Editing Ruby Keeler (section)

==Early life==
Keeler was born in [[Dartmouth, Nova Scotia]], Canada, in 1909 to Ralph Hector and Nellie (''née'' Lahey) Keeler, one of six siblings in an Irish Catholic family. Two sisters, Helen and Gertrude, had brief performing careers. Her father was a truck driver. When Ruby was three years old, her family moved to New York City, where her father could get better pay.<ref name=foster/> Although Keeler was interested in taking dance lessons, the family could not afford to send her.

Keeler attended St. Catherine of Siena on New York's East Side, and one period each week, a dance teacher taught all styles of dance. The teacher saw potential in Keeler and spoke to her mother about Ruby taking lessons at her studio.<ref name="Tap">{{cite book| last1=Frank| first1=Rusty E.| last2=Hines| first2=Gregory| title=Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories 1900–1955| date=March 22, 1995| publisher=Da Capo Press| page=358| isbn=978-0306806353| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KjRBswEACAAJ&q=Tap!+The+Greatest+Tap+Dance+Stars+and+Their+Stories+1900%E2%80%931955| access-date=April 30, 2019| via=Google Books}}</ref> Though her mother declined, apologizing for the lack of money, the teacher wanted to work with her so badly that she asked her mother if she would bring her to class lessons on Saturdays, and she agreed.

During the classes, a girl told her about auditions for chorus girls. The law required professional chorus girls to be at least 16 years old; although they were only 13, they decided to lie about their ages at the audition.<ref name="Tap"/> It was a [[Tap dance|tap]] audition, and many other talented girls were there. The stage was covered except for a wooden apron at the front. When it was Ruby's turn to dance, she asked the dance director, Julian Mitchell, if she could dance on the wooden part so that her taps could be heard. He did not answer, so she went ahead, walked up to the front of the stage, and started her routine. The director said "Who said you could dance up there?" She replied "I asked you!", and she got a job in [[George M. Cohan]]'s ''The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly'' (1923), in which she made $45 per week, equal to ${{Inflation|US|45|1923|fmt=c}} today. <ref name="Tap"/>