Juliet Prowse; Actress, Dancer on Stage, TV and Film

Juliet Prowse, the dancer and actress who high-kicked her way to fame by performing a saucy cancan before startled Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, died Saturday. She was 59.

She died at her Holmby Hills home after losing a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, according to her spokeswoman, Marcia Groff.

Prowse was an auburn-haired beauty who was once linked romantically to singers Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra--at the same time. Her 37-year Hollywood career included film, stage and television.

But dancing was the true love of the Bombay-born performer, who ended up in movies only because some felt she was was too tall (5 feet, 7 3/4) to be the ballerina that she had studied all her life to be.

Prowse was 22 when she was recruited by 20th Century Fox at the urging of choreographer Hermes Pan, who considered her one of the world’s best dancers.

There was no acting for her in her first film, “Can-Can.” But the surprise reaction of Khrushchev to her dancing in late 1959 in the movie made her internationally famous.

During a U.S. visit, the Soviet leader stopped in at the Hollywood set where the musical that starred Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine was being filmed. As he watched, Prowse and other dancers performed the cancan for him.

“I thought he was enjoying the dance,” Prowse recalled later. But apparently Khrushchev’s wife did not. The next day Khrushchev denounced the dance as immoral. And newspapers around the world printed Prowse’s picture along with the story.

Prowse turned her attention to acting after that, appearing in eight other films through the mid-1960s.

“I’m learning. I’m going to make it as an actress, although probably not in heavy, serious drama,” she told The Times in a 1960 interview.

Movie roles led to her romantic involvement with Sinatra and Presley.

Prowse met Sinatra on the set of “Can-Can” and met Presley a year later while filming “G.I. Blues” with him. For a time she dated both simultaneously.

“I had a date or two with Elvis--he’s a nice, polite chap--but we’re definitely not a steady item as some columnists say,” Prowse said in 1960. “Yes, I see Frank Sinatra quite often. We’re good friends. And I’m very tired of some people trying to dig up a ‘triangle’ situation. It’s ridiculous.”

In 1962, Prowse became engaged to Sinatra but broke it off after six weeks. “Frank wants me to give up the business,” Prowse told celebrity columnist Hedda Hopper shortly before calling the wedding off. “It’s a bit of a problem for me. . . .”

Prowse married dancer and choreographer Eddie Frazier in 1969 but separated after eight months. Her 1972 marriage to actor John McCook was delayed five weeks when Prowse gave birth to the pair’s son, Seth, an hour before wedding vows were scheduled to be exchanged.

Born to an Englishman working in India, Prowse was 3 when her father died and her mother took her and her brother to Durban, South Africa, to live with relatives.

“I’d been dancing ever since I could walk, so when I was 4 and my mother had to go to work, she sent me to dancing class,” Prowse recalled later. “It was largely a means of keeping me happy and out of mischief.”

But Prowse was so talented that she was dancing with Johannesburg’s Festival Ballet by age 14. She was performing with Teatro Madrid in Spain when 20th Century Fox cabled her to come to Hollywood.

Along with her roles in “Can-Can” and “G.I. Blues,” Prowse starred in “The Fiercest Heart,” “The Right Approach” and “Second Time Around” for the studio in 1960 and 1961. She later starred in “An American Wife,” “Dingaka,” “Who Killed Teddy Bear?” and “Run for Your Wife” for other studios before her film career stalled.

She starred in the television series “Mona McCluskey”--a sitcom about a movie star married to an Air Force sergeant--that was canceled after one season in 1966. “Things generally happen for the best. I never worry about what happens in my career, because I can always do something else,” she told an interviewer afterward.

Prowse performed steadily on television in the 1970s and ‘80s, appearing often on specials.

She attracted a flurry of publicity in 1987 when she was mauled by an 80-pound leopard during rehearsals at Cal State Northridge for a “Circus of the Stars” television show. She returned to work after receiving five stitches in her neck.

The same animal attacked Prowse again 2 1/2 months later at the NBC-TV studios in Burbank as she was rehearsing for an appearance on the “Tonight Show.” That time, about 30 stitches were required for wounds to Prowse’s neck and ear.

After that incident, Prowse, an animal lover, vowed to restrict future performances to animals “no bigger than an alley cat.”

Prowse is survived by her son, Seth McCook, her mother, a brother and longtime companion B.J. Allen. Services were not immediately announced.