Jane Finnegan Pearson demonstrates a high kick in 2007. Photograph by Paul Markow. Courtesy of Jane Finnegan Pearson.

As a member of the dance chorus at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company (the Muny), the teenage Jane Finnegan lived a glamorous life for four glorious summers in the 1930s as one of the Missouri Rockets, the precursors to the Radio City Rockettes. Her plan from the time she was a young child had been to become a dancer, and through determination and natural talent she was selected out of 1,200 St. Louis area high school students for a prestigious role with the Missouri Rockets in 1936. Jane has recollections of the long hours of practices, stage sets, and shows. Jane noted, “a performance may look simple to the audience, but really it’s very intricate. I have a wealth of information, tricks, and secrets on how it worked. It was necessary to master the dance art of tap, jazz, ballet, and modern dance.”

More than 70 years have passed, and Jane Finnegan Pearson loves to talk about her dancing and modeling days, her three marriages, and her son. None of her memories are quite so cherished as the ones from the shows. “The fun costumes, the crowds who lined up outside—they were all part of the experience of being a Rocket.” Pearson’s striking beauty and tremendous enthusiasm have always been readily apparent—and still are at the age of 90. During a recent visit to Scottsdale, Arizona, where Pearson now lives, two present-day Rockettes invited her to join them onstage for a few high kicks. Because she has remained in superb physical condition, she had little trouble making the moves—to the amazement and delight of the audience.

In February 2008, Pearson recounted stories of her days as a St. Louis chorus girl during a telephone interview by Repps Hudson for the Missouri History Museum. The transcript has been edited for publication.

MISSOURI HISTORY MUSEUM: Let me ask you some questions about being in the Rockettes, or the predecessor to the Rockettes, I guess.

JANE FINNEGAN PEARSON: Well, you see the Rockets started in Missouri in 1925.

MHM: And were you among the first?

JFP: I came in 1936. I’m about the only one left that is 90 years old. I did it in ’36, ’37, ’38, and ’39, four years. And that was hard work. We were outside and we danced 10 to 5 every day. And there was no air conditioning in those dressing rooms. And then we had no cars, so my father used to take me out in the morning, pick me up after 5, have dinner at home, then take me back to do a show at night. Then come back and pick me up after the show.

Aerial view overlooking the outdoor Muny Opera Theater where the Missouri Rockets performed. Photograph by Ralph R. Ruff, ca. 1930. Missouri History Museum.

MHM: You were closely supervised because in those days, people—young girls—didn’t go running around much by themselves, did they?

JFP: You’re darn right.

MHM: I want to get a flavor of your experiences when you were there and when you were dancing and how you trained.

JFP: Well, you see, I did it for four years. And we got 30 dollars a week. That was during Depression time.

MHM: So it was a little steady money.

JFP: Yeah, real steady money, and it was a really big salary then.

MHM: What did you do with the money?

JFP:  I gave it to my father to pay the bills. My mother and father were both attorneys in St. Louis and both graduated from Saint Louis University Law School.

MHM:  Your mother was an attorney? Back in those days, that was a little bit rare, wasn’t it?

JFP: I’ll tell you how that happened if you got a minute.

MHM: Sure, I’ve got all the time you need.

JFP:  Okay. My mother was born in Budapest, Hungary. And her father was a doctor and came to this country. Of course, in those days they did not accept doctors from overseas. And he came over to this country to bring his family, his wife and three kids. He had to sell medical books to bring them over. So they came over, it took them two weeks to come over in this ship. I got a picture of the ship they came over on. The kids were thrown into public schools, they didn’t speak English, but they learned English then. And when she graduated from high school, her father said, now you’re going to college. College? You know, that’s a foreign word for a woman. He sent her over to Saint Louis University Law School, which was all Jesuits, and she was a straight-A student. Her name was Hollous. They Americanized it to Hollis. So when she went over there, the Jesuits said, it’s a girl, she’s a straight-A student, we’ll take her. She graduated four years later. My father was in the same class. They both graduated together but she graduated, if you can imagine this, in 1912, and she couldn’t vote. I've got pictures of her dressed as a suffragette. Now, can you imagine? I mean, I don’t know how she did it, but she did it.

MHM:  Sounds to me like she was a pretty good role model.

