Marathon Dancing - The 1930s Dance Craze That Stepped Too Far

Step back in time to the 1920s and 1930s, an era when the music never stopped—because if it did, you went out of the contest!

In this episode, we dive into the bizarre, grueling, and shockingly hilarious world of marathon dancing. What started as a quirky, record-breaking trend in the Roaring Twenties quickly evolved into a high-stakes, desperate survival strategy during the Great Depression. We explore how a simple dance floor transformed into an arena of pure endurance, where couples shuffled, staggered, and slept on their feet for hundreds of hours just for a shot at a cash prize and free meals.

Inside the Great Depression's Craziest Craze

Join us as we break down the rules of these grueling endurance contests. Couples were required to stay in constant motion for 45 minutes out of every hour, earning a measly 15 minutes of rest. You’ll hear the wildest historical stories from the ballroom floor, including contestants shaving while shuffling, partners tying themselves together to stay upright, and the extreme lengths promoters went to keep the crowds entertained.

We look at the colorful characters who defined the era:

• The "Cots": Delirious dancers who literally slept while their partners dragged them across the floor.
• The Promoters: Master showmen who rigged the drama, started fake rivalries, and turned human exhaustion into premium entertainment.
• The Fans: Spectators who cheered on their favorite couples like sports teams, throwing pennies at the most entertaining dancers.

The Comedy, the Chaos, and the Collapse

While the physical toll was brutal, the sheer absurdity of the spectacle brought an unexpected wave of comedy. From hallucinatory mid-dance conversations to chaotic "sprint laps" designed to eliminate exhausted contestants, we highlight the dark humor and carnival atmosphere that kept audiences glued to their seats. Finally, we look at how the craze eventually spun out of control, leading to public outrage, medical interventions, and widespread city bans that finally turned off the music.

Whether you are a fan of weird history, vintage pop culture, or just love a good story about human resilience mixed with absolute chaos, this episode is your front-row ticket to the madness.

Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your favorite dance partner!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hey Alex, it's good to see you. Hey, buddy. Man, I think it's time for a dead end. What do you think? I like a dead end. No, you got this is gonna end up being dead end number 60, if you can believe it. It feels like it's still new, still fresh.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Yeah. I remember when we first started, I I wanted to call him a cul-de-sac.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

You just wanted to get the word sack in there.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah, that's why there's two of us, though. You're I'm you know I came up, I got I got us halfway there, and you got us across to finish.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I mean, that's basically what a dead end is. Is a cul-de-sac, or a cul-de-sac is a dead end. Well, I want to talk to you. You know, we've we've talked a lot about entertainers, I think, you know, and people that have brought media and entertainment to people's houses, like Ted Turner. We've you know, we've talked about Hannah Barbera, we've talked about all of the options that people have today for entertainment. It's a lot, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, you could you could get kind of overwhelmed with all the options. Well, of course. If you look back across the the century, you know, let's call it the 20th century, uh the previous century. I I like it too, but there wasn't, you know, especially early, there wasn't a whole lot of options for entertainment. What are some things you think people would do back in like the 1920s for entertainment?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Oh man, well, there was probably um there was they had kaleidoscopes. Right. They had they had tops you could spin a top. Um ride your penny farther, right? Penny farthing. There, you know, a good um uh maybe a some jacks, maybe a ball and jacks. Right. That's right. I've you ever played jacks? I've tried. It's it's difficult. It's it's you know, it gets boring.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Bounce it and grab the onesies and the twosies. My grandmother wanted to teach me, but I I wasn't having any of it. Well, there was a thing, there was kind of a craze that happened in the 1920s and 30s, and you know, the way a dead end works is it's something that was popular, but it's no longer popular. And I'll say pole sitting. You like pole sitting. Yeah, this this is probably pretty similar to pole sitting. This was something that happened, um, and it kind of went into the Great Depression, got really popular at that time. This was uh dance marathons. Now, have you heard of this? I've participated in a dance marathon.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Well, your wedding doesn't count. Come on. No, I was in a 24-hour dance marathon. Were you really? Okay, well, I had no idea. Tell me about that. What was it like? They did it, they did it, they locked you in the the uh school. This was at my uh high school in Michigan. Okay, and they uh locked us in the um we had this area called the Commons. It was a lock-in, yeah. And it was like at seven o'clock at night, six o'clock, something like that. Yeah, and then it was like a high school dance that just went on and on and on and on, and you got donations. It was for like marcha dimes or something. You get donations for you know for how long you danced. I mean, you yeah, yeah, yeah. Um now the ones you're talking about were a little more strict with the rules where you had to be continuously moving for the whole time, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I mean, this one was a little looser where we, you know, maybe you'd be playing basketball and then um, but I think most of the most of us tried to like stay on the dance floor as long as we could. How long did you last? Oh, who knows? Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

