Her legs went all the way, and she wasn’t afraid to use them. This was South African dancer, singer, actress Juliet Prowse, who described herself as being a clown with “a gash of a mouth”. She turned heads and hearts from her late teens and armed with formidable talent and a deep sense of work ethic, developed an enviable performance career. Hers was a name associated with the kings and queens of Hollywood, from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley, Rock Hudson to Elizabeth Taylor. Her niece, also called Juliet Prowse, has written a fresh and candid biography of Prowse, which launched last month.
Written with a delightful sense of breathlessness, this is a quick but informed read which is not an unabated tract of self-praise and lavender prose, but one which paints a portrait of a beloved aunt who carved a career for herself in arguably one of the toughest industries there is. Armed with her seriousness about the value of work and using her body as medium, Prowse was often torn to gossipy shreds by journalists keen for a bit of sensationalism. But who really looks at the bigger picture of the performer herself?
The beauty of this book is unlike autobiographies by performers, such as David Niven, for instance, the writing is never allowed to degenerate into shopping lists of achievements and names-dropping. Prowse’s career was remarkable. She canoodled with the biggest names in the biz, but she gave blood, sweat and tears to her craft in hefty doses and her niece does her proud in not oohing and aahing with platitudes, but in offering a detailed and strong work that gives an exceptional life feasibility without rendering Prowse untouchable or godlike.
It takes you from her birth in Bombay, India in 1936 through her upbringing in Vereeniging, south of Johannesburg to very middle class folk, to her debut as a green 17-year-old at Sadler’s Wells in London. And the rest might be history that gets blurted all over entertainment tabloids, but the writer of this book reflects on an art career of a triple threat – one who can sing, dance and act – as one that is not all glitter and feather boas but a hilly maze of ups and downs in every kind of facet of being in the world. You fall in love with Prowse for her gutsiness and her pragmatic take on opportunities that would horrify lesser individuals.
This is the kind of book, written very ably and engagingly in the first person, that lends status and credibility to the subject, without becoming a tired gesture in the name of showbiz or a vessel to make the writer important in the shade of her subject. It pulls no punches, respects the messiness of context and takes on behemoths from South African racism to the breaking of moral ‘rules’ to confronting cancer, with engaging frankness. It’s a text which shows love without being abashed and maudlin, yielding a robust and eminently sparkly read.
This review is by Robyn Sassen, an independent critic of the arts in South Africa. As a lover of the arts, her status as a critic grew out of 16 years experience in the newspaper industry — as an arts editor, a generalist journalist, a freelance writer and a copy editor: https://robynsassenmyview.com/2025/05/26/review-of-juliet-prowse-born-to-dance/