JFP:  That’s right. Well, she raised me and my brother. And she used to say, honey, I didn’t raise you to sit in a corner.

MHM:  She was way ahead of her time, wasn’t she?

JFP:  I know she was. I have lawyer friends that come from St. Louis and all over and I show them her diploma. You’ve gotta be kidding, they say.

MHM:  She would have been one of the first women to graduate from that school most likely.

JFP: She was. I think she was the first one. I’ve got articles about her. She practiced, if you can imagine, 60 years in St. Louis. And they gave her a big party with all the Jesuits.

MHM: Do you know what firm she was with for much of her life?

JFP: Both of them were lawyers, They went in as Finnegan and Finnegan in downtown St. Louis.

MHM: So they had a partnership and a marriage. What was their practice, what kind of specialty did they have?

JFP: She did probate and he was a trial lawyer.

MHM: What area of St. Louis did you live in?

JFP: Right on Maryland, not too far from Newstead.

MHM: How old were you when you started with the Missouri Rockets?

The Missouri Rockets, late 1930s. Courtesy of Jane Finnegan Pearson.

JFP: I think I was about 17.

MHM: So you were still in high school.

JFP: We could do it in the summer and go back to school in the winter. It was a way we could earn money.

MHM: Did you have any kind of audition or anything to get started?

JFP:  Oh, you gotta be kidding. You gotta listen to this. You see, St. Louis had the biggest stage in the country.

MHM: You mean an outdoor stage?

JFP: Yes, well, even in New York, they didn’t have any big stages. So you see, all of it came from New York, these tryouts. We had a ballet tryout and then we had a man…that was George White Scandals. And he would do the tryout of all the other, tap and what-have-you. So it would be 250-plus, and I’m trying to think of what theater it was, around Grand Avenue someplace downtown or around there. It was not too far from the Fox, it was another one [the Missouri Theatre at 634 N. Grand]. But we had to go and try out. There were 250 girls-plus, for 25 jobs. We had 24 girls and then one for a spare. So we had to go and they interviewed us individually. They’d say, do this, do that.

			Jane Pearson auditioned for the Rockets at the Missouri Theatre in St. Louis. The theater was then owned by the Skouras Bros., who later founded 20th Century Fox. Courtesy of Ed Martin.

MHM: How had you prepared for that?

JFP: I was in ballet school at 7. The dancing school was on Olive. Betty Grable went to the same dancing school. She was ahead of me. Anyway, if you didn’t do it right, you got the ruler.

MHM: What do you mean?

JFP: Well, the teacher had a ruler and she’d hit your ankles or hit your wrist. Then she would look at you and you thought, oh-oh. But then you learned, you learned faster. So we did the tryouts. The first time I tried out, I made it. And Virginia Mayo, who was Virginia Jones then and lived in St. Louis, she said, Jane, I didn’t make it. I said, you gotta try harder. Well, the next year she made it.

MHM: So you knew her?

JFP: We knew each other since 1937. And she died not too long ago at 84.

MHM: So you went through this audition, and did you make it on the first round?

JFP: Yes, sir, I did.

MHM: And you were part of the chorus, right?

JFP: Yes, that was the dancing chorus. On Saturday nights, after the show, they gave us from 11 to 12 to go get something to eat. We’d go to Medarts or Parkmoor or what was it, one of those out in the park, and eat. Then we came back at 12 because then they had to work with us with the lights. At nighttime, you gotta work for the next week to do the lights for the next show. So we worked from 12 ’til 3 in the morning.

MHM: That’s child abuse, isn’t it?

JFP: Well, it wasn’t then. It was a paycheck. We worked from 12 ’til 3 because they had to do it at night to get the lights right.

MHM: So you’d do a show and then you’d do a rehearsal?

JFP: Yeah, and then we’d rehearse from 12 ’til 3 in the morning. Then my father would pick me up. Then I’d go home and sleep. Then he would bring me back for the next day, which was Sunday. And we had to practice on that stage out in the sun with the symphony orchestra and they had hats on to keep the sun off their head. So we practiced from 3 to 6. Then my father would pick me up again, go home and eat, and bring me back for the show that night.

Jane Pearson, sixth from the left, with the Missouri Rockets. Courtesy of Jane Finnegan Pearson.

