She’s Never Let Her Feet Drag

Mamie Wurzel likes exotic animals. She once had an anteater in her Studio City home and took it shopping. She also enjoys volunteer work, but the favorite part of her day is the evening, when she goes dancing. Wurzel, 67, and her husband Max live in Van Nuys.

I was a tomboy. I was out in the streets playing all the time. My mother had a candy store, so there was always a bunch of kids around. I had three brothers and I played on the playgrounds until I was 17 years old with all the boys--baseball, football, whatever.

People who knew me when I was 2 or 3 years old and then met me when I was grown up were surprised I was still alive, because of the things I used to do, the climbing I did. I don’t remember, but my mother said that when I was 2 years old I climbed on top of the house. I was just very, very active. I could do anything a boy could do.

My older brother taught me how to fight. He was very athletic and we used to trade punches through a pillow to see who could make black-and-blue marks.

When I started dating, none of the fellas would ever mess with me because I could beat them all up.

I worked as a waitress from ’41 until about nine years ago. When I quit as a waitress, I was used to getting up at 4 in the morning, I was going buggy. So I went down to the Jewish Home for the Aging on Victory Boulevard and I started to help down there. My mother was in the home there and I was helping with the crafts almost every day.

Then they opened up the Vanguard Thrift Store on Reseda and Sherman Way and I went to work there. I get down there around 6 o’clock in the morning, so I get a lot of work done before anybody else gets in the place. Then I go home around noon, which is great for me because that gives me time to get ready to go out at night. I’m going out five nights a week, dancing.

When I was a kid, my next-door neighbor, who happened to be black, taught me how to dance. I was out of school because I had hurt my ankle, and he taught me how to jitterbug on the corner, on crutches.

From then on I was dancing whenever I could. I danced at the Palladium throughout the war years. We lived in Hollywood at the time. My girlfriend would come over and stay at my house and Sundays we’d go to the beach, play ball and go to the dances at night, the swing-shift dances after midnight. During the war they had those at Casino Gardens in Santa Monica. Tommy Dorsey’s band used to play down there, you know, the big bands.

My husband does not dance. He doesn’t know his left from his right foot. So I have a partner who is in his 70s, a very good dancer. I learned an awful lot from my partner. The more I danced with him, the better I got. I’ve been dancing with him about six years. He’s the one who taught me all this Latin. I was primarily a swing dancer because that’s what I grew up with.

I can do all your Latins: cha-chas, rumbas, tangos, mamba, salsa. I can even do the lambada if I have to, but I hate it. I waltz, I do West Coast swing and East Coast swing. I’m into West Coast swing now. It’s a form of jitterbugging.

I dance five nights a week for two to three hours until my partner gets tired and then we go. It’s a real good workout. I don’t know what I would do without it.

Not only is it exercise, it is socializing. I don’t care where you go to, in the Valley, Long Beach, you are going to see people you know. You can say hello and start talking to them. Dancers are from all walks of life, all religions, all nationalities. You’d be surprised at how many people in their 70s and 80s are dancers, and there are a lot of young people doing ballroom dancing.

When my partner can’t dance anymore, I hope I can find another partner as good, but I will dance. I’m going to dance until I can’t dance anymore, I hope forever. My dad died on a dance floor.