Billie Mahoney danced with the best of them — and at 80, this sexy number isn't done yet

Billie graduated from college in 1949 and moved to New York City a year later. In 1954, she joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a five-ring spectacle that began its season at Madison Square Garden. Mike Todd — later one of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands — produced the opening night. Billie led the band in, drum-majorette-style and twirled her batons in the center ring.

Billie did the New York dates for Ringing Bros. for a couple of years. The circus was filled with glamour then. One year, James Cagney sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" while Billie twirled. Marlene Dietrich served as the ringmaster while floats representing each month of the year rolled in. Martha Raye rode the Halloween-themed October float, and Sonja Henie wore ice skates on the December float. The finale was January's Happy New Year float, featuring Marilyn Monroe atop a pink elephant. Billie also led the band from astride an elephant. Getting off the elephant was the tricky part, and she often tore her tights on the jeweled harness or the elephant's bristly hide.

She recalls her circus days fondly. "Everyone in New York was, 'Billie! You're with the circus!' Everyone says, 'How great, Billie, you worked with Hamp at the Apollo.' So in show business, I am a big star."

Her mother saw things differently. One night, on the phone, Rona Mahoney spoke contemptuously of Billie's career choices. She didn't like that Billie performed with a black band, and she viewed the circus as something people ran away to join. "How low can you sink?" she asked.

The words still sting. Billie's voice quavers, and the tears start flowing when she recalls her mother's disdain for her most important gigs.

She recovers a bit and gives a little laugh. "And I thought, How little do you know."

Billie's early New York years were filled with nightclub dates, dance rehearsals and dance classes. She worked as a cigarette girl and a coat-check girl at the Latin Quarter and the Copacabana Club. She once helped Frank Sinatra with his coat. He slipped her a buck, four times the average tip, and said, "Here you go, sweetie."

A professional choreographer helped her polish her act. She still incorporated the batons, and Variety described her performance in classic '50s language: "Gal really scores with sock flash terp-stuff ... and her twirling's boffo."

One novelty routine — which she performed in Lionel Hampton's show — was a duet with a metronome. While the band played "Time on My Hands," the metronome ticked, and she tap-danced during the pauses in the song. The ticks got faster, and so did her dancing. Then the metronome stopped. She looked at it. The band kicked in with a brassy finale, and she picked up the metronome and triumphantly left the stage.

Billie says people often told her, "'Oh, you're from Kansas City, that wide-open town.' So they expected me to be very wild," she said. When Billie appeared on the Arthur Godfrey and His Friends TV show, the announcer whispered to her, "Arthur's quite taken with you and wants to know if you would want to come to his place after the show." Billie declined.

When she auditioned at the Latin Quarter, an 18-year-old Barbara Walters sat in with her dad, who owned the club. After Billie performed, she says she was asked whether she would work topless. "I said, 'No thank you. I'm talented. I do an act,'" she recalls with a laugh.

Toward the back of her scrapbook, Billie appears with her auburn hair cut short. Her dance outfits — which previously featured embellishments such as fringed epaulettes — changed to plain black leotards. In other photos, she's clad in a black turtleneck paired with a long pendant necklace. Her act changed, too. By the mid-1950s, many hotels had installed ice tanks, so she learned how to twirl her batons while ice-skating.

She married in 1961 and divorced her husband after 20 years. She moved back to Kansas City in 1992 to be with her mother, who, at 87, was still going strong. Her father had died of pneumonia the year before.

Billie's schedule today is still as hectic as it was in the '40s. In addition to teaching, she's active in the Worldwide Church of God and volunteers for the food kitchen at the Willa Gill Center in Kansas City, Kansas. She also hangs out at the Mutual Musicians Foundation for jam sessions with her friends. She is already planning her next big trip: Next fall, she'd like to go to Warming Island, a newly discovered island off the coast of Greenland. She'll take the cold-weather gear from her 2003 trip to Antarctica.