They Danced All Night…All Week…All Month…
Marathon Dancing in Whiting-Robertsdale

John Hmurovic
January 2023

They danced for 1,208 hours, which works out to fifty days and eight hours. Or, to put it another way, all they did for just over seven weeks was dance. It was a world record, and it happened right here in Whiting-Robertsdale. But even before the last couple standing stepped off the dance floor, the city of Hammond decided to ban marathon dances forever, calling them a disgrace to the city.

The year was 1928, and America was dealing with marathon fever, a condition that had been spreading since at least 1923 when Alma Cummings of Texas danced 27 hours straight in a Manhattan ballroom. She said the key to her success was eating vegetables (especially potatoes), as well as chasing cows on a ranch back home. She became a national celebrity, and her fame inspired others to imitate her…at least partially. There is no evidence that vegetable eating or cow chasing increased, but a dancing craze was born.   

It took five years for it to reach Whiting-Robertsdale. It might have come sooner, but Chicago was next door. Local couples could dance in a marathon as close as Chicago’s White City Amusement Park, located just ten miles away on 63rd Street in the Grand Crossing neighborhood, or at numerous other locations in the city. Dance promoters, however, were always on the lookout for “virgin spots,” as they called them; towns that had not yet experienced a dance marathon. Big city folks were accustomed to marathons by this time, but a dance marathon was something different for smaller cities. There was money to be made in those places. Whiting was one of those “virgin spots.”

It was, after all, mostly about money. Some dancers may have sought fame, but most stepped forward because promoters offered cash prizes. The participants were young, and the lure of big dollars was hard to resist. All they had to do to get the cash was to dance, and dancing was something many of them already loved to do.

But the real money was made by the promoters. By 1928, dance marathons were an industry, with an estimated 20,000 people working nationwide as promoters, trainers, nurses, and other jobs that depended entirely on dance marathons. The promoter of Whiting’s dance marathon was W.G. Newbould. He was born in Anderson, Indiana, but grew up in Lafayette. From an early age, he was a salesman. At the age of eleven, he made money selling newspapers, pencils, and fruit to passengers on the daily train between Lafayette and Chicago. “He could sell a blind man a set of encyclopedias,” his grandson later said. Newbould was 32 years old at the time he brought the dance marathon to Whiting.

He had the perfect location for it. Boardwalk Park was Whiting’s version of Chicago’s White City. It was a huge amusement park located on the far northern end of Robertsdale. It was located on the northwest corner of Five Points, the part of town where the major roads meet (Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard) just before they enter Chicago city limits. Every day in 1928, an estimated 15,000 cars passed that intersection. Also, because it was a major route, all the bus and streetcar lines stopped there. Automobiles were popular by 1928, and Boardwalk Park had a parking lot that could handle 5,000 cars. The parking was free.

Crowds were drawn to Boardwalk Park by the amusement rides, including the King Bee roller coaster, billed as the fastest in America. There were rides and amusements for every age, and acts like The Fearless Greggs, who among other daring stunts would flip a car mid-air in a triple somersault before landing safely on the ground. They appeared at Boardwalk Park in May, on opening day of the 1928 season.  

But it was the park’s Danceland that won the attention of W.G. Newbould. The giant ballroom first opened for business on April 24, 1926, a month before Boardwalk Park opened for the first time. It was popular from the start, drawing dancers with top-notch musical talent, such as Gene Goldkette’s Victor Recording Orchestra. Among the band members he brought to Boardwalk Danceland were future jazz legends Bix Beiderbecke on cornet, and Frankie Trumbauer on saxophone. At the time, Goldkette’s orchestra was considered by many to be the best dance band of its day, known for its innovative arrangements and strong rhythm.

Besides the music, the Boardwalk’s dance floor itself was an attraction for dancers. Promoters called it the “most scientifically perfect ballroom floor in existence.” Made of maple wood, it was said to be a “perfect spring cushion” dance floor. “Dancers say they feel as fresh as they leave after a full evening’s rapturous dancing as when they started,” said an article in the Lake County Times in 1928.