MHM: What kind of costumes and things did you wear?

JFP: You know, my mother made my costume to practice in. See, all the mothers made costumes for their daughters to practice in. It was little shorts and tops. And then we had tap shoes we had to buy. Or ballet shoes. And then toe shoes, we had to buy those.

MHM: How did it feel to be part of a bigger production than maybe you’d been in before?

JFP: Well, you know what? I felt like I was in the Marines when I look back, because you did not make a mistake. If you made a mistake, you’re out for a week.

MHM: And that would be a great humiliation.

JFP: Yes, it would.

MHM: Plus you wouldn’t get the 30 dollars.

JFP: You’re right. But you know what? It was a group, none of us smoked. And drinking, I must have been around 20 before I had a drink. Because we were so disciplined and we had to perform. So we ate well. I can remember my father picking up four of the gals after rehearsal on a Saturday, and my mother would cook pork chops and mashed potatoes and gravy. Well, I could polish off four pork chops, mashed potatoes, and gravy because I knew I’d be all worn out by the time evening came.

MHM: How tall were you and what did you weigh at that point?

JFP: I was 5’7” and I weighed about 120. I was one of the middle ones. See, you have six in the middle to hold the line. And right now I’m about 5’6” and a half. You shrink when you get older. They measured me a couple weeks ago at the Mayo Clinic, I’m about 5’6”. And I weigh about 128, 130. So you see, I’ve kept my figure.

MHM: Were you ever in the company of any of the visiting actors and actresses or the stars who were passing through? Did you ever have a chance to meet any of them and strike up conversations with them?

JFP: Oh, yeah. You see, years ago they had all the stars from New York come to St. Louis because they didn't have that big audience that we had in the park. We had 12,000 every night. So Red Skelton got his start there, Cary Grant got his start there. I’m trying to think, I’ve got a book here, there were so many that came to St. Louis to get their start.

MHM: What do you remember about some of them?

	View of the audience at the Muny Opera Theater looking out from the stage. Men would sit in the front rows to admire the Rockets. Photograph by W. C. Persons, 1920s. Missouri History Museum.

JFP: Well, I want to tell you a funny story. In St. Louis, they have the box seats down in front. Well, we used to call them Stage Door Johnnies. You never heard that expression.

MHM: I think I know what it is. But you tell me, what does it mean?

JFP: Well, the box seats were for the men that were rich from St. Louis. And they would sit down so they could get a good look at us. We called them Stage Door Johnnies because they were always looking like, oh, I’d like to date that one, I’d like to date that one.

MHM: Were they old and fat and rich, or young and handsome and rich?

JFP: No, they were older and they weren’t fat, but they were rich. And my father used to pick me up every night. Well, there was a man that used to come and see me come out of the gate and he’d say, say, I’d like to date you. I said, no thank you. So I’d just go on over and he kept coming back and I said to my father and mother, for crying out loud, this guy keeps coming back and asking me for a date. Oh, okay, my father and mother said, I tell you what you do, honey. When he asks you for a date the next time, tell him you’ll go if he takes the whole company. Well, there were 96 in the company. So he came again and I said, I got his name, he was well known in St. Louis, I said, I will go with you if you take the whole company. He says, that’s a go, I’ll take ’em. Virginia Mayo went and some of my friends that aren’t alive. He had a big yacht on the Mississippi, He bused us all down in cars and what-have-you. And I got pictures of us on this boat or yacht. And over the years, this gal would write me, whoever is left, remember that date you had, boy, did we have a good time. Even the ballet master, all of them, the whole company, all the singers, all the dancers, 96 of us.

MHM: That must have cost him a pretty penny.

JFP: Well, it did. And he fed us all and we had a wonderful time. And then when I got off, I was taken back to the opera, my father picked me up. Then he went to my father and mother and asked me for my hand.

MHM: Was he single?

JFP: Yes, he was. But see, I was 17. I asked him how old he was; he was 40-something. And I would have been the original, what do you call those girls? Trophy girl. So my father said, you ask her. And he knew what answer I’d give. So he did ask me, I said thank you for the compliment, but you’re too old for me.

MHM: I’m wondering, why didn’t you go ahead and pursue a career in show business?

