Dance with the stars, put thieves behind bars

Gladys Poneira lived a colourful life with celebrity New York friends before marrying, moving to Winnipeg and catching shoplifters at the Bay

By: Eva Wasney

Days before she died, Gladys Poneira was watching a Bette Davis marathon on Turner Classic Movies and regaling her daughter with stories about the famous actress. It was a fitting final scene for a woman whose star-studded anecdotes often made their way into conversation.

"We’d be watching TV and she’d be pointing to these stars and would say, ‘Oh I met this person here’ and ‘This is what this person was like,’" said Melody Clegg, speaking to the Free Press about her mother from her home in Scotland. "They were great stories to tell and people loved hearing about them."

Poneira died in Winnipeg on Nov. 21, 2019 at the age of 94. Hers was a rags-to-almost riches story.

Born in Detroit, Mich. she grew up poor during the Great Depression and dropped out of school at 16 to work in a munitions factory to support her family and the war effort. At 18, she tried to enlist in the United States military but was turned away. A determined young woman, she decided to walk across the border and join up in St. Catharines, Ont., where she served for a year before returning home to care for her dying mother.

Poneira got her first taste of show business while entertaining soldiers at a convalescent hospital in Detroit. The bedside performances gave way to the big stage when she crossed paths with famed band leader Louis Prima.

"He told her that she had a lot of talent and if she wanted to make it big she should go down to New York," said her son Rick Poneira.

She had no formal training, but followed the advice and started dancing with Prima’s band in New York. It was the era of supper clubs and Poneira became a fixture in the local scene and a friend to entertainment elites such as Jerry Lewis, Red Buttons, Joey Bishop and Rodney Dangerfield.

Her resumé grew to include membership in the June Taylor Dancers, a troupe similar to The Rockettes, and performances on the Jackie Gleason show and at the Copacabana nightclub.

Over time, Poneira developed her own style as a comic dancer and was hired to do pratfalls in a Broadway musical with actor Milton Berle.

"She would fall down on cue or fall down stairs," Rick said. "These were the days before they had trained stunt people, so she used to say how much it would hurt."

Berle was an important mentor during Poneira’s introduction to the upper crust of New York society.

"She had these Detroit bad habits... in her vernacular and he would say, ‘No, no if you want to mingle in these crowds you do not say these kinds of phrases,’" Rick said. "She took that to heart and kind of self-educated, to the point where she could move freely with all these movie stars and not feel out of place."

She retired from dancing at 27 and started doing publicity for the Harwin Club in Manhattan, Rick said. It was there that she mingled with the likes of Eva Gabor, Frank Sinatra and Joan Crawford and met her future husband, Jose Poneira.

He played piano at the club and, compared to her, came from a life of luxury. He was born in Germany, grew up with a nanny and had an orthopedic surgeon for a father. The pair hit it off quickly despite their differences, or perhaps because of them.

"Dad used to say, ‘I’ve never met anyone like your mom, she’s so unique,’" Clegg said.

They married within months and moved to Winnipeg, where Gladys had family, several years later. The transition from the Big Apple to a small Prairie city was a difficult one.

"I think my mom never really left New York; it made such an impression upon her," Rick said.

Jose became a big fish in a small pond in Canada and his music career took the family across the country. While her husband was performing on radio and television shows, Poneira was left packing for the next move and caring for their two young children.

"She was a very strong woman, a lot of the winters my dad would go and play music... in Switzerland and my mom was just a single mom," Clegg said. "She’d hold us together."

After moving nearly a dozen times in 10 years, the family settled in Winnipeg permanently and Gladys discovered a new calling: sussing out shoplifters at local department stores.

She started a lengthy career in retail security in her early 40s, working first at Sears before moving to the Hudson’s Bay store in Unicity Mall. Gladys was sworn in as a special constable by the Province of Manitoba and recognized by the Bay for her impressive arrest numbers.

Both her children worked at Unicity during their youth and have memories of their mother in action.

"She was running down the mall after someone who had stolen and I think finally, just outside our store, she catches the person and sits on them," Clegg said, laughing. "I remember at that time being so embarrassed… but she was relentless."

Rick worked security at a different store in the mall and teamed up with his mom on several occasions to make arrests.

"I think she liked the excitement and… she was just fearless," he said, adding that the job is part of what inspired him to pursue a career in the Winnipeg Police Service.

In Winnipeg, Gladys and Jose Poneira maintained their reputation as entertainers by hosting cocktail parties for their friends — an eclectic group that included artists, musicians and security guards. The evenings were filled with music, storytelling and the blue haze of cigarette smoke.

Poneira is described by her children as a feisty, caring woman who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and played a mean game of Canasta.

"She was a self-made woman, really," Rick said. "Living in tough times shaped the sort of person she became, she was very independent, very strong-minded."

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney