Actress-Dancer Juliet Prowse Dies Pancreatic Cancer Claims Woman Whom Nikita Khrushchev Unwittingly Helped Make Famous

Juliet Prowse, who parlayed skillful dancing, sultry good looks and the best legs since Betty Grable into stardom in ‘60s movies and TV specials, died Saturday. She was 59 and had suffered from pancreatic cancer.

The unlikely combination of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Nikita Khrushchev made the former South African ballerina famous within months of her arrival in the United States in her early 20s.

Producer Hal Wallis predicted the tall redhead would be “buying Rolls-Royces before long … a big star.”

While her film career didn’t soar as long or high as many predicted, she had lasting success in television specials, stage musicals and nightclubs, often commanding thousands of dollars a week.

In 1965-66, she starred in a sitcom, “Mona McCluskey,” about a movie star married to an Air Force sergeant.

She was in the news even before her first major Hollywood movie came out, the 1960 musical “Can Can,” starring Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine.

When filming was under way in the fall of 1959, Soviet leader Khrushchev was visiting the United States. He was a guest on the set, and the dancers performed the cancan for him.

The next day, Khrushchev roundly denounced the dance as immoral, and the then-unknown Prowse’s picture was seen in newspapers around the world.

For a while, she juggled romances with Sinatra and Presley, star of her second film, “G.I. Blues.” (Explaining her dates with Presley, she said, “Frank and I are mature people. We don’t go for this teenage bit about going steady and all that jazz.”)

She later became engaged to Sinatra, but broke it off after six weeks in early 1962 - generating another blizzard of publicity.

Born in India and raised in South Africa, Prowse trained as a ballerina, dancing with Johannesburg’s Festival Ballet when she was just 14. What ended her ballet career was her height - 5-foot-8.

“When I got on my toes, some of those male partners were way down there,” she joked.

She embarked on a lucrative career as a dancer in European night clubs, and was appearing in Rome when she was noticed by famed Hollywood choreographer Hermes Pan. He was preparing “Can Can,” and Prowse landed a role.

Prowse was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1994.

Last year it was in remission and she was well enough to perform in Las Vegas, but the illness returned, said Mark Mordoh, her manager of 30 years.