March 18, 1983: Dance marathons take a physical toll on participants, as shown in the classic 1969 movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”
When we looked at old pictures of local dance marathons, we realized that contestants’ clothing transported us back to specific decades.
Remember New Balance T-shirts and running pants with racing stripes? That was so 1983 but it’s what Castle Shannon residents Tammy Farrar and Mark Roper wore that year to a 30-hour Muscular Dystrophy dance-a-thon held at Robert Morris University in Moon.
Running shorts trimmed in white piping evoke the 1970s. That’s what Jean Haase of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Gino Colombara, of New York City, wore in November of 1978 to a 52-hour dance marathon held at Duquesne University to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Our favorite is an even older image. Taken by Pittsburgh Press photographer Michael Chikiris, the May 1973 image shows Rick Munsick, left, age 20; Rick Couch, 20; and Anita Tambura, 19, who participated in a dance marathon to raise money for the Kidney Foundation of Western Pennsylvania.
Mr. Couch’s outfit consisted of ball cap, T-shirt, denim cutoffs, tube socks and tennis shoes, a tour de force that made him the king of casual.
Many dance marathons held in Pittsburgh were staged during a weekend and participants got three hours a night for sleep and a half-hour break for a meal.
During the Depression, 137 people competed in a dance marathon held in 1933 at Motor Square Garden in East Liberty. Contestants got two meals a day and two, five-minute breaks for a drink.
The grand prize was $1,000, which was a lot of money in an era when you could buy a Pontiac Straight Eight for $585 or 5 pounds of coffee for 59 cents. After more than 838 hours of continuous dancing, Flo Franchina and Eddie Bonach won the couples category while Rae McGregor won the soloist category.
