Trump Speechwriter Meredith McIver Was Once a Broadway Baby

Before her name became synonymous with "Speechgate," Meredith McIver, a Donald Trump staff writer who officially took the blame for the sections of Melania Trump's Monday night speech at the Republican National Convention that plagiarized Michelle Obama's DNC speech of 2008, was a New York ballet dancer who briefly basked in the bright lights of Broadway.

As the New York Times reports, McIver is the daughter of a ballroom dancing team, and, at age 14, came to New York to study at the at the School of American Ballet on a Ford Foundation scholarship.

But she then enrolled as an English major at the University of Utah, graduating magna cum laude in 1976.

She continued to dance until injuries slowed her down, settling in New York's Upper West Side and eventually making her mark in the publishing world by co-authoring Donald Trump's books "How To Get Rich," "Never Give Up," "Think Like A Billionaire" and "Trump 101: The Way To Success."

But before that, McIver appeared on the stage of Broadway's Minskoff Theatre in the 1981 revival of Cole Porter and Abe Burrows' 1953 hit, CAN-CAN. Burrows himself directed the production, which was staged and choreographed by Roland Petit and starred Zizi Jeanmaire, Avery Schreiber and Pamela Sousa in the role that made Gwen Verdon an overnight star.

The critical response was that the material did not hold up well and the production closed after five performances.

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UNK, The New York Public Library. (1981). Actress Pamela Sousa (3L) with cast in a scene from the Broadway revival of the musical "Can Can." (New York) Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/356497f0-9f49-0132-64b6-58d385a7bbd0