Cincinnati sometimes gets a bad rap as a priggish and censorious community of small-minded prudes, but we often go out of our way to earn exactly that reputation.

For instance, when the Tango invaded the Queen City in 1913, local authorities mounted a vigorous defense, hoping to prevent the moral pollution of our young people. To be fair, although the Tango endured the fiercest opprobrium, Cincinnati got plenty het up about an entire array of dances that year, including the notorious Bunny Hop, the Castle Walk, the Fish, the Bear Cat, the Turkey Trot, the Barbary Coast Walk Back, and the Texas Tommy. Heavens! Where were Cannibal & the Headhunters? It was truly a “Land of 1,000 Dances”!

But it was mostly the Argentinian Tango that got the parents and other civic guardians all exercised. The Tango was banned at Chester Park, Coney Island, Music Hall and the University of Cincinnati. What was the big deal? The Cincinnati Post [23 December 1912] explained:

“With the unusually tight skirts that are worn today, the Argentinian Tango is most suggestive. Never before has the young society woman consented to combine the revelations of the bathing beach with those of the formal ball gown. Hitherto, when she disclosed her nether extremities, she covered up her neck and shoulders and vice versa.”

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [21 November 1913], even the Pope got involved:

“Several bishops have addressed to the Vatican questions as to whether confessors should give absolution to Catholics who dance the tango. The reply of the Vatican is as follows: ‘The tango must be considered an immoral dance and consequently it is prohibitive to Catholics.’”

Although Cincinnati’s archbishop remained aloof from the terpsichorean fray, the Municipal Court got dragged into the Tango controversy when an insurance agent named Justin McCarthy, who claimed expertise in several verboten dance steps, including the Bunny Hop, the Turkey Trot, the Bear, and the Tango, was called into court as a witness. The defendant was Jacob Tahl, salesman for the Queen City Rag & Paper Company, who objected to being ejected from Coney Island for immoral dancing by attacking the park’s security staff. McCarthy never got to testify because Tahl’s attorney instead asked Coney Island security officer Eddie Barr to demonstrate the prohibited dances, but the Judge objected.

As usual, Cincinnati was somewhat ambivalent about the tango ban. That is often the case here when there is an opportunity to rake in a few dollars while skirting ever-so-nimbly around the censors. At Chester Park, for example, a May 1913 news story announced that the latest dance sensation, the “Spanish Boston” would be demonstrated as an alternative to the banned Turkey Trot and the Tango. Just one month later, according to the Cincinnati Post [7 June 1913], the story was totally different:

“The Hartmans will show the patrons of Chester how the ‘Tango’ is danced in Berlin and Paris music halls.”

The Tango was also good business for a young real estate clerk named Harry Bernard Leussing. By night, Leussing took the dance floor at the Orpheum on West Fifth Street, as a Tango partner. The Cincinnati Post [3 March 1914] explained:

“A tango partner, Bernice? Child, where are your wits? It is the newest profession, and it pays – well, rather, it pays! So many women who do not tango would tango if the tangoing were good. That is to say, they know how to tango but their husbands do not. As is perfectly well known, after a long day at the office the ordinary businessman feels about as much like tangoing or one-stepping or hesitating as standing on his hands. Hence, reason the tango promoters, a fine young chap whom any husband wouldn’t mind his wife dancing with is needed to stimulate the game.”

For his part, Mr. Leussing describes himself as merely the “humble means” by which women can enjoy the newest steps. Leussing and Inez Fennell also performed as a duo to demonstrate new dances.

The Tango proved very rewarding, as well, for George Coverdale. Just one year before he headlined at Cincinnati’s Grand Opera House, Coverdale was selling newspapers on a street corner. Now, as part of a dancing duo with partner Minerva White, he performed the Tango Trip in the “Red Widow” review. The Cincinnati Post [7 December 1912] describes the dance:

“The Tango Trip is the ex-newsboy’s creation. It is danced to a pensive introduction with a sandwich finale. It begins with the man holding the girl at arm’s length, his fingers grazing hers. Suddenly, a close embrace, a la ‘bunny hug.’ And, waltzing to a presto movement, they do the ‘dip,’ almost touching their knees to the floor with each revolution. Next they glide, faster and faster, until they burst into a wild rag and finish with an oscillating, whirling lock-step.”

Outside of those oscillating, whirling lock-steps, one finds little objectionable. If the Tango was bad, what was an acceptable dance in Cincinnati back then? Let us leave that judgement to Miss Emilie W. McVea, UC’s dean of women, as reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer [7 January 1914]:

“’The hesitation waltz, if properly danced, is really a beautiful step, and is not objectionable,’ she said, ‘and even the modified tango may be permitted, but we shall not allow any dancing which is evidently vulgar.’”