her movement.
(08:17):
Modern in her bones, Luigi's jazz in her phrasing,
the undulation she's drilled since childhood.
And when all is said and done, she makes all the cuts.
Down to the final three dancers out of thousands who auditioned.
And that is when Jerome Robbins himself tells her,
(08:38):
welcome to Australia.
She is shocked.
She thought she was auditioning for the Broadway production.
She tells Robbins she's only 15,
that she needs her parents permission.
He stares at her.
"You're what?" he told her.
"Give me your number.
"Go home.
"I want you to call me.
(08:58):
"If you don't call me by tomorrow morning, I'll call you.
"I need to know if you're coming,
"because I've got others on standby."
She goes home and blurtes it all out to her parents.
She's cut school.
She's auditioned for Jerry Robbins.
She's been offered West Side Story in Australia.
She needs permission.
The answer is immediate and firm.
(09:20):
No way.
Never absolutely not.
She is hysterical, pleading, begging, telling them
she's not a good student anyway.
This is her chance.
But the answer stays no.
She cries herself to sleep at 5 a.m.
She's up, swollen eyed.
Knowing she has to make the call to Robbins, she can't go.
(09:42):
And then all of a sudden her father walks in.
Well, he says, you're going.
The high school of performing arts
refused to let her keep her place
if she left for Australia.
So her parents enrolled her in Quintanos,
a professional children's school
that mailed lessons to working kids
so they could still earn a diploma.
(10:04):
She spent only two weeks there,
long enough to transfer her records
and feel the shock of leaving friends and teachers behind.
The show opened at the Princess Theater in Melbourne
for three months, then moved to the Tivoli Theater
in Sydney for another three.
She lived the full theatrical experience,
dancing, rehearsing, performing every night,
(10:26):
and watching as the American dancers around her
were slowly replaced with Australians to cut costs.
Eventually the pink slip came for her too.
And just like that, she was sent home.
16 back in Brooklyn, but not the same girl who had left.
She'd lived on her own,
(10:46):
flown halfway around the world, earned money
and been part of a Broadway show abroad.
She had a basically paid for high school diploma
and she was smack dab in the real world
of trying to make it as a working dancer in New York City.
Summerstock gave her her first American equity credits,
the King and I, where she played topsy,
(11:08):
"Destry Rides Again" and "The Mary Widow".
By 1963 she was back inside West Side Story.
This time, Summerstock in the States,
performing as a jet in Connecticut and Rhode Island,
working with Tony-nominated choreographer, Lee Theodore.
The following year, 1964, she danced in America,
(11:29):
being seated at the Louisiana Pavilion of the New York World's Fair,
built as a modern minstrel show with names like "Lugasit",
"May Barnes" and "Lola Fulana".
It was meant for Broadway, but fizzled fast at the fairgrounds.
And when Ron Lewis, already a powerhouse choreographer,
staged "Minsky's Follies" at Jack Silverman's
(11:51):
International Theater restaurant, she was in it.
Those nights gave her real stage chops in New York,
"Cabaret" and "Nightclub Dance".
In 1965, she auditioned for "Hullabaloo",
a new television variety show,
choreographed by David Winters.
She had just come back from visiting her sister in Florida,
(12:12):
and she was extra, extra tan.
Her hair was super long, hanging all the way down her back.
The audition included "The Jerk",
a dance considered "Rescue" at the time,
but she dove in and made it to the very last rounds.
She knew she had danced circles around everyone else,
and still, when it was over, the panel cut her with a flat,
(12:34):
thank you very much.
Angry, she started to change in the dressing room
when word came through.
Was she still there?
Winters wanted to see her.
He told her the truth,
"The producers didn't want her.
Too wild, too much like a hippie,
but he said, 'I'm hiring you anyway.
Just make sure they don't recognize you on the first day of rehearsal.
(12:56):
Do whatever you can to look different.'"
So her parents went all in.
Milk baths, creams, late-night face rituals,
even cutting her hair into awkward bangs.
She showed up on set looking all American enough
that even Winters himself didn't recognize her.
And suddenly, she was in.
She shot weekly in Manhattan, and sometimes at NBC in Brooklyn,
(13:20):
working alongside future dance stars, Donna McKecney,
and Michael Bennett.
During that year, the exposure was enormous.
Hullabaloo brought top musical acts every week,
the Supremes, Sunny and Cher.
And those dancers on the show became recognizable faces.
She couldn't walk around without someone asking,
(13:42):
"What was it like working with Sunny and Cher?"
It was a steady, full-time television job.
But the show was high stakes.
Dancers were hired and fired every week
as Winters rotated in favorites.
In the year she was there, she was the only one never fired,
but the fear of that pink slip nod at her.
(14:02):
And after a year, she did the unthinkable.
She quit on her own terms to work at the world's fair
for the second time, this time at the RCA Pavilion.
It was a job unlike anything she'd done before,
inside a glass pit with cameras projecting her performance
across the fairgrounds.
(14:23):
She threw herself into everything.
Medea, St. Joan, duets, solos,
even personality songs like "I Got a Crow."
She remembers it as a period of growth.
"I stretched myself," she said.
The whole experience opened her psyche, expanded her range
and reminded her she wasn't boxed in.
(14:43):
At the world's fair between monologues and musical numbers,
she wandered into the African Pavilion,
bought a Quinto,
and practiced those drums until her hands blistered.
And then, the opportunity to audition for a new Broadway show,
"Sweet Sherry" came along.
The first round was dance for Fossy.
(15:04):
And for her, it was the very first time moving in his style
where others struggled with the angular precision,
the isolations, she felt it land in her body immediately.
It just fit Fossy noticed.
And she got a callback.
He said to bring an instrument and a song.
She practiced her drums for a week until the callback.
(15:28):
She got through all the dancing,
and then it was time to sing and play her instrument.
She changed into a pink pleated skirt and a pink pleated top,
looking demure, but everyone else was famping.
Then she realized something.
She had missed her Fossy's direction.
She thought he wanted everyone looking demure at the callback.
(15:51):
Not the case.
She sang, "I'm just a girl who can't say no, playful, comic, innocent,
and she found herself wanting to cry."
But Gwen Verdon jumped on stage, told her
that was the very song she had once auditioned with
and soothed the moment.
Then came the drum solo,
two minutes on a Quinto perched on books,
(16:13):
and a thank you.
Weeks later, the phone rang.
It was Fossy himself, telling her she was in sweet charity.
Her first rehearsal, in her own words, "I was incredible."
Incredible.
In the show, she danced in the frug.
One of many bodies in Fossy's hypnotic spectacle
and held her place in the number big spender.
(16:36):
But she also carried an understudy assignment, Rosie,
the so-called Virgin of the Fandango Ballroom,
a small but juicy acting part.
During previews, the actress playing Rosie
sometimes chose to rest before big nights.
Gwen Verdon, watching closely,
felt more comfortable with the understudy in the role.
(16:58):
And so, on opening night, Bob Fossy and Gwen made the call.
The understudy would go on.
She didn't tell her parents when they were there
for opening night.
When they saw her on for Rosie, they almost passed out.
She called it an understudy's dream.
But the months wore on.
She loved sweet charity.
(17:19):
She really did, but the New York audiences were thinning
and she sensed the end was near.
So when she heard Fossy was setting up a new production of charity
at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas,
starring Juliette Prous, she made her move.
She asked Fossy if she could leave
the Broadway company and head west.
(17:40):
Vegas, she explained, was on the way to California,
where she eventually wanted to land, but she had one condition.
She wanted to do the rich man's fruit as the lead.
Fossy agreed.
And in Vegas, she did it all, Rosie, big spender and the fruit.
(18:00):
Opening night at Caesar's was a hit.
Vegas was glamorous.
The cast was strong and Juliette Prous was gracious.
When the stage show leapt to the screen,
there were talks of bringing in a bigger name
for the signature dance sequences.
Even Barry Chase was mentioned,
but Bob Fossy and Gwen Burton pushed back.
(18:21):
They knew the dancer they wanted.
The call came.
She would be the lead in the movie's showpiece,
the rich man's fruit.
For her, it was overwhelming,
carrying a number in her very first film
and under the direction of Fossy,
one of the most acclaimed and demanding choreographers
(18:42):
in the business, she was excited, terrified and determined.
And what a sequence it was.
Three distinct movements filmed at Universal,
each one a slice of Fossy's genius.
First, the aloof.
It begins as almost a sculpture.
The dancers arranged in rigid shapes, cool and detached,
(19:05):
faces blank body snapping from stillness into sudden precise movement.
At the front, she leads with indifference written across her face,
that Fossy mask of irony.
While her body moves with a mastery that makes it impossible to look anywhere else,
her carriage, her musicality, the isolations,
(19:26):
the stretch of her spine, sheer brilliance.
The work was grueling that heavy ponytail wig she wore,
left her scalp burned and infected,
but she never let it show.
Next, the heavyweight.
Also called the boxer.
Here, the temperature rises.
The men square off like prize fighters, fists, flying.
(19:48):
The women circling in rhythm, its witty physical combative,
a stylized match where every move lands with timing and force.
She hits each accent with precision,
even while carrying another secret pain.
Fossy had insisted she wear shoes a half size too small.
They were killing her feet, but she didn't say a word.
(20:10):
As she later put it, between my head and my feet,
I was an agony, but it's better to look marvelous than to feel comfortable.
And finally, the big finish.
Here, the ensemble breaks free.
The red backdrop, the silhouettes, the sudden bursts of wildness.
She is center stage, and even her costume tells a story.
(20:31):
Edith Head's original gown was rejected by Gwen Verden,
who said it looked like armor.
Gwen instead offered her own black norell sequined gown.
Cut to fit, and that is what she wore on film,
a piece of misverten shimmering on her body
as the number roared to its climax.
(20:51):
Together, the aloof, the heavyweight,
and the big finish form a masterclass in Fossy Style.
And in her very first film, right at the center of it all,
she delivered one of the most iconic dance performances in movie history.
At the Sweet Sharity premiere, Carrie Grant approached her at intermission
(21:11):
and told her, "You were marvelous, darling."
And she found herself dancing with Danny K,
captured in a Vogue magazine photograph.
For a dancer who had idolized him as a child,
it was the most Hollywood of moments.
When Sweet Sharity hit theaters, the reviews rolled in,
and she was the one consistently highlighted.
(21:32):
Universal recognized it immediately.
They sent her two dozen red roses
and a bonus check for $5,000.
Proof that her work on film had landed,
and with that recognition came new visibility.
Universal put her front and center,
even lining the studio commissary with her photos
before the movie was even released.
(21:54):
She was featured on a billboard for Sweet Sharity
on Sunset Boulevard that is literally just her dancing
with her name, Front and Center.
Soon, the king of late night came calling.
Johnny Carson.
He had her on the Tonight Show as a returning guest multiple times.
She guest starred and danced on the Delariche show.
(22:16):
Also multiple times, the momentum soon carried overseas.
Bob Hope had first spotted her on the Joey Bishop show,
and not long after, she found herself on tour with him.
In 1969, she went to Vietnam,
performing alongside Connie Stevens,
Neil Armstrong and others.
And from there, onto Berlin, Italy, Turkey, and Thailand.
(22:39):
She went back again in 1971 when Hope personally asked her to return.
This time, the soldiers already knew her.
They held up posters with her name on them.
Welcoming her back.
But as the years unfolded,
dance began to dissolve for her.
Acting had always been a dream,
and doors opened there too.
(23:00):
Television roles, film work,
and the one fans still talk about her turn as the vampire
on Kohlshack the Nightstalker.
Yet even though she stepped away from dance in her 20s,
what she left behind is timeless,
because in that one sequence from Sweet Sharity,
everything came together.
(23:20):
Her training, her mastery, her gifts.
Through Fossi's vision, she gave the world
one of the most astonishing dance numbers
ever put on film.
She didn't just perform his style,
she embodied it.
She made it immortal.
One of the few benchmarks,
dancers still studied to understand Fossi's movement
(23:42):
and his language, her name, Susan Charney.
And now you know the rest of the story.
All right, Dance Fam, did you love it?
I hope you did.
I hope you felt inspired and you learned something.
You're entertained if you did, if you were.
Make sure you just take a second to leave a comment.
(24:04):
Tell me your thoughts, like the video,
share it with your dance family.
And if you aren't already,
please follow or subscribe to my podcast
and hit that notification bell on YouTube.
So you're always alerted when a new episode drops.
I publish at least once a week and I read all my comments
and I'm just grateful that you're here.
So as I alluded to in the intro,
(24:25):
I actually spoke with Susan in preparation for this episode.
I'll give you a quick backstory every week
when I dig deep into the research of these dance legends.
I'm always sort of mystified
even when the dance subject is famous, you know,
like Vera Ellen, Jean Nelson, legit movie stars also.