It was a long time 24 hours is a long time to be on your feet. It's a long time to be able to get it.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

You're like 14, you're with your friends, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

You're wild, you're free.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, I mean, I mean uh you have the magic power. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but but you're talking about the time like actual endurance comp contests.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah, I'm talking about um let's start with 1923. Well, first of all, it was around that time that the Olympics were coming back into fashion, right? And so these feats of um endurance and strength were were kind of a big thing as as the Olympics, the Olympic Games became a thing again in in the world. And in February of 1923, Ollie Finerty and Edgar Von Olfin set a record, and and this was in Sunderland, England. Guess how long their dancing record was in 1923. Now, this was early days. This was a couple. I don't know if I don't know if Ollie. I mean, I'm assuming Edgar was a guy, and I don't know about Ollie if it was just like two dudes dancing or if it was a guy and a girl dancing. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

I think back then it had to be a guy and a girl dancing. Probably, probably.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

So maybe Ollie had to be touching at all times, too. Well, it doesn't say anything. Uh we'll get into that in just a minute, but this first dance record was a mere seven hours.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I was gonna say I was gonna guess five hours. I think the first time you do it for it's still a long time, still more than I could do, probably.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

It is a long time for dancing to dance with one other person.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Yeah, unless it was slow dancing. I could probably do that for seven hours.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Well, well, you know, there's there's issues with slow dancing that we'll get into here. Leaning and groping and you know, right, like sleeping. Yeah, yeah. Um, sleepwalking. So groping. Well, you know, you just like put your hands on them and you're holding yourself up and hands go in the wrong place. I don't know. I've I've never done one of these things, so I'm just guessing.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

That makes it easier to last seven hours than I mean. Yeah, it's cheating. It's cheating. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

So uh so this happens February 18th of 1923. Ollie and Edgar do the seven hours. Twelve days later, a new record is set across the pond in New York. You never want to be the first one to set a record. No, because um Alma, her name was Alma Cummings. Alma Cummings set a record for guess how far she blew it away. By herself.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Um yeah, yeah. One person dancing. I don't from seven hours. I think that's like one hand clapping. I don't think one person dance.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

No, you can dance by yourself. I don't Billy Idol, come on, dancing with yourself. She went from seven hours to 27 hours. Yeah, but it's easy to yourself. She wasn't no, I'm sorry, she wasn't. She had six different partners. So the other the partners rotate in, yeah. No man could keep up with her for 27 hours.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

She dances for 27 hours, and then I'll bet you Babe Dietressen either tried and beat it, or yeah, or I bet she was involved somehow because there wasn't a record, an athletic type record that she would have heard about and been like, oh, cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Whether it was goldfish swallowing or competitive knitting, she was there. Yeah, maybe that was a little before it was around her time though. Well, this is this is 1923. So, so you know, these two people in England, seven hours, then Alma Cummings with six different partners does it in uh twent does 27 hours with partners rotating in, but then I guess a craze kind of caught fire. This must have hit the papers. This is before CNN, right? So there's no there's no uh there's no news necessarily, but it's in the papers. Her record got broken at least nine times within three weeks after that.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Everybody's breaking this record. So this starts to become a cultural phenomenon, and people are starting to go to these things, and there's not only contestants, but they're spectators. They would serve food, they would have people come in and um be seems really boring. They would there were um celebrity judges that would come in, and these people would uh actually go in there to win a prize. So there were these people organizing it to make money. You know, what they would do is they would promote people, they're they would promote the event, they'd have um people coming in to do the dances who would pay an entry fee, but they'd have the opportunity to win a big prize. And you know, it was 75% women that participated in this.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Now, are these like is this like the Charleston and that kind of dancing?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Well, so I think the dancing, the type of dancing varied. Um, I think you could you could do they might have a theme where you would do a certain type of dance, it wasn't like freestyle dancing, probably.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

It was probably more like hip than that, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

No, actually it was less hip because the rules were you had to remain upright and move for 45 minutes out of each hour around the clock. So so you had a 15-minute break every hour. Does that make it sound less impressive?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

