David St. Hubbins: It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh...
Nigel Tufnel: Clever.
David St. Hubbins: Yeah, and clever.
Rosita and Deno were a publicity-hungry wedding-parties-anything show duo who may or may not also have had day jobs. We don't know their real names but would like to.
In June 1953 the duo unveiled their latest dance, the peg leg, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
The male dancer would strap on a fake wooden leg for the dance and I guess that somehow made it more fun.
They claimed that the dance was based on a craze that had caught fire in the Dominican Republic after a wooden-legged sailor took to the floor with great results.
The stunt got them some media attention beyond these borders and surely helped their bookings in such resorts as Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks.
The first mention I find of Rosita and Deno is when they were on a bill at the Normandie Roof in 1948, teaching 600 people the samba without forcing them to get out of their chairs, they were at the Snowdon Theatre in 1950 and had Sunday night gig teaching the rumba at the Downbeat Club on Peel by 1952.
Somebody mentioned that the dance might be considered offensive by amputees, of which there surely must have been many after the war, but I don't know if it was any worse than some rock star posing with an eyepatch.