VERDUGO VIEWS:

Don Galleher spent many Saturday nights dressed up in a coat and tie, practicing social graces at Jane Denham’s cotillion classes at the Thursday Afternoon Club.

“I hated it, just hated it,” he said. “The only reason I went was because she [Denham] was so pretty. I was going to Roosevelt Junior High at the time, in 1946, and really wasn’t at all interested in learning to dance, but my folks made me go. But it was OK, because most of us guys were in love with Jane Denham.”

Denham, who grew up in Glendale and graduated from Glendale High School in 1943, began dancing as a young girl. She took cotillion classes, then studied ballroom dance. As a Glendale College student, she stepped out on her own, teaching social graces classes sponsored by the PTA.

Later, she started a cotillion class at the Thursday Afternoon Club on Cypress Street near Central Avenue.

“I was just a few years older than my students,” she said in a recent phone interview from her Idaho home. “There were 50 to 60 students. They wore white gloves and learned party manners.”

When her cotillion classes became popular, she leased space on Glendale Avenue and opened a ballet studio.

Melinda Grubb Gillman and Tracy Weed both studied ballet there. Gillman, a 1960 Glendale High School grad, started in 1947 when she was 5.

“Her [Denham’s] mother sat in the front, collecting the money,” she said. “We paid a couple of bucks for every lesson. We did a ‘Nutcracker’ program, but there were no boy students, so I got to be the prince. My mother bought me tights without feet, so there I was with wrinkled knees.”

Weed, who graduated from Glendale High School in 1965, began ballet with Denham about the age of 3. When she was older, she enrolled in cotillion.

“We even had to wear white gloves,” she said.

The cotillion classes soon outgrew the first location, so Denham moved to the Tuesday Afternoon Club on Central Avenue at Lexington Drive. (The building was demolished in the 1980s.) Marilyn Chrisman took cotillion at this location from 1946 to ’49.

“It was a perfect spot, with a very large room and a good smooth hardwood floor,” she said.

An invitation from Denham was considered quite a social privilege for girls.

“Most boys could get an invitation, since they were a much rarer commodity,” Chrisman said.

Denham was always specially dressed, even for regular class nights, and Chrisman recalled that she was very attractive.

“I’m sure she made some boy’s heart beat fast,” she said. “She was tall, with an elegant figure, a perfect oval face and dark brown hair, which she wore pulled back in a chignon.

“At that time, ballerina-length dresses were in style,” she said. “They made great dance dresses since the length allowed your feet and the dance steps to be seen.”

Denham had two young assistants, Stuart Snow and Bob Angle, Chrisman said.

“They were a little older than ourselves, good looking blonds who made quite a hit with the feminine side of the class,” she said.

Denham said that after 15 years at the ballet studio, she married Don Cotterell and moved to the Bay Area. She recalled her dancing days in Glendale with great fondness.

“I loved Glendale and I was doing something I loved,” she said.

 KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached by leaving a message with features editor Joyce Rudolph at (818) 637-3241. For more information on Glendale’s history visit the Glendale Historical Society’s web page: www.glendalehistorical.org; call the reference desk at the Central Library at (818) 548-2027; or visit the Special Collections Room at Central on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. or make an appointment by calling (818) 548-2037.