A little.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

They would have live bands that would play part of the time, and then when the live band would take a break, they would play the radio or they would play a record player, you know, with the old 78s or 45s or whatever. And they were expected to dance um more heavily when the audience was there in the evening hours. So this is kind of one of these things where the audience would come and go, right? So you'd you'd pay your 10 cents or 15 cents or whatever it was to go in and see this dance contest. You'd watch for a while, you might go get some dinner, come back, you know, you got your hand stamped so you could get back in. And then every hour there would be a bell that would ring, and they would have actually in some of these longer ones, they would have beds set up so people could lay down in the beds. Now they they segregated the men and the women in the beds. You had to go to the men's side to rest or the women's side to rest. You know, this is the early 1920s, 1930s. Um, but they these these ones that were so um good at it and had trained, they actually could lay down and fall asleep immediately for 15 minutes. Now, can you do that? Like, can you take a nap? You don't you don't even like naps, do you? Um you're judgy about naps. Every time I've suggested taking a nap, you always shut it down. Well, you know, it's a time and a place for a nap. Well, so they lay down for this 15 minutes, and to wake them up, um, the tradition was with women, they would either slap slap them or give them smelling salts to wake them up. But with men, they actually they actually would dunk them, they would dunk them in a tub of ice water. Yeah, because they would take their head.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Cruel to do to a woman, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Let's give her smelling salts, and if that doesn't work, we'll slap her. Um also sometimes the couples, even though they were in separate twin twin cots, they would be chained together. So they they one of them couldn't leave without the other one leaving. Um, I mean, this got a little bit this got a little bit hedonistic and animalistic. They called these things sometimes cot nights, and this is where they would have the beds out in full public view, and even the moments where the people were sleeping, the audience was watching.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Kind of weird. I I think it sounds like a really boring thing to to go to as an uh as a as a as a well, I mean, there was food, there was a band, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

So other people might be dancing. Or jacks. Um they there were there were other people dancing, there might be a band playing, and then apparently they served these people food because of the number of um uh calories they were burning. They got they got 12 small meals a day, and they would eat while they were dancing. So they could either you know they could eat during their break, but they wanted to reserve that for um sleep. So instead they would eat standing up while they were dancing.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

I'm still trying to picture what how many calories they're burning. Are they dancing? Is it slow or fast?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Well, I think I think when people are um when people are there when there's an audience watching, they are they're encouraged to dance more uh fast. So, I mean, sometimes they would start to nod off, right? And so they had to be held up. You were talking about slow dancing. They were required if your knees hit the ground, you were out. Every sport should have that rule. It's like football, right? So if your knees hit the ground, yeah, or if your hand touched the ground, you were out. So your partner might actually hold you up while you rest, and then you would hold your partner up while while you're while your partner's resting.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

In the limbo, that's the case too. If your knees hit the ground, you're done. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

It's kind of a universal thing for dancing. Um, there were judges that were allowed to walk around and and see if people were considered dancing. So if they were just standing still, the judges would flick them with a ruler on the legs, and if they didn't uh they didn't start dancing again, they were eliminated too. They had like 10 seconds to get dancing.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Being a judge does sound kind of fun. Walking around slapping people and hitting people in the in the legs.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Well, apparently, apparently, um, you know, at the height of its popularity, people would shave, men would shave while they were dancing. Um they they would shave their beards, they would read the newspaper.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

That was probably a straight razor, too.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, yeah. And you know, that's that could be dangerous. Yeah. Um, there was also a some of these dancing um contests, they would have these um spur-of-the-moment foot races where they had to race around the around the dance floor. That's not dancing, no, no, but it was more just to wake them up, I think. But is that in the 15 minutes? Uh no, no, during the dancing part. During the 15 minutes, they're out. So competitors would would enter these things, they'd pay their they pay their dollar or their 50 cents or whatever. And a lot of sponsors would actually sponsor dancers to wear their brand or their logo. So there they had kind of like a NASCAR, they had these logo branded um uh jerseys they might wear. And some of these marathon dancers got to be so popular that they would actually autograph postcards and they would sign it dancingly yours. Oh god, you know, this was happening during the depression. There was lots of stuff going on, a lot of people uh feeling kind of sad. And the people that were against this, right? There were there were people that were not um the prohibition crowd, the prohibition crowd did not like the dance-a-thons. They hated everything, man. They were they were killing the party, they were killing the party. Churches considered the dancing sinful. Um, obviously, the couples touching while they were dancing was scandalous a lot of times. So sometimes these promoters would call it a walk-a-thon, but it wasn't really a walk-a-thon. It was a it was a dance marathon. Movie theater owners hated this because it was competition for their for their business. Uh, and they also decided that some of the um some of the dancers were being inhumanely treated, and it was dubious to watch people suffer. So there there were people that would suffer um mental, like basically they would see hallucinations because of their lack of sleep. Um, there was a guy named Homer Morehouse who in April of 1923, same year this crow uh craze took off, he collapsed at age 27 and died after dancing for 87 consecutive hours.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah, that's stupid.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

