Muriel Dresser poses next to her much-used piano with husband, Bud, and Tovar Candy Dancer, one of 10 Westland Terriers they raise at their AKC Kennel outside Willamina.

Marcus Larson / News-Register

Self-taught pianist Muriel Tovar accompanies herself as she croons a hit tune at a Marina del Rey night club in 1971.

Submitted photo

Muriel Tovar, left, poses with her mother, Tana, and sister, Lolita, for a publicity shot in the early 1940s.

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The dancing Tovar sisters joined the Andrews Sisters, Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame and Cisco Kid TV star Leo Carrillo in this 1944 western/ romance musical.

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When Muriel Dresser sits down at the piano on Sunday at Willamina's Free Methodist Church, she says, "I'm playing for the Lord." But decades ago, as a young girl, she performed for pay - big pay.

It wasn't her considerable talent at tickling the ivories that brought in the bucks, rather her adeptness on the dance floor. At an age when most children were learning their ABCs, Muriel Tovar was already an accomplished flamenco dancer.

Born in Manhattan, Muriel attended the Dance Forum at Carnegie Hall in 1939 with her older sister, Lolita. The siblings, 5 and 6 at the time, went at the urging of their mother, Tana, to learn Spain's signature dance - the flamenco.

Muriel and Lollita quickly mastered the sweeping swirls, rat-a-tat toe taps and flamboyant flourishes of the age-old, multi-ethnic art form, made famous by Spanish Gypsies.

From the early 1940s through the early 1950s, the sisters teamed up, most often as a duo, but sometimes joined by their mother, and occasionally even their brother, Conrad, for couples' fandangos in a variety of performing venues.

Talent obviously runs in the Tovar family. Muriel's father, Manuel, was an oil painter and classical violinist who worked from a studio in Greenwich Village. And Tana's own dancing abilities were exceeded only by her desire to propel her children toward success.

In 1942, Tana uprooted the family and abandoned the Big Apple for Hollywood. Within two years, she had landed the girls roles in a movie titled "Moonlight and Cactus," a western/romance musical starring the Andrews Sisters.

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At the height of their popularity in 1944, Laverne, Maxene and Patty Andrews had a gold record to their credit, ensuring strong box office for an entertaining film that also featured Leo Carrillo, best known as Pancho in the 1950s TV series, The Cisco Kid.

That same year, Muriel announced that she wanted a piano. Asked why, the precocious 11-year-old said she was certain she could play one, even though she had never taken a lesson and could not read a line of music.

Tana apparently took her younger daughter's unabashed self confidence seriously. She came across an old upright, being discarded by a neighborhood church, and bought it for $10.

That modest sum launched another aspect of Muriel's amazing career.

A year later, the sisters were on-screen for the second and final time in "Bombalera," a Latin American musical short from Paramount, which starred Olga San Juan.

The vivacious 18-year-old, an American-born singer and dancer, billed herself variously as the "Cuban Cyclone" or the "Puerto Rican Pepperpot." Her even younger co-stars called themselves simply "The Dancing Tovars."

A more colorful name might have been the "Dazzling Flamenco Duo." Following their film roles, representation by the powerhouse William Morris Agency got them an extended tour through America's Borscht Belt, and beyond

The appropriately named "Borscht Capades" was an ethnically slanted variety show promoted by Mickey Katz, the father of Academy Award, Tony and Golden Globe winner Joel Grey.

Though Grey didn't launch his career until the early 1960s, he learned his shtick from the song, dance and comedy routines that made his father's production a hit with audiences from the Catskills to eastern Canada, the New Jersey shore to southern Florida.

The Tovar sisters perfected their own routines to the point where they were invited to perform with the USO, criss-crossing the country during the Korean War.

"I remember flying to military bases on huge B-36 bombers," Tovar said. "They had six engines. We were part of a troupe that included Red Skelton and Danny Kaye."

As for perfection, Muriel's instincts proved unerringly accurate in regard to her piano-playing abilities.

"I just listened to a piece a few times and I could play it," she said. "That's still the way it is today. I've never taken lessons and I can't read music."

When she turned 18, in 1951, Muriel decided it was time to quit dancing.

"I had essentially missed my childhood," she said. "I wanted to do something else, be an average, normal person for awhile."

She worked in L.A. as a switchboard operator, then took a job at the Diamond Exchange, where she learned how to grade the precious stones.

She got married in 1960 and had three children in four years. She played piano for the school district.

Eventually, the desire to perform professionally again proved too strong to resist. In the early 1970s, her innate talent on those 88 keys, coupled with a nice singing voice, landed her gigs in L.A. nightclubs.

A few years of developing her jazz and ballad repertoire, while crooning the night away, satisfied that desire. In 1978, Muriel made another big change in her life by moving to Portland.

"I was fed up with Southern California," she said. "I fell in love with the clean and green and decided it was time to leave."

With her gem expertise, she landed a position at Friedlander's Jewelers and settled into the suburbs.

Children grown and gone, Muriel reached her 60th birthday in 1993, living alone and still driving what she called a frumpy family car. Her kids urged her to go out and buy something fun, fancy and perhaps even frivolous.

She went to Olinger Lincoln-Mercury in Beaverton and wound up not only with a brand new Lincoln Mark VII, but also a new husband. Bud Dresser, the dealership's general manager, took a liking to this particular customer and decided to sell himself along with the car.

"Bud was working 10 hours a day, six days a week," Muriel said. "After we got together, that changed. It took eight more years to get him to retire, but when it happened in 2001, we decided to buy a place in the country and raise Westland Terriers.

They both loved Yamhill County. They knew they'd found what they were looking for when they came across 5 1/2 acres northwest of Willamina, at the edge of the Coast Range foothills.

"We wanted our Westies and a garden," Muriel said. "We got both those, and we've also had goats, sheep and steers. Last summer, we kept horses for a friend."

Big city folks who didn't know a soul in the area, they went to the Free Methodist Church in Willamina to introduce themselves. The next day, they got a visit from pastor Gary Widrig and his wife, Marylou.

Widrig took one look at the piano and asked Muriel, "Do you play? We need a pianist."

Over the years, dancing and singing had become fond memories from the past, but she never gave up the piano.

"Yes, I do," she replied. "But the only way I could play hymns would be if I were to hear them on CDs."

"No problem," replied Woodrich. Before long, the church had a new pianist and the pianist had a new outlet for her music.

From childhood recognition to senior satisfaction, Muriel Dresser has come full circle in a most gratifying way. Things couldn't have worked out better for someone with a God-given gift.