Meet the real-life Rockette who inspired a glittering new novel

Fiona Davis writes gripping historic dramas established in New York City’s most glittering landmarks, from the Frick Assortment to the Chelsea Lodge.

But in 2021, 81-year-old Sandra Lachenauer contacted Davis as a result of her web page suggesting an additional site: Radio Town Audio Corridor.

“She said, ‘You know, I’m a former Rockette and if you want to know all about Radio Metropolis, you should connect with me,’ ” Davis tells The Article.

“So I did, and she just experienced such an extraordinary memory for almost everything that she’d accomplished and the specifics of what it was like to dance there that I imagined, ‘Okay: I’m gonna have to do this.’ ”

The consequence is “The Spectacular” (Dutton, out now).

The novel follows Marian, a plucky young dancer in the 1950s, who defies her family’s expectations when she runs away from residence to be a part of the Rockettes — proper as a mysterious bomber is terrorizing the metropolis, leaving explosives in some of the Major Apple’s most legendary landmarks.

Davis interviewed about a dozen Rockettes in the system of her investigate, but Lachenauer proved to be an a must have useful resource, plying her with previous courses and photographs from her time there, as perfectly as looking at a manuscript and offering notes for Davis to make her tale as reliable as doable.

“I was genuinely intimidated because I really do not have a dance qualifications,” Davis explains.

“[But Lachenauer] described that she experienced some archival content that she could send me, so I experienced items like the everyday plan, a flooring program, a map of what it was like.”

Lachenauer even helped her with a chase scene set backstage. “I said to her, ‘Where would an individual disguise?’ And she came up with that [part of the book].”

Lachenauer — now 83 and primarily based in Monmouth Seaside, NJ — danced with The Rockettes from February 1959 until July 1963.

Like Marian in “The Impressive,” Lachenauer joined the troupe when she was 19 and lived in the famed Rehearsal Club, the all-ladies boarding dwelling on 53rd Avenue for aspiring ingenues.

“Right just before I moved in, Carol Burnett moved out,” Lachenauer tells The Post.

“I was 19 and owning a excellent time.”

Lachenauer, who goes by Sandy, grew up in a modest town in Illinois and had never read of the Rockettes before her ideal friend joined the troupe.

The subsequent 12 months, Lachenauer auditioned also. Soon after she created the slice, the line captain bought her a ticket to the next exhibit.

“I was in awe simply because I experienced under no circumstances witnessed them execute,” Lachenauer recollects.

“I reported to her, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I can do that.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Oh certainly you can.’ ”

Lachenauer danced at Radio Town for 3 and a half a long time. She even met her husband, Bob, in the Corridor.

“He came in just a few months just after I did and was apprenticing in the electrical office,” she claims.

“He was a catch — there weren’t a lot of bachelors in the new music hall. So he experienced pretty a bunch of ladies just after him. But I normally say to him, ‘You chased me. I did not chase you.’ ”

Lachenauer finished up quitting the Rockettes when she was pregnant with her initial of 3 youngsters.

She finally opened her possess dance studio, teaching ballet in suburban New Jersey.

She says her passion and her satisfied reminiscences motivated her to reach out to Davis.

“I experienced browse all her books,” Lachenauer states. “I genuinely like her fashion of creating.”

Even right after dancing in a person of the most well-known theaters in the planet, Lachenauer claimed that assisting Davis write her newest tome was a unique thrill.

“Have you at any time been so shocked you could not cease wanting at a little something?” she asks.

“That’s how I felt when I seemed at my mobile phone and noticed that Fiona answered me.

“I am commencing to sense like Gloria Swanson in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ coming down the stairs, declaring, ‘Are you completely ready for my shut up, Mr. DeMille?’ ” she claims, just as she is about to hang up the cell phone to go to her seniors faucet dance course.

“Either that or Carol Burnett’s model of it.”