That is stupid.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

You'd think your body just wouldn't let you do it.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Well, it it got banned in Boston, it got banned in Philadelphia, it got banned in New York, but people would do these underground dance-a-thons. This this is when it would go underground. Were they doing it for money? Yeah, they were trying to win the contest. How much money are we talking? So I'll give you an example. In 1928, five years into this trend, a lady named Gladys Lentz danced for 19 hours straight, and her partner who was dancing with her, um, they they stopped because her partner was starting to hallucinate and punched her in the face.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

And despite all that, they came in fifth place and they won $50. Which is how much in 2026 money to split 1928. Yeah, they split a thousand dollars. She got punched in the face. Ain't worth it, Gladys. Uh, the winning couple actually won a thousand dollars nineteen twenty-six, which is worth about nineteen thousand today. Uh, or nineteen twenty. I mean, it was the depression. It was, it was, and this this became something that some professional some people became professional at. There were a few folks that um uh started to do this professionally. There was a couple named Callum and Vonnie. They were from Minneapolis, and they okay, you're gonna have to guess how long they danced for to win a thousand dollars, the equivalent of nineteen thousand dollars. Just just guess how long they danced for was it a world record? I think it was a new world world record. Now, this was starting and stopping, you know, every 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's see, the one guy tried for eight, maybe a hundred hours, five months.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

For five Callum and Vonnie died. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

I don't know, I don't know if they got you know, if they got like time off for 19,000 today's money, yep, yep, 20, 20, 10 grand each, basically. In today's money, 10 grand for five months. Yeah, that's not even like reality show. Like Survivor would pay more than that, I think.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, but but those things didn't exist back then, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

This no, I'm saying, but that's exactly who that's the same people. Yeah, it is the same people. It's they're they're their offspring today are reality stars.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

So there was a woman named June Havoc, and June was um pretty pretty famous, I guess, as a vaudeville star. It's a cool stage name. June Havoc, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she started doing uh dance marathons at age 14, which you were supposed to be 16, so she kind of cheated, kind of like some of these some of the guys in Dirtnap City joined the military at you know, underage. She she did this for dance. Um, her war her record was 3,000 hours dancing and sleeping in 15-minute intervals. And she actually wrote a stage play called Marathon 33. This was in 1933, based on her experience. Now, would you want to go see a stage play about marathon dancing? I mean, it is living worse than marathon dancing, it's a stage play about marathon dancing.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Or a podcast about marathon dancing. I mean, if I'm if I'm good, why listen to a podcast?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Why wouldn't I watch a stage play about it? So there was a guy named Horace McCoy, and he wrote a book. I had I hadn't ever heard of him, but I had heard of a movie that was made out of this book. It was called They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Oh, yeah. Heard of that? Yeah. You know that's about marathon dancing? I did not know that. I didn't know that either. I mean, the the name should give it away, but it really doesn't. He participated in uh and and worked as a bouncer and a judge in several dance marathons, and that's where he got the idea to write this story about dance marathons during the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Um, so I guess maybe the only thing worse than a podcast would be a book about so did this stop because people started or the depression stopped, and people are like, What were we doing? Now we have other things to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

It hasn't stopped. You know, you talked about when you were in high school, you did a you did a charity. So a lot of people still do this for charity, you know, but it's not the same kind of thing. This is it's a little less um, a little less stringent, probably, a little less dangerous, hopefully. Um less slapping, but there are still charity events that go on. So uh Penn State has the Penn Hellenic Dance Marathon, also called the Thon, and they have raised oh just a ton of money. Northwestern University, the NUDM, the Northwestern University Dance Marathon was founded in 1975. Uh the Indiana, Indiana University, the IUDM, um, has raised over $32 million for a children's hospital. Oh, that's awesome. Uh Iowa, Florida, all these all these places have these dance marathons. But the world record today for continuous dancing uh by an individual. Now I think this is without a break, perhaps, or maybe I'm not sure what the criteria for this is.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

