Buster Shaver & Olive- The Dancing Doll

The dancing team of Buster Shaver & Olive started out as Buster Shaver, Olive & George. Olive & George were sister and brother and yes, they were both midgets. The last name of Olive & George was Brasno. George was out of the act for this performance, which features Buster Shaver dancing with the "living doll" of Olive in a department store during the Christmas shopping season.
This entertaining clip comes from the public domain episode of "The Colgate Comedy Hour" originally aired on December 14, 1952. It was episode 13 of the show's third season, hosted by Abbott & Costello. Olive Brasno is quite extraordinary, and proves that midgets CAN be outstanding dancers.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Buster
• Shaver
• Olive
• The
• Dancing
• Doll
• George
• Brasno
• Colgate
• comedy
• hour
• 1952
• christmas
• department
• store
• dance
• living

[MrColigings]

Did she get bigger? She looks like a ten year old here. In the Little Rascals short, she looked smaller, like a six year old.

[MrColigings]

Do you have anything more on these two? She's so beautiful.

[MrColigings]

Reminds me of the midget dancing girl from the Poe story Hop Frog. She was portrayed by a little girl in the movie version, though. Too bad.

[icbr]

@smerd70 Thank you! I'll be on the lookout for it. I think it may wind up under some Xmas trees later in the year. BTW, they knew Bud and Lou and here's a true story. Olive was visiting another midget friend in SF and A&C happened to be in town and Lou wanted to go out that night and party with the girls. They all got into a cab together but he was already so smashed that lunging for them sexually he kept missing them. The girls & cabbie were laughing hysterically the whole time! He got none ;)

[smerd70]

@icbr You can get it on DVD, it's on the Abbott & Costello Christmas Special.

[icbr]

@jivinjimbo You're quite welcome.

[jivinjimbo]

Oops, I see now that this was from "The Colgate Comedy Hour", and not from a movie, which possibly makes the footage even more rare! Excellent!

[jivinjimbo]

Wow, wonderful footage of some great dancing from a movie that I've never seen, and of people I've never heard of! It's also cool that a relative happened to find this on youtube, and provided some great, interesting, behind-the-scenes info on it! Thanks for posting!

[icbr]

Where did you find this?! Which TV show? (They were on so many in the early days of the tube). And thank you for loading it! I've got to share this with friends and family. Buster Shaver was my grandfather and I knew Olive as well. They both passed in the '90s. BTW that over-the-shoulder flip at the end was their signature movement and no one else in the biz could do it. Sinatra even wanted to try it with Olive but she said no because he didn't know how and she might get hurt. True story.