W.G. Newbould leased the ballroom for his marathon. It was to begin on August 10, 1928, at 8 P.M., and he said around two hundred couples were ready to compete. Some were local, but many came from a distance. Among them were about twenty couples who just completed a marathon in Milwaukee, including Joe Powers. He was the reigning world champion in the sport of flagpole sitting, another marathon competition that swept the country in the 1920s.

Records were on the mind of some dance competitors, and so was fame. But most were interested in the $5,000 cash prize Newbould promised the winners. To win it, all they had to do was stay on the dance floor longer than anyone else, and they had to follow the rules. The rules said contestants must dance continuously for forty minutes each hour. For the rest of the hour they were given a twenty minute rest period. The sounding of a gong let them know when the rest period began. Near the end of the rest period, two rings of the gong served as a three-minute warning. If they were not in place in three minutes, when the next gong sounded, they were eliminated from the competition.

The rules allowed dancers to continue on their own if their partners dropped out, but only for six hours. If another partner didn’t become available, the dancer would have to withdraw. They could only team up with a partner who had already been dancing in the competition.

The marathon drew a great deal of attention, helped along by Newbould’s vigorous marketing efforts. Ads appeared regularly in the newspapers, and radio station WWAE, which later became WJOB, strung a cable from its Hammond studio to Danceland so it could broadcast live from the event. Newbould needed to draw crowds, because it was the spectators, paying for a ticket to watch the marathon, who would bring in the big revenues he hoped for.

The crowds came. There were lulls in the afternoons, “but excitement is at feverish pitch in the evening” the Lake County Times reported. Spectators cheered on their favorite dancers. Three orchestras took turns each day, providing entertainment for the spectators and something for the participants to dance to. During the twenty-minute break periods for the marathon dancers, the orchestra kept playing and spectators were allowed some time on the dance floor.

In her book, Madura’s Danceland, Patrice Madura Ward-Steinman said that one of the spectators who kept coming back was Al Capone. The Chicago gangster “sat down in the lower bleacher seats about two nights a week.”

The Boardwalk Danceland had a capacity of 6,000. Just the year before it underwent an upgrade that included new upholstered seats and improved lighting. Two giant chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the lighting from them could change colors whenever the managers of the ballroom wanted a change in effect.

At the 125-hour mark, thirty-five couples were still dancing. At 150-hours, it was down to twenty. At the 650-hour mark, nine couples still hung in there. The world’s record of 1,000, just recently set in Milwaukee, was within sight. “Crowds are flocking to the ballroom every night by the thousands to see it,” The Lake County Times reported.

But there were problems, both inside and outside the dancehall. Inside, Margaret Buse declared that she was tired and wanted to drop out. Her partner, 29-year-old Phil Carlin of East Chicago, went inside a dressing room during the twenty-minute break period to think over his plan. When he came out, non-contestants were on the dance floor taking advantage of the break. When Phil looked toward the dancers, he saw Margaret, dancing with 28-year-old Neal Cardoni of Hammond. That did not sit right with Carlin, who confronted Cardoni. Carlin was arrested, Cardoni was taken to St. Margaret’s Hospital with a broken jaw.

Outside the dance hall there were similar problems, usually involving young men and alcohol. On a Saturday night, after midnight, a riot was about to break out. News reports say some were angry over the disqualification of one of the marathon dancing couples. A formidable squad of Hammond policemen broke it up and arrested three young South Chicago men for violating the state liquor laws.

There were many more incidents like this, and as the marathon continued with no end in sight, news stories about the problems outside the dance hall easily outnumbered stories about the dance. There were also numerous news reports about incidents in other places where marathons were underway.

