Rehearsals posed problems. None of the women were professional dancers, so choreographer Don Liberto took them back to the basics. "I always thought I could do anything," cracked McKnight, wife of actor Gary Conway, "but when it came to tap dancing I had to change my philosophy." Hatcher was undismayed. "I am truly an optimist," he confided. "It never occurs to me that something won't work."
Living together in an inn near the theater, the seven thrived in the sorority atmosphere. "There were no prima donnas," explained BeBe Shoppe (1948), whose 17-year-old daughter danced in the show. "The man who did our hair wouldn't take the job until he saw that we weren't pills." Housemother for the group was Marian Bergeron (1933), who won her title when she was only 15. "It was just a personality-and-bathing-suit competition then," she recalled with a giggle. "We didn't even have Bert Parks."
Meriwether, a regular on TV's Barnaby Jones, was the only card-carrying performer, but the others had proved themselves in the past. Bergeron sang with Rudy Vallee's band, Jean Bartel (1943) was in opera, and Barbara Walker (1947) had her own television show in Memphis. All seven had learned the arts of survival. "It's just amazing," said Walker, reflecting on the aches and pains of rehearsal, "that we're all still living and in good health."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
