NEARLY KILLED ME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 187, 10 August 1939, Page 9

NEARLY KILLED ME.

DANCER ON SLIMMING.

SENT TO SWISS SANATORIUM. HER SIX MONTHS' ORDEAL. (Special—By Air Mail.) LONDON, July 16. Miss Tilly Losch, the famous dancer, arrives back in London this week after a six months' absence that has puzzled all except a few of her intimate friends. The secret of her disappearance was that Miss Loseh had been undergoing treatment in a Swiss sanatorium, after nearly losing her life by slimming.

"My case should be a warning to all those who have taken up slimming fads," she said. ' When I was in Hollywood for the films 'The Garden of Allah' and 'The Good Earth,' I thought it essential to keep my weight down. Xot that 1 was huge, but because I had the mistaken idea that the slimmer I was the better dancer I would be. So I ate nothing but raw vegetables. The absence of square meals, the doctors told me afterwards, had undermined my whole constitution and lowered my resistance.

"I was on holiday in Wales last Christmas when I caught a cold. That was the start of my illness. The doctors immediately sent me to Switzerland t3 prevent serious complications."

The dancer who started her brilliant career at the age of six in the Vienna Opera Ballet shuddered as she recalled her early days in the sanatorium. "Being sent there seemed to be a death sentence. It was a terrific shock to learn that I was seriously ill, for I had never been ill in my life* before."