Allegra Kent Allegra Kent Allegra Kent (born August 11, 1937) is an American ballet dancer, actress, children's book author and columnist. Iris Margo Cohen was born to Jewish parents, Harry Herschel and Shirley (née Weissman) Cohen, and later changed her name to Allegra Kent. Kent grew up in what she later described as a dysfunctional environment. In "Once a Dancer: An Autobiography", she describes her Texan father – "who liked to substitute 'Cowboy' for Herschel" – as having "a gambler's soul and a restless nature". She describes her Wisznice-born immigrant mother as feeling "neither European nor American; she was ashamed of her
Allegra Byron remarked that their toddler son William disliked Allegra, but was fond of his baby sister Clara. She saw her son's reaction to Allegra, who was no blood relation to him, as "an argument in favor of those who advocate "instinctive natural affection"." In addition, the Shelleys were constantly in debt and Mary Shelley wanted the baby to be sent to Byron and wanted her difficult and temperamental stepsister, who had too close a relationship with her husband, to leave her house. After the child's birth, Shelley wrote to Byron "of the exquisite symmetry" and beauty of "a little being whom