Merian Ganjou
Acrobatic star of the popular Dior Dancers adagio troupe
MERIAN GANJOU, who has died aged 79, was the daring female member of the Dior Dancers adagio troupe, an “apache” (pronounced ah-pash) or toss-the-girl act which performed during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Dior Dancers – three men and Merian – were created by Bob Ganjou, of the world-famous Ganjou Brothers and Juanita adagio act. Merian was 17 when she auditioned for him and, although Bob was 35 years older, she later proposed and they married in 1962.
The Dior Dancers were instantly successful, and in 1958 joined Val Parnell and Bernard Delfont’s “revusical” Large As Life, starring Harry Secombe and Terry-thomas, at the London Palladium. On television they performed twice on The Royal Variety Performance, and on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. During an appearance on The Stanley Baxter Show, Baxter donned a corset and stepped in for some of the throws.
They crossed the Atlantic for the The Ed Sullivan Show, but the Americans found Merian Ganjou’s costume too revealing, complaining that her “tush” was showing. As a result they had to add extra fabric, which Merian found hilarious.
In 2010, old footage of their act was screened at BFI London during its 100 Years of the London Palladium season, showing Merian’s male colleagues throwing her around and using her slender body as a skipping rope. “It wasn’t at all scary; it was wonderful,” she recalled.
Merian May Morris was born in Kensington, London, on August 8 1938 to Richard Morris, a miner and later a fireman at Heathrow Airport, and Queenie Underwood, a housewife.
After the family moved to Hillingdon, Middlesex, she studied ballet, tap and acrobatics from the age of six. In 1954, helped by her uncle and aunt – the singers and composers Ken Morris and Joan Savage – she toured Britain with Herbert De Vere’s dance troupe.
In 1956 she heard about Bob Ganjou’s new act from someone playing the rear of a pantomime horse and decided to apply to join. “I was always a daredevil and would do anything; scrump for apples or climb on roofs,” she recalled. “I was a contortionist; very, very supple. The men balance you, you do nothing. You just keep very, very still. I had a very strong body and just had to keep rigid while the boy held me in the splits, for instance, then threw me up.”
The Dior Dancers debuted in London with Max Miller at the Metropolitan, and with Tommy Steele at the Dominion. Large As Life was followed by the 1958 Royal Variety Performance at the London Coliseum, The Night of 100 Stars, and the 1959 Royal Variety Performance at the Palace Theatre, Manchester.
The Ed Sullivan Show brought much work in America, including a two-year run at the Las Vegas Tropicana’s Folies Bergere, and Merian Ganjou travelled widely with the Diors with engagements around Britain, and in Sweden, Finland and at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens.
She admitted there had been a few mishaps: “Once I fell on my head. The catcher immediately picked me up to take a bow. I was still conscious but then passed out. The doctors said I had such a thick skull there was no damage whatsoever. I went on the next night.”
Merian’s husband, Bob, died in 1972 and after his death she joined the amateur Barnes & Richmond Operatic Society. Introduced to the Grand Order of Lady Ratlings and its Cup of Kindness charity by her brother-in-law Serge Ganjou, she became Queen Ratling in 2011.
Merian Ganjou’s long-tern partner Iain Calder died in 2013. She is survived by the son and daughter of her marriage to Bob.
Merian Ganjou, born August 8 1938, died July 2 2018