These included stories about the physical harm caused by marathon dancing. In Seattle, they were 330-hours into a dance sponsored by American Legion when it was cancelled by the city. That happened after one of the dancers “went wild, pulling off his belt and shouting that a snake was encircling his body.” Police and trainers had a difficult time subduing him.

There were also stories about unscrupulous promoters. In Montpelier, Indiana, four couples were at the 600- hour-mark in their marathon when they were notified that the management was practically bankrupt and had no money to pay off the dancers. Six marathon dancers in Kansas City went five hundred hours when they found out the promoters skipped town after writing rubber checks.

There were also stories about frauds. The dancers who caught the attention of many spectators were the ones who looked like they were ready to collapse from exhaustion. To get more attention, some dancers faked their collapses, and some promoters paid them to do it. In Chicago, the going rate was said to be two dollars.

There were also many articles critical of the spectators who showed up for marathons. At most marathons, it wasn’t anyone’s dance moves that earned a strong reaction from the spectators. What really interested them, what brought many of them back, was the drama of watching totally exhausted dancers struggle, hanging on desperately to one another, or collapsing on the dance room floor.

At Boardwalk Danceland, a rumor rapidly spread that one contestant had died. Evelyn Nelson Morgeson was at the center of this rumor. She was ordered off the floor after an attending physician at the marathon said she should not continue. Her condition was not serious, but she was taken to the hospital just to be sure. St. Margaret’s was flooded with calls as the rumor spread of her death. The nuns at the hospital struggled to keep up with the calls.

Evelyn was one of the most popular and colorful dancers on the floor, and she completely won over the spectators at Boardwalk when it was announced that she was going to marry her dance partner, Darrell Morgenson, on the dance floor on August 29. Darrell was a student at Notre Dame but from Louisville, Kentucky, while Evelyn was from Logansport. Theirs was one of two weddings that took place during the marathon. The other was on September 27, between Robert Dickson who was living in East Chicago, and Odileen Quinn of Whiting. Dickson was a musician who tried to make a career out of performing at marathon dances as either a dancer or musician. His marriage with Odileen did not appear to last. Darrell and Evelyn, however, lived happily ever after, until his death in 1959.

Despite the good publicity from the marriages, Newbould was battling the bad publicity that had taken hold in Hammond. City Judge Joe Todd was one of the loudest critics as his courtroom filled up with young men arrested outside the dance hall. If it was in his power, he said, he would immediately shut the marathon down. “No good has resulted from this event, and that the sooner it was ended the better it would be.” He called it “the most disgraceful thing ever carried on within the confines of the city of Hammond.” Even those who shared his opposition to the dances probably had a good laugh at that comment, considering that there were plenty of other disgraceful things going on in Hammond.

The Lake County Times, which had heavily promoted the marathon, changed its tune as the event continued on and on. “Our highly developed neighbors on the planet of Mars,” the paper stated in an editorial, “must feel great pity for the brutality of a smug civilization that permits such misguided spectacles…We can discern nothing esthetic in a group of tired boys and girls, dancing themselves to exhaustion for the edification of a gallery of novelty seekers. Neither can we see the justification in expending irretrievable youthful energy for the financial gain of fat promoters.”

Many religious leaders of the time were among the opponents. A speaker at the Evangelical League Convention, which was being held as the marathon at Boardwalk got underway, lumped marathon dancing in with divorce, non-traditional marriages, nude art, theater, newspaper advice columns, and nauseating literature as reasons for America’s moral decline.  

Locally, there were not many supporters of dance marathons speaking up in Hammond or Whiting. The New York Daily News, however, probably spoke for anyone on that side of the issue when it wrote an editorial headlined, “O, Let ‘Em Dance.”  