JFP: Well, I’ll tell you why. After four years…we didn’t have airplanes, we had to travel by bus, travel by train, mostly by bus, and I remember going to Kansas City at the Starlight Theater, they copied the Muny Opera. And I thought, what the heck am I doing here? It was hard work. I got to the point where I’m sick and tired of this, riding a bus or maybe getting a train.

MHM: You didn’t like the vagabond life.

The Missouri Rockets clown around onstage during the 1930s. Courtesy of Jane Finnegan Pearson.

JFP: No, I did four years of it and I thought, I gotta do something else.

MHM: And you weren’t very old when you stopped. You must have been only 21 or so.

JFP: That’s right. But I didn’t want to get married right away. And in those days if you remember, if you didn’t get married by 21, you were an old maid. I didn’t get married ’til I was 25. And I said you know, I really don’t care, ’cause I’m doing what I want to do. I went back to school. I went back to business school.

MHM: And that was for secretarial skills and things like that?

JFP: Well, in those days you took shorthand, the Dictaphone, and we didn’t have electric typewriters, it was just the good old typers. So I worked down at City Hospital, but there was another part of City Hospital called Bliss. That was the mental hospital. That was a “lock-up.” I worked there for two years. I took dictation from the interns, the visiting men.

MHM: It sounds to me like you were right in the middle of World War II by that time.

JFP: Yes, I was. Because then I met my first husband, who was a doctor from St. Paul, Minnesota, that came down to St. Louis. Because in his field, he was a psychiatrist, all the visiting men, the big ones, were at Saint Louis University and Washington University. So he came down, he left his practice and came down for extra training. And that’s where I met him.

MHM: And what was his name?

JFP: Dr. Walter Carley. I worked down at the hospital for, well, I started working in ’40…’41, and then I married in ’42. That was during the war.

MHM: So you married Dr. Carley. Did he have to be in the Service and was he then sent overseas?

JFP: No, being a psychiatrist he used to talk to the ones before they came into [the] Service. You want another funny story?

MHM: Sure.

JFP: Well, I was in my office, and in the mental hospital they would take them down for movies or occupational therapy. And one came into my office. I just looked, I said good morning. He started taking off his clothes, and I said, sir, can I help you? Yeah, I wanna get out of here. I said, well, okay, I’ll tell you what. You sit down there, I have to get a key to get you out. Now will you do what I tell ya? Yeah, and he’s taking off his clothes. What the heck.

MHM: Had he taken everything off?

JFP: Well, he was in his shorts when I went out of the office. So I said, you stay right here and I’ll get a key and I’ll get you out. Oh, okay. So down the steps came my husband-to-be, the psychiatrist, and I just pointed at him and I pointed to my office. And he knew what I meant. He went in the office and he said, sir, I’ve got the key, would you like to follow me? So away he took him. That’s how I met my first husband.

MHM: Did he pass away and you married again?

JFP: He passed away unfortunately at the age of 52.

MHM: Do you have children?

JFP: One son. When his father died, [my son] was 15 and he was over at St. Thomas Military School, a Catholic military school, which is a double whammy in discipline. And I went over to the brothers over at the school and I said, you know he’s lost his father. Okay, Mrs. Carley, what do you suggest? I said, well, you fellas are very disciplined and if he smarts off to you, put him up against the wall. And that’ll be fine with me. My son came home, he was a junior, and he said, I quit. I said, well, I tell ya what, if you quit, you don’t live at home, you have to support yourself, what education you got, you get a job. You got three days to think about it. Well, he came home one day, it was the third day, I said, have you made a decision? Yeah, he said, you know what, that’s not very realistic. Well, he went back, he went back to St. Thomas, graduated from high school. Then he went down to Vanderbilt. He got his Ph.D. in [medicine], he's a scientist now. But that’s a long story. And then I married the second time, a doctor, and I lost him two-and-a-half years later.

MHM: Did he just die of bad health?

JFP: He was introducing a speaker on the platform in one of the hospitals in Minneapolis. He fell off the platform and he was gone in 20 minutes. So here I am, and here we are again. Then I stayed a widow for a while. Now I’ve had three husbands and they’re all up in heaven.

MHM: Were all three doctors?

