Joan Sawyer

Short Biography

Joan Sawyer was one of the most successful female dancers in the nightclub circuit in the 1910s. She started her professional dance career in 1907 in the production of the Vanderbilt Cup. Her shrewd business sense and self promotion garnered her top billing among her dance partners hips, some who were very famous dancers themselves such as Rudolph Valentino (not yet a movie star) who she partnered for months in the Vaudeville circuit untill Valentino became involved in a complex sex scandal involving millionaire Jack de Saulles, his wife Blanca, the actress Mae Murray and Joan Sawyer. Valentino was a divorce witness for Blanca, which abruptly ended his partnership with Sawyer. Soon afterwards Blanca de Saulles shot her estranged husband dead. She was very popular with New York`s `400`. Around 1914 she would manage, dance, teach and perform at the very popular "Persian Garden" (in the Winter Garden Building.) She had her own band called "Joan Sawyer`s Persian Garden Orchestra (PGO.)"Joan is said to have created the Aeroplane Waltz and Joanelle dance. In 1913, Lew Quinn and Joan Sawyer made the first real attempt to introduce a new dance to the United States called the Rhumba.