Hard times only made choreographer Mann stronger

The portrait of Anita Mann (legendary choreographer) takes shape on the day long ago when her father (starving artist, bleeding ulcer) painted little Anita's tap shoes silver for dance class.

"Spray paint," Mann recalls. "I remember standing on the sidewalk, with newspapers on the ground."

Her first-generation American father, Jerry Kleinman, had been forbidden by his mother to pursue art as a boy. But he read about a contest to draw the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, he mailed in an entry, and he won a scholarship to art school.

"Follow your dreams," he'd tell young Anita, when he wasn't painting landscape murals, or barbering for extra cash.

Little Anita had only discovered dance by the narrowest of coincidences in downtown Detroit at age 2. Her brother, 3, was pigeon-toed. A doctor prescribed dancing for Steve. Their mother, Clara, took both kids to dance class. Steve hated it. Anita was transfixed.

"I heard the music," Mann says. "I never left."

Life was tough for the Kleinmans, but when the family moved to St. Louis (while Anita was in elementary school), life got tougher.

"There were gunfights and stabbings in front of our house. My mother's brother was shot and killed at work," Mann says. "One time, there were two people stabbing each other, leaning on our car — I went out to pull these guys apart!"

So the Kleinmans left for work opportunities in Los Angeles in '56. Money was tight.

The family dropped nickels in a jar to save up for dance classes. Anita worked accounting jobs alongside her mother, a secretary. Anita carved turkeys in cafeterias at 14. She scrubbed bathrooms in dance studios.

Poor but magnetic, Anita became head cheerleader at Fairfax High School and earned dancing parts on TV ("Shindig"), movies ("Bye Bye Birdie") and stage.

Anita made herself undeniable. She danced in Elvis films; choreographed "The Monkees," "The Bobby Darin Show" and "Solid Gold"; she was Cher's dance captain on TV; she staged choreography for "Here's Lucy"; won an Emmy; and choreographed the Muppets, the Academy Awards and Michael Jackson.

Here in Las Vegas, she has produced the topless-women revue "Fantasy" at Luxor for an astounding 16 years.

"I look at their belly buttons and give notes," she jokes over coffee in Starbucks.

If you ever decide to write a script about her glamorous life, make sure you include her Elvis-film-set scenes. ("He was sitting on a chair talking to some nuns …"); her status as one of the first women directors ("I was making as much money, if not more, than the men — I was taking three jobs when they were taking one"); and you'd have to include the Hollywood work permit office clerk who couldn't understand "Kleinman" ("Sweetheart, you're now becoming Anita Mann").

Mann, 69, and her brother Steve, a retired dentist, have lived more carefully than many.

"We just saw so many bad things happen, like really bad things, like murders, that you just said, 'I want to live life as healthy as I can.'"

She was the kind of woman who, before the term "sexual harassment" was invented, grinned and beared it.

"There are stories you would not believe," about things men said to her, she says. "I'd sit in my car and cry, and I was raising two kids, too. I was a single mom."

She has two kids and 15 grandkids/step-grandkids.

Mann's mother, 89, says, "Anita did it on her own."

Mann won't tell you these stories easily. This portrait basically had to be snuck out of her while she kept trying to get me to focus on charities she works with — the Dizzy Feet Foundation, the Gabriella Foundation, a charter school for dance, Share For Kids, the Exceptional Children's Foundation, the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and the Professional Dancers Society.

What is she trying to instill in the charity kids she's helping all the time?

"A work ethic" in artistry, she says. "An attitude of gratitude about living life and not to be entitled."

"This young boy," she said of another child brought to her attention, "was disowned by his family, because he wanted to be a dancer."

That boy now has a scholarship thanks to Anita Mann, the good daughter of a starving artist who, generations ago, spray-painted his daughter's tap shoes silver, and let her know he had all the faith in the world in her.

Doug Elfman can be reached at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. On Twitter: @VegasAnonymous