(24:49):
There is almost always nothing, nothing at all,
about their youth, their training.
That's the stuff that makes me really excited.
You know, that's the stuff that I want to know.
That stuff has arguably what I want to bring to you the most.
I think it's so fascinating.
What was involved in their training?
What shaped them as dancers?
How did they start pursuing the industry?
(25:11):
Those first dance jobs?
Which is probably why I spend the most time trying to unravel
these early years as part of my weekly research.
And so with Suzanne in particular,
it was even, there was just even less information.
Now I can certainly create a podcast no matter what.
I decided to do this episode on Suzanne and it was going to happen
(25:34):
even if I didn't have a whole bunch of the gaps filled.
But I mean, I wanted more.
All I could find even in interviews with her.
And I think that's a thing to when people interview dancers,
especially if it's a non-dance podcast and the dancer
like Ms. Charney went on to, you know, success and acting
and was always on the Johnny Carson show.
(25:54):
When people interview her, they almost never asked questions about,
you know, her training as a dancer growing up.
And so I just had so many gaps.
And so with a little bit of slew thing,
I was able to find her.
So first, I just want to thank her stepdaughter,
Trevor, who is someone that I just found in sleuthing online,
(26:17):
was connected to Suzanne.
And I reached out to Trevor among others.
And Trevor got back to me with contact information.
And long story short, I was on the phone with Ms. Charney
for over an hour.
And I asked her the most probing, deep in her recesses,
questions about dance, her training,
(26:38):
and she couldn't have been lovelier.
Now, my podcast, as you can probably tell,
is not an interview-based podcast.
So that interview, if you will, is not meant to, you know,
be played publicly.
It was just almost a biographical,
me just kind of trying to fill in the timeline.
And anyway, she just couldn't have been more gracious and more kind.
(26:59):
And it was just an honor to speak with somebody who, in my opinion,
truly, in many dancers' opinions,
truly holds this, I don't know, magnificent place
in the world of dance, you know, as truly being the embodiment
of Fasi's style.
I also want to thank her daughter, Lee,
who Suzanne put me in touch with,
who sent me a plethora of pictures.
(27:21):
I asked Suzanne.
I said, "I don't know if you have any pictures.
I don't want it to be a burden."
And I'll even push back the release date of this podcast
because obviously pictures do help tell the story.
If I don't have them, I can still do it.
But as you can see by watching, if you watched on YouTube or Spotify,
my gosh, all the incredible pictures,
so many of which, of course, have never been seen before.
(27:43):
And it's just an honor that I get to tell Suzanne's story,
really, for the first time, the full-true dance story of her life.
Now, onto a little bit about Suzanne's acting,
as I always say, this is a dance-centered podcast,
but Suzanne definitely did some acting work.
And I wanted to address that very quickly.
It really had always been a part of her dream, you know,
(28:06):
acting.
And after sweet charity, as you can tell,
she shifted her focus.
Her first television role came in 1970 on that girl with Mar-Low Thomas.
She went on to appear in "Brakens World,"
even circling in Emmy nomination,
and had film work like the "Steagall."
She worked steadily across television in the '70s.
(28:26):
Oh my gosh, so many credits.
Emergency Ironside, Marcus Welby, "Star-Skin Hutch," the Bionic Woman,
Fantasy Island, and the Incredible Hook.
So she really was a fixture on television.
But as I mentioned in the main script,
the role fans never forgot was her turn as the vampire
in "Colshack the Nightstalker."
(28:47):
She didn't have a lot of dialogue in that, actually,
but she delivered such a striking performance
that she still receives fan letters for that today.
And even beyond the stage and screen,
her life as an artist kept evolving really through the decades.
She turned to sculpture.
Oh my god, her website is extraordinary.
I'll leave all the links below.
There'll be a little title on the screen here
(29:08):
so you can check out her website also,
where she really channeled her dancer's eye
into clay, bronze, and resin.
For her, the human body was always the center of expression.
She once said she tried to capture not just a shape,
but the energy that continues even when the body stills.
Many of her works, which I think is so cool,
(29:29):
feature dancers like Martha Graham, Carmen D'Alavalod,
stylized, powerful, almost larger than life.
It was another way of celebrating movement
for her, another way of leaving her mark.
All right, dance fam, that's all I got.
I'll see you next time.
[MUSIC]
(29:55):
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
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