Terri Stevens – In Memoriam

Terri Stevens – Dancer/Model/Actress/Businesswoman

My first introduction to “stardom” began when I was just five years old. The Five and Dime stores on my block in East Harlem offered my sister and me a job taking pictures for the photo booths as a way to attract other customers. Our pictures lined the walls of our block and this small taste of fame is where my path started.

During the Feast of Mount Carmel I joined the band procession, mimicking the movements of the majorettes, imagining the feel of the baton in my hand. Not long after, it was.

After moving upstate to Newburgh, my mother, who “Gypsy Rose Lee” could have taken lessons from, “negotiated” with the door to door insurance salesman (who happened to be a big shot with the American legion). She buys a policy, but her daughter gets in the Legion Drum Corp marching and twirling. Tap lessons, ballet lessons you name it she made a deal I had them!  “Rose” which actually was her name broke down all the barriers and got me in all the competitions and never let up. This path lasted throughout high school, where I led the band, twirled my way to fame up and down the Hudson River Valley and all the while I performed in every variety show in the area.

During the War my band helped launch ships going off to battle and my sister and I helped sell war bonds. Meanwhile my “Rose” worked in a defense factory feverishly as a means to push me into every pageant, audition, dance contest, and baton twirling competition on a state and national level she could find. My mother would never settle for me being one of the dance line. I had to be in front, leading the rest, the star.

After winning contest after contest in my youth, later, I began judging the very same contests I had won. Judging led to teaching, and while teaching ballroom dancing at West Point Military Academy, I became the first woman to lead the West Point Marching Band, something unheard of at the time. While teaching ballroom at New York Military Academy and performing my fire twirling routine, one night I gave them a little extra. My name still “haunts the halls”. That night my future husband, a cadet there, trying to help me make a big splash, anointed my batons with a little extra white gasoline. My show began as usual, spectacular, and then became explosive. The curtains caught fire first and the rest is a blur. And then I was married!

After moving to Bayside, one of our neighbors, Estelle Getty, persuaded us to join a theater group, mainly because Estelle couldn’t drive and needed us for a ride. We all decided to join the theater group in Fresh Meadows which was founded by Paul Newman and his first wife Jackie Witt. This path led to my attending the exclusive “Actors Studio” in the Village, where I participated in workshops with many “unknowns at the time. Working with the famous teacher Uta Hagen was something I will always remember.  Those days turned into a lifelong friendship with Estelle. Years later when I lived in Florida, and after she became famous, Estelle would call me every time she was in town. The old Bayside group would get together and I was the host. By this time Estelle was making loads of money with the Golden Girls, but she never failed to stick me with the check! However, I’ll never forget the fun times we had, the old days when Estelle (due to her NAACP membership) got us into various affairs where we hobnobbed with Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Shelly Winters, and then the Miami Beach times where she tried to travel incognito to no avail.

My television debuts started back in Newburgh, with Miss Video Venus, where Sarah Vaughn singled me out and mentored me through the competition. TV continued with appearances on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, where I won first prize. The Paul Whiteman show invited me on their stage numerous times, and I exhibited my fire twirling (minus the curtains). During that time I owned the local Arthur Murray Dance studio. When Donald O’Connor was filming The West Point Story, he used my studio to rehearse, which gave me an opportunity to work with him. In Bayside, I continued teaching dance and worked at the first Art Linkletter studio. When Art Linkletter moved his popular daytime show to nighttime, he came to the studio to select students to dance on the show. The head of the studio had no ideas and I heard my mother’s voice in my ear pushing me once again, and I blurted out “I have two little cousins who know the routines!” Next thing I know, I’m being introduced on national TV, much to the dismay of the head teacher, who to this day never lets me forget it. My family, on the other hand, was very proud.

Years later in Florida, my second husband and I ran the most successful photography studio in the south. My husband, an entertainer himself, found that success in the photography business led us to travel in the circles of the movers and shakers of Miami. We became friends with the Cowans (owners of the famous Diplomat Hotel), politicians, George Steinbrenner, Jackie Gleason and June Taylor and others. We would be at the front table when all the entertainers came to town. We hung out with and sometimes shared the stage with the likes of Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme, Sammy Davis, Joey Bishop, etc. We were in the Turf Club hanging with the racing crowd. It was most flattering when The New York Post’s earl Wilson the largest and most read showbiz columnist in the country featured me and my fashion statement in the accompanying photo of us he captioned “Terri’s Leopard Look”. He featured me in many more of his columns.  Exciting times; but eventually too much for me.

With all those years, and my mother pushing me, I spent several years shunning the spotlight and raising my family in south Florida, but couldn’t avoid associating with famous people such as Don Shula, whose apartment I managed during my third career as a property manager.

After years of being quietly out of the limelight, that spark was ignited in me again when I was introduced to the Florida Follies. This group of people has inspired me in so many ways and they continually illustrate the power that the spotlight can have for others who don’t have the same opportunities. That’s why this group is so important. The spotlight now serves a purpose, to give to others, and I am blessed to be part of it, and feel like I’m home.

Thank you Cathy Dooley and The Follies.