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Sally Rand

Born Harriet Helen Gould Beck in Elkon, Missouri, Sally Rand began her career as a teenager when she ran away from home to join a carnival. Interested in dance and performing, Sally was employed at one time by a ballet company in Chicago and the Ringling Brothers Circus. In 1920, Sally went to New York and became a chorus girl until she went to work for silent films the next year. Working in Hollywood for C.B. DeMille until 1932, he gave her the stage name Sally Rand. 1932 marked the development of the infamous Fan Dance, which she performed in Chicago speakeasies and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. Cheyenne Frontier Days™ committeeman John Pickett witnessed that performance at the World’s Fair and suggested that the committee contract her troupe for the 1935 rodeo. She accepted and she and her troupe played to a packed house four times each night with Sally closing the show in a cloud of feathery fans. Falling in love with Cheyenne and Cheyenne Frontier Days™, she spent the week signing autographs, posing for advertisements and performing for the Veteran’s Hospital patients. At her visit, she suggested that Miss Frontier be outfitted distinctly to represent the rodeo. The white buckskin divided skirt, satin shirt and bolero jacket that she wore at the rodeo were adopted in 1936 for CFD royalty and have been the standard ever since. During her marriage to cowboy Turk Greenough, Sally visited Cheyenne Frontier Days™ and entertained the crowds with the Greenough family.

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