Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1962)

If you don't know yet, read on and see what this vivacious sexpot did when Joey Dee’s combo rapped out that mad, mad, mad beat. She was at a table, sort of jumpin’ in her seat as the couples surged on to the dance floor. Joey spotted her, jumped from the handstand and toddled over to her table. “Shall we try it?” he asked. It got to her! The babe’s eyes flashed with delight. “I dig you, buster,” she burst out. She leaped to her feet and in an instant they were in the center of the floor. The crowd, sensing something big, cleared a space. For ten minutes, pandemonium reigned as this Hollywood queen, her flashing red hair bouncing in rhythm, spun erotically in wiggles, shakes and shimmies. Her every movement, forward and backward, was a panoramic symphony in ecstasy. Finally she pleaded. “No more. No more, please! I’ve had it!” And Joey Dee took Warren Beatty’s sister hack to her table. Oh, how Shirley MacLaine can twist! The big story about the twist is not so much how the teenagers, the grownups, the beatniks and the Hollywood personalities went to it like ducks to water, but the way the Social Register turned out for the dance. It was like the Roaring Twenties, when Mayfairites sneaked up to Harlem to drink bathtub gin and dance the Charleston. Only now. in the Mad Sixties, they were dancing the twist unabashedly out in the open. What Igor Cassini did for the twist with New York society, Oleg Cassini did for Washington’s “400.” For no sooner had he been identified as the man who had flung his hips to the north, west, east and south, than the Capital’s elite promptly became enchanted officially by the new dance mania. Mrs. Herbert May, the Post-Toasties heiress, gave a party at once, and the famed Sidney of the Mayflower brought his musicians to the soiree to play twist music. The guest of honor, Diane Dow (Dede) Buchanan, debutante daughter of former U.S. Chief of Protocol [ Wiley Buchanan, endeared herself to the devotees of the twist by dancing it herself. The fad then spread like wildfire to other fashionable surroundings. In no time the “400” were wiggling as madly as if they were trying to shake off a million biting ants that had crawled under their minks and tails. At the fashionable Crescendo in Los Angeles, where only the veddy, veddy ultra-ultra congregate, the twist was done as if the socialites really had pantsful of ants. They devised a variation called the “back scratcher” in which the twisters stand back-to-back and gyrate as if they were scratching away the crawling ants. It was like crazy, man. A twist on the twist In San Francisco, they danced the twist with highball glasses on their heads! I tried, but couldn’t find out whether it was gin or rye. Then there was seventy-one-year-old former Mayor William Hartsfield, who tossed a mean hip at a benefit soiree ball in Atlanta’s posh Piedmont Driving Club when he went out there and twisted. Not since Sherman hit town had there been anything so hot. Society was literally out of joint. But so was the rest of the populace. The twist had become a national — even international — rage. In Rome, where Elizabeth Taylor tossed a party for Kirk Douglas, a group of swivel-hipped guests got up and went through the scintillating motions of the dance. Did Liz? Honestly, everyone I've talked to over there insists she didn t. But maybe this story will have a sequel in the next issue of Photoplay. Look at how that White House soiree was twisted up. Twisted up, incidentally, is what a lot of people are, over the twist. To put it bluntly, there are those who think it stinks. Take Geoffrey Holder. Trinidad-born dancer and painter who has played himself in a film made in Britain, “All Night Long.” Holder volunteered this observation on the mania: “It’s dishonest. It’s not a dance and it has become dirty. Not because it has to do with sex — everything does. But it’s not what it’s packaged. It’s synthetic sex turned into a sick spectator sport. “Not because it’s vulgar. Real vulgarity is divine. But when people work at it, break their backs to act vulgar, it's embarrassing. . . . You have to be pretty far gone to want to do it all night.’ Bob Considine, the columnist and roving world reporter for the Hearst newspapers, says: “The twist, which has turned a joint named the Peppermint Lounge into the worst ventilated and successful trap in town, is best described as resembling two persons — preferably of different sexes — conversing while toweling themselves dry after a shower. “What makes it so preposterous is that they appear to be complete strangers to the institution of the hath." No doubt about it — not everyone is twist crazy. Nevertheless it has rolled over the country and made its impact on the seismographs with the force of a major earthquake. And its rumblings can still be heard as loud as ever. It’s more than likely the twist will be around a while. It is an exciting stimulant and the response has been national and nearly total. Dances have come and gone over the years. They’ve had their brief moments of glory, then vanished. A few have endured — the waltz, fox trot, Lindy and Charleston, among others. They are the durable dances — just as I believe the twist has become an enduring social phenomenon. Now, before you rush out on the dance floor, remember this: You can’t get kissed while doing the twist. (It’s against the rules to embrace your partner.) But those in the know tell me you can get something much better. A gal who can twist will have the eyes of every man in the room on her. A gal can get a new slim waistline and hipline (expert Chubby Checker is hardly “chubby” anymore). But most important of all, a gal who can twist can get a whole new stagline — all lined up and ready to twist! And after a twisting session, what’s there to twisting a guy around your little finger? — George Carpozi, Jr., author of twistdom’s new book, “Let’s Twist.” OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU ror ad rates, write PCD 549 W. 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