Early Life
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Coca's parents were veterans of the entertainment industry; her father, José Fernandez de Coca, was a well-known violinist and vaudeville orchestra conductor, and her mother, Sadie Brady, was a dancer and magician's assistant.
Coca took lessons in piano, dance, and voice as a child and while still a teenager moved from Philadelphia to New York City to become a dancer. She got her first job in the chorus of the Broadway musical When You Smile, and became a headliner in Manhattan nightclubs with music arranged by her first husband, Robert Burton. She gained prominence when she began to combine music with comedy; her first critical success was in New Faces of 1934. A well-received part of her act was a comic striptease, during which Coca made sultry faces and gestures but would manage to remove only one glove. She committed this routine to film in the Educational Pictures comedy short The Bashful Ballerina (1937), and co-starred opposite another newcomer to films, Danny Kaye, in Educational's 1937 short Dime a Dance. Both of these comedies were filmed in New York.
Read more about this topic: Imogene Coca
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“To my fancy, one looks back on life, it has only two responsibilities, which include all the others: one is the bringing of new life into existence; the other, educating it after it is brought in. All betrayals of trust result from these original sins.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)