“It’s nobody’s business – least of all the law’s,” the editorial said, “if you want to overdance, overeat, overexercise, overstudy, or overdrink. You aren’t called a fool when you throw all your muscle and nerve power into the pursuit of $5,000, except when you do it in a dance marathon…”

But the Hammond City Council wasn’t paying attention to a newspaper in New York. It quickly took up a proposed ordinance that would ban marathon dancing in the city. The ordinance allowed the marathon at Boardwalk Danceland to continue, but the councilmen made it clear that when it comes to marathons, this would be the last dance in Hammond. It was signed into law by the mayor on October 2, just days after the marathon ended on September 30.

At the start of the marathon at Boardwalk Danceland, the newspapers had numerous articles about it. By time it ended, there was barely a mention of it in the press, and none when it ended. We know from a photo that has survived that Nora Ryan of Chicago was one of the winners. She was apparently from Chicago, because the photo calls her “Chicago’s Venus.” The photo, however, does not identify her partner. They did set a new world record, but it didn’t stand for long. Callum DeVillier and Vonny Kuchinski of Minneapolis later took claim to the honor.  In 1933, in Somerville, Massachusetts, they danced 3,780 continuous hours, which translates to about five months. They won $1,000. He is buried in Minneapolis, where his tombstone reads: "DeVillier, World Champion Marathon Dancer 3,780 continuous hours."

W.G. Newbould, “the ultimate salesman,” produced at least one more marathon. It was a rocking chair marathon held at the Croatian Hall at 96th and Commercial in Chicago. Eighteen people, bringing their own rocking chairs, set out to break the record of 331 hours and ten minutes of continuous rocking, with ten-minute breaks allowed every hour. Newbould went on to have a long life and long career as the founder and owner of W.G.N. Flag & Decorating Company of Chicago, still in business at 7984 South Chicago Avenue. The W-G-N has nothing to do with the radio or television station. It stands for the initials of William George Newbould, who discovered that in America, you can sell a lot of flags. By all accounts, Newbould was an honest promoter.

The ban against marathon dancing in Hammond did not stop young Whiting and Hammond residents from taking part in marathons. Sixteen-year-old Catherine Dvorscak traveled from her home in Robertsdale to a dance floor in Huntington, Indiana, where she met Walter Donat at the start of the marathon. Three weeks into it, they got married on the danceroom floor. The marriage lasted longer than the marathon, but not by much.

Twenty-one-year-old Andy Marko of Whiting lost a leg in a railroad accident when he was younger. It didn’t stop him from taking part in a roller-skating marathon in Chicago. Two weeks before the event he practiced for it by skating from Whiting to Michigan City, back to Whiting to put new wheels on his skates, then on to LaPorte, and then back home. He didn’t use his artificial limb while skating but used a cane for support. Ernest Canner of Whiting was in the same event, with partner Audrey Malloy of Miller. They collided with another couple and were unable to continue.

None of them could have participated in a similar marathon in Hammond because the city ordinance that banned marathon dancing in the city also banned marathon roller-skating. Marathons of any kind faded away from the American scene as the 1930s wore on.

The dancing marathon in Hammond was in many ways, a fitting event to the end of a brief era in local history. It was the last major event at Boardwalk Park. Once the 1928 season came to an end, the amusement park was shut down, because Lever Brothers made an offer that was too good to refuse. The land was sold to the soap maker, a plant was built on the site, and it still sits there today as the Unilever plant.

As for Boardwalk Danceland, it lived on. Mike Madura bought the ballroom and spent $6,000 to have it moved across the street, to 1337 Calumet Avenue, in the area where the CarX auto repair shop is currently located. According to Patrice Madura Ward-Steinman, in her book, a team of horses pulled the building across the street inch-by-inch. It took three months to complete the job. Madura’s Danceland, as it became known, opened on August 24, 1929. Nearly three thousand showed up for its first dance. For the next 38 years it was one of Chicagoland’s top ballrooms, until lightning struck on July 23, 1967. The building burned to the ground. In her book, Madura Ward-Steinman says, a small part of the maple wood dance floor, on which the marathoners and thousands of others danced, lives on in a cabin in Cedar Lake.