JFP: No, two doctors and one businessman—[Dr. Walter Carley, Dr. Arthur Kerkoff, Mr. George Pearson].

MHM: How did you support yourself when you were a widow?

JFP: I modeled for Dayton Hudson. You ever heard of Dayton Hudson?

MHM: Absolutely. They founded Target. And one of them is in the Senate today.

JFP: Well, when I moved to St. Paul with my first husband, in those days the doctors didn’t like their wives to work. I remember my mother saying, you don’t sit in a corner, you know. You gotta speak up. I took a streetcar over to Dayton Hudson, which was downtown Minneapolis, and I said, I’ve done modeling before, I’d like to model. They tried three or four outfits on me and said, when can you start?

MHM: Were you an in-store model or something for the magazines?

JFP: No, it was runway. All the New York, like Trugiere and all those big ones from New York would come and show.

MHM: Who was watching, if you were on a runway, who was watching?

JFP: Well, you see, Dayton had 12 floors. On the top floor in Minneapolis was this gorgeous tearoom. And this is where they had their runway shows. And all these big shows all came from New York. And there were ten of us that kinda held the market there because, see, the Twin Cities have so many other stores, Donaldson’s, all these other small shops. So I could do six shows in a day. I had a babysitter for my son and then when he was going to school, a lot of us had kids, we’d try to do these shows and get home in time for them to come out of school. So I did that for 20 years.

MHM: Do you think all the physical things you did, in modeling and in dancing, added to your life?

JFP: Oh, heavens yes. And I got three holes in one in golf.

MHM: Do you still play golf?

JFP: I play nine holes. You know the Rockettes were here in Phoenix for 10 days. They gave me a big luncheon at the Desert Ridge Hotel, which is a big one here in Scottsdale. And four Rockettes came all dressed up in their red and white, and they sat across the table from me and they said, we want to interview you. I said I want to interview you, too. But it almost made me tear up. And they asked me, what kind of medical help did you [the Missouri Rockets] have when you got sick? I said, I tell you what girls, here’s an aspirin and a Band-Aid, we’ll see you in the morning.

Two of the Rockettes who honored Jane Pearson at a luncheon in Phoenix. Photograph courtesy of Molina Fine Jewelers, 2007.

MHM: Could you identify with those young ladies?

JFP: Oh yes, definitely.

MHM: Do you think things have changed very much for them?

JFP: Well, the thing is they can be married, we couldn’t.

MHM: Can they have had children?

JFP: No, no. No, no. That’s a no-no.

MHM: Because?

JFP: They don’t give you time out for that. But it’s those same clean-cut girls that work hard. It’s like a sorority, if you know what I mean. They, I mean, none of us, we all kind of stuck together. When we went out, we always kinda looked after each other. And these girls are absolutely the same, and they’re just adorable.

MHM: Where do they come from?

JFP: They come from all over the country.

MHM: Were these basically small-town kids who are looking to make a name for themselves in show business?

JFP: No, some of them are working to better themselves going to college or doing other things, eventually, when they make enough money. But they’re pleasant. That night there were about 110 of us from the country club. I was all dressed up in sparkles and everything. Went down to the Dodge Theater and they put me down in front. And over the loudspeaker comes “Welcome, Jane Pearson.” And two Rockettes come out and they gave me a dozen roses.

MHM: They called you up on the stage?

JFP: Yes. I just loved every minute. All these friends saying, atta girl, Jane, go, go. And these two Rockettes said, can you kick? I said sure. You still know how to do it, I said sure. So I put my hand behind each one of them and said, you know how to put your foot, okay now let’s go. The three of us were kicking.

MHM: That must have brought down the house.

JFP: It did. It made me tear up to think that, here I’m looking at these young ones, I did that. And they’re just a neat bunch of gals.

MHM: I’m really glad you’ve taken the time to talk to me. Is there anything else you want to tell me?

JFP: I volunteer at the Mayo Clinic and I’ve been there 15 years, and I volunteer at Scottsdale Healthcare for 13 years. I work at the information desk. See I tell everybody where to go, but I don’t get in trouble.

MHM: It sounds to me like you’ve got a great life and you’ve got it all figured out.

JFP: And you know what? I’m the kind that never gives up. My son says, Mother, your hands are still behind me, pushing me.

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