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Book
Signings
Barnes & Noble, Tampa, Florida, Friday, March 7, 2008: Author
Kristin Baggelaar was joined by former Copa Girl Norma Barlett (Grau),
and her husband, Herman, for an early evening of book signing and conversation.
The beautiful Norma danced in the Copa line for two consecutive shows from
May 1948, when she was seventeen years old, to January 1949. She
has fond memories of her first show at the Copa with Dean Martin and Jerry
Lewis, and the fall show with Joe E. Lewis. In September 1950, one
week after her nineteenth birthday, she married Copa emcee and singer Fernando
Alvares. Norma appeared in shows at the Roxy Theatre and was one
of Jack Entratter's Las Vegas Copa Girls at the Sands Hotel, 1953-54.
In The Copacabana, Norma is shown in the photograph at the bottom
of page 56, erroneously identified in the caption as her sister Wendy Bartlett
(the correction will be made in future printings); she also appears in
the photograph at the top of page 71 (top row, right).
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Kristin Baggelaar
and Norma Barlett Grau
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Barnes & Noble, Naples, Florida, Saturday, March 8th: Singer
Kitt Moran and her musician-husband Mike Moran, along with Maxine Barrat
(Carter), former dance partner of Don Loper, were on hand to promote The
Copacabana in Naples, Florida. Now residents of North Port, Florida,
Kitt and Mike performed at the Copacabana toward the end of its tenure
at 10 East 60th Street, when they played in the former lounge (upstairs)
that featured cabaret acts in the seventies (Note: the main room,
downstairs, was a disco). Kitt has enjoyed a successful career as
a jazz vocalist, recording with Don Sebesky, Teo Macero, Rosemary Clooney,
John Pizzarelli, and others, and she has sung with Michel LeGrand, Burt
Bacharach, Merv Griffin, Vic Damone, and other GAS (Great American Songbook)
and jazz standard performers. Kitt's latest CD, Snapshots from
Atlantic City, features recordings from the period of her reign as
one of the premier performers there. Kitt and Mike currently present
intimate cabaret shows at local southwest Florida venues and perform at
national jazz concerts. They are both members of the Society of Singers.
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Kitt and Mike Moran
with Maxine Barrat Carter
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Maxine Barrat began her long and illustrious career as a John Robert Powers
model in New York City, and she is still modeling today. Maxine always
knew that she was destined to dance professionally, and she was influenced
and inspired by Ginger Rogers, who became one of her personal friends.
Her first break came when she teamed up with dancer Don Loper, and, as
Barrat and Loper, they were catapulted to national fame with their debut
appearance at the Copacabana in 1941: their second show on opening night
made Copa history when the unknown, innovative dance duo brought down the
house. Barrat and Loper were primarily responsible for making the
samba the nightly highlight of the Copa show and for the widespread popularity
of its Tico Tico-style in the 1940s. Barrat and Loper appeared in
several Broadway shows and the film Thousands Cheer (1943), and
Maxine was the host of her own television show, And Everything Nice.
Currently she presents a program called Chocolate Bars to Caviar in
which she shows pictures and tells stories about her career.
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Maxine Barrat Carter
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Photo
credits (Morans, Carter): Anne Drever Macias
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