Dance marathons were a seedy, exploitative Bay Area craze that SF's women helped stop
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A group photo of contestants at Emeryville's walkathons, which employed 50 people including four nurses, a dental unit and orchestra musicians.Courtesy of Ray Raineri
Despite its libertine reputation, San Francisco was among the first to crack down on a degrading, sometimes-deadly craze that was sweeping much of a starved nation during the Great Depression: competitive endurance dancing.
Dance marathons, also called walkathons to avoid legal and moral scrutiny, were essentially the Netflix dating show of that era. As an emcee entertained the audience with dancers’ biographies over live music, the couples danced, stumbled and dragged each other for weeks on almost no sleep in the pursuit of money and glory.