 n 1926, when Ethel Mann was 18 years old, she won a scholarship for a year of dancing lessons in New York. After each class, she came home and taught her sister Marion everything she had learned. At Madison Square Garden, the sisters learned rope tricks from Will Rogers, and they were soon on the vaudeville circuit. They performed as tap and ballet dancers who simultaneously sang and did rope tricks. The Mann Sisters entertained up and down the east coast, sharing the stage with Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, and Bob Hope. During the summers, they attended classes at the University of Colorado. They started a dancing school in Boulder, performing at Chautauqua throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1934, both Mann sisters married and settled in Boulder County permanently. |