If it's less than five months, it would be right.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Well, it is it is less than five months. So uh it this was uh an Indian woman named Shroudy Sudhir Jagtap. Shruti Sudhir Jagtap. She was 16 years old uh when she entered this. She danced uh individually for 127 hours to cat uh Catholic music. Do you know what Catholic music is? No, it's it's Indian music, and it the the dance involves storytelling, and you communicate um these Hindu epics using your hands. You know, you've kind of seen Indian dancers where they're doing all these movements with their hands and their feet and stuff. That's Catholic dancing. She did that for 127 hours in 2023. Um and broke a round record. Was there a crowd there? I don't know. I don't know. It was there must have been because it was actually set for the Guinness Book of World Records. It was on that ticket. Okay. And then and then here's the weird part. 127 hours. But the longest couple dancing was a couple from Catman Kathmandu, Nepal. Uh it started in uh May, uh May on May 25th and ended on May 27th. They danced 41 hours. That didn't seem like that long compared to 127.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah, but they probably had rules like they had to always be touching.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

That's a long time. And like you said, depending on the rules about breaks, you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean that that can make a big difference. And also, I feel like with Red Bull and, you know, these energy drinks, Celsius and and vaping, I mean, I feel like chemistry is gonna also probably impact people today.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Do you think that you and your wife could dance for two hours straight?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Hell no. Hell no. First of all, I'm not a big fan of dancing. It's not my thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I'll do it, but what if it was for $19,000? For two hours?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah. Yeah, we could do it for two hours for that.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

You have to be touching at all times. Yeah. And you have to be rhythmically to the mu rhythmically dancing to the same thing. That's a problem. That's a problem. Just because you have no rhythm, you make?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Yeah, yeah. Did you ever see the movie Hands on a Hard Body? Yeah. Yeah. Remember that? It's kind of a similar concept, right? It's just it's just endurance.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

It's just how long it yeah, but it's a little more athletic than just putting your hands on a car. True, true. I mean, you would get winded, you would get winded pretty quick. I think it's a good thing. I think at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it's more mental than physical. I don't know. Your legs would be killing you. Your legs would be killing you. I mean, two hours is a long time to be exerting yourself.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Really? You you I mean, if you're a marathoner, you do it like they do, you know, exactly, and they trained months for that. Yeah, and that's true. Two hours. Here's the thing though, I don't do well without sleep. I need I'm I'm I'm one of those people that needs a good ten hours, nine hours, nine, ten hours a day, you know. And and so that's what would kill me is I would just basically fall asleep and keel over. And then somebody hunch me in the face. Well, that was marathon dancing, it still exists, but not in the same form it did. If you ever have marathon danced like Alex, maybe you were what was the name of the high school? Nova High School. Nova? Nova. Novae High School. If you were at Novae High School in uh the mid-80s, early 80s with Alex, uh let us know. Drop us a line, not at DirtNet City. Also, if you are a uh competitive um marathon dancer, please drop us a line too. I'd happily revisit this episode if we had a real competitive uh marathon dancer on with us. Because the only thing worse than one podcast about marathon dancing is two. Alright, thanks everybody.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

They said just dance till dawn. I said that sounds like fun. By supper time, my knee said we are number one. My shoes began to gossip, my tie got in a knot. I waltzed with a lamppost. I think that was a plot. We circle in and smiling, but the ceiling looks so near. My feet are making speeches and my eyelids disappear. Dance marathon, oh no. Dance marathon, oh me. I lost my hat, my rhythm, and part of my dignity, Dance Marathon, oh no. Dance marathon, oh dear. I hugged the wrong old stranger, then I smiled and said, You're here. I nodded in the corner and woke up in a spin. My partner's elbow found me right where my ribs begin. We tried a fancy tangle. I drifted in a fog. I think I danced with Harold or possibly his dog. The judge said keep on moving, but my soul slid out the door. My left shoe made a confession, then my right foot asked for more. Dance marathon, oh no. Dance marathon on me. I lost my at my rhythm, and part of my dignity. Dance marathon, oh no. Dance marathon, oh dear. I hugged the wrong old stranger that I smiled and said, You're here. Now here's the grandest trouble when nature starts to call. You can't just leave politely, you must apologize to all. You shuffle like a secret, you pray the line is short, but every pair of jammed up legs is one more awkward sport. Oh, pardon me. Excuse my meander. I'm only trying to reach the laboratory grand.