Ballroom’s Lure Is Dancing, Romancing

Slim’s the band leader. Tiny’s his girl. He’s dressed in a fire engine red jacket, bow tie and tuxedo pants. She wears a low-cut black number with faux diamonds encircling her neck.

The two met 20 years ago when Slim Tanner and his brother Don came with their orchestra to the Mayflower Ballroom in Inglewood, where the seven-piece band has played ever since. Tiny Todd, then the leader of the Dancing Grandmas tap troupe, became an instant groupie.

Slim, 85, and Tiny, 74, are still going strong, and the Mayflower, with its live band and ballroom dancing, is hanging on as well. Part of a dying breed, it is one of the last original big-band ballrooms in Southern California.

On a recent Wednesday, roughly 200 dancers punished the floor and proved the ballroom’s enduring appeal through the eras of rock, disco, punk and hip-hop that have reigned elsewhere.

Dancers in patent leather shoes and Ginger Rogers heels whirled by as Slim’s Tanner Brothers Orchestra belted out rumbas, fox trots, tangos and swing. The women tossed coquettish smiles at men who whisked them over the floor.

The couples range in age from their 30s to late 90s, with most in their 60s. By day, they are homemakers, engineers, retirees, secretaries, doctors, insurance salesmen. By night, their cramped feet grow lighter, arms more graceful, backs straighter.

“People feel like they’re coming home there. Many people have met there and married. We get that all the time,” said Slim, who, in addition to leading the band, plays electric bass. Don Tanner is the drummer.

Slim performed with the Tommy Dorsey band in New York City, and looks forward to the ballroom dance nights because the old songs evoke memories. “It takes us back quite a few years, brings you back to the good old days,” he said with a laugh.

Dressed in a scarlet chiffon dress, Dodie Cruse a retired real estate board office assistant with Bette Davis eyes, said she came to the Mayflower to find a good man to dance with after her second husband died. There, a decade ago, she met her third and current husband, Bob Cruse. “I’ve always liked to dance, and it’s hard to find men who like to dance. That’s why I decided to come here,” she said.

Cruse, a Torrance resident, said not much has changed at the Mayflower, except maybe the height of her metallic red heels. In her late 70s, she’s had to give up the three-inchers for something just a bit lower.

The Mayflower has survived while many other big-band ballrooms have closed. The Stardust, one of the original downtown Los Angeles clubs, shut down years ago, and Myron’s in downtown is now more of a disco.

The Satin Ballroom at the Veterans Memorial Building in Culver City still exists, and there is the Hollywood Palladium. Mayflower patrons say most of the other halls are smaller and focus more on swing than the classic ballroom dances.

One can be forgiven for thinking the Mayflower a bit out of place in the middle of Inglewood, a city lined with mini-malls and famous for the Hollywood Park Casino and Race Track and the Forum arena. But the ballroom has been a hub of community life for more than 50 years, hosting local government forums, quinceaneras, bar mitzvahs, strip shows, drag parties, church services and TV shows. At one point it served as a USO hall and a skating rink.

Wedged among warehouses and car dealerships on an industrial stretch of South Hindry Avenue, the 9,000-square-foot ballroom is easy to miss. But inside, the wooden dance floor with inlaid colored lights, the mirror ball and the wagon wheel chandeliers transport patrons to a bygone and magical era. Slim plays on a stage lined with red velvet curtains. Wooden tables surround the dance floor.

Wednesday is open dance night. On Mondays and Tuesdays the Mayflower offers ballroom dance classes, and on weekends the owners rent out the ballroom for private parties. Sunday mornings, a local church group holds services in the space.

Mark Sinaguglia, who runs the Mayflower, acknowledges that changing times have made it harder to squeeze by. Sinaguglia still keeps the admission at $7 but has had to reduce the number of open dance nights from several a week to just one. He used to have three bartenders on Wednesdays and now has just one.

Many Reasons for Coming Back

“I don’t even think we sell a dollar’s worth of drinks per person,” he said. So it’s the private weekend parties that keep the place afloat.

Bob Cruse said he’s been coming to the Mayflower since 1950. He learned to dance under Arthur Murray--the man, not the school--and wanted to keep up his moves when he came out to California after the war. At the time, many of the lots near the Mayflower were still open fields.

Cruse said he is drawn back by the quality of Slim’s band. “They don’t sing. They just play. They play every song that can be danced to. They play for the people, not just themselves,’ he said.

Slim, who commutes from Downey, and his brother Don, who comes from Ventura, confess that their true love is jazz. But the brothers say those who come to the Mayflower prefer to hear the dance tunes. And as the other clubs have closed, he has bought up other bands’ music libraries, creating a vast store of more than 1,000 ballroom tunes.

Some come to the Mayflower to escape the loneliness of retirement or the death of a spouse. Others come to escape their spouses. A man who asked not to be identified said his wife used to love to dance, but now she only plays cards and watches television. So he sneaks out at night to go ballroom dancing. “It’s cheaper than gambling,” he said.

Nancy Lynch Sidenberg calls her frequent evenings at the Mayflower “better than a therapy session.” With her white hair in a bun, a high-necked embroidered blouse and flowing gaucho pants, she looks half Aussie cowgirl and half Victorian librarian.

“There is nothing like dancing,” she said, “There’s a magic that just sweeps you away.”

Sidenberg lives in Pacific Palisades and first came to the Mayflower in 1984. “So many places have died,” she sighed. She said her sisters tell her she’s crazy to drive all the way to the Mayflower alone each week, but she laughs them off. “I keep my cell phone with me. I don’t have anyone to play bridge with. What are you going to do?”

Younger couples come simply to learn to dance. Cecile Billauer and Roy Gifford from Malibu came because Gifford was sick of years of shuffling red-faced in the corner at his engineering company’s black-tie galas. He and Billauer came to the Mayflower to practice. Though decades younger than many of the other dancers, they said they are enchanted by the ballroom’s ambience and plan to return with friends.

The mix is what Dodie and Bob Cruse love about the Mayflower.

“That’s the beauty of something like this,” said Dodie Cruse. “You have great-grandparents, young people, but when the music starts, everyone gets swept up.”

By 11 p.m. the crowd has thinned. Discarded water bottles are strewn across the tables. Todd is tired but still tapping her feet, thinking up new routines for her latest dance group as she waits for Slim. In the side room, near the corner of the bar, a slightly bent, white-haired couple locks in one last, passionate, ballroom-style embrace.