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Ziegfeld Follies
The ''Ziegfeld Follies'' were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as '' The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air''. Founding and history Inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., reportedly at the suggestion of his then-wife, the actress and singer Anna Held. The shows' producers were turn-of-the-twentieth-century producing titans Klaw and Erlanger. The Follies were a series of lavish revues, something between later Broadway shows and the more elaborate high-class vaudeville and variety show. The first follies, '' The Follies of 1907'', was produced that year at the '' Jardin de Paris'' roof theatre. During the Follies era, many of the top entertainers, including W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Josephine Baker, Fanny Brice, Ann Pennington, Bert Williams, Ev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Etting
Ruth Etting (November 23, 1896 – September 24, 1978) was an American singer and actress during the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film. Known as "America's sweetheart of song", her signature tunes were "Shine On, Harvest Moon", "Ten Cents a Dance" and "Love Me or Leave Me (Donaldson and Kahn song), Love Me or Leave Me". As a young girl in Nebraska, Etting had wanted to become an artist; she drew and sketched all the time. At sixteen, her grandparents decided to send her to art school in Chicago. While Etting attended class, she found a job at the Marigold Gardens nightclub. After a short time there, Etting gave up art classes in favor of a career in show business. Etting, who enjoyed singing in school and church, never took any formal singing lessons. She quickly became a featured vocalist at the club. Etting was then managed by Martin Snyder, Moe Snyder, whom she married in 1922. Snyder was known for being very protective of Ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fanny Brice
Fania Borach (October 29, 1891 – May 29, 1951), known professionally as Fanny Brice or Fannie Brice, was an American comedian, Illustrated Songs, illustrated song model, singer, and actress who made many stage, radio, and film appearances. She is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series ''The Baby Snooks Show''. Her life story was loosely adapted into the stage musical ''Funny Girl (musical), Funny Girl''. Brice was famously portrayed by Barbra Streisand in both the original Broadway theatre, Broadway production of the musical and its Funny Girl (film), 1968 film adaptation. Early life Fania Borach was born in Manhattan, New York City, United States, the third child of Rose (née Stern; 1867–1941), a History of the Jews in Hungary, Jewish Hungarian woman who immigrated to the U.S. at age 10, and Alsace, Alsatian immigrant Charles Borach. The Borachs were Pub#Saloon or lounge, saloon owners and had four children: Phillip, born in 1887; Carrie, bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nora Bayes
Nora Bayes (born Rachel Eleonora "Dora" Goldberg; October 3, 1880March 19, 1928) was an American singer and vaudeville performer who was popular internationally between the 1900s and 1920s. She is credited with co-writing the song " Shine On, Harvest Moon" and performed many successful songs during the First World War, including " Over There". She was also noted for her independent views and unconventional private life, becoming an early media celebrity. She made over 160 recordings. Life and career Early life She was born in 1880 in Chicago, the daughter of Rachel and David Goldberg, a Polish-born saloon keeper. She seems to have been given the traditional family name Rachel at birth but was known as Eleonora, or "Dora" as a nickname. She grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish household and moved with her parents to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in her teens. In 1899, she married salesman Otto Gressing. They lived in Joliet, Illinois, and in the hope of starting a stage career, she began ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilda Gray
Gilda Gray (born Marianna Michalska; October 25, 1895 – December 22, 1959) was a Polish-American dancer and actress who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions. Early life and 'the shimmy' Gilda Gray claimed herself to have been born on 24 October 1901 in Kraków (then part of Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Galicia-Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and now part of Poland) and she was an adopted child of Maksymilian (Max) and Wanda Michalski (née Kuras).Giordano, Ralph G. (2008)''Satan in the Dance Hall: Rev. John Roach Straton, Social Dancing, and Morality in 1920s New York City'' Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press. p. 119. . However, according to her birth certificate she was born on 25 October 1895 in a village Rydlewo near Żnin (Żnin County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship) and Maksymilian and Wanda Michalski were her biological parents. In 1903 she emigrated with her parents to the United States. She had one sister, Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ed Wynn
Isaiah Edwin Leopold (November 9, 1886 – June 19, 1966), better known as Ed Wynn, was an American actor and comedian. He began his career in vaudeville in 1903 and was known for his ''Perfect Fool'' comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor, which continued into the 1960s.Obituary ''Variety Obituaries, Variety'', June 22, 1966, page 71. His variety show (1949–1950), ''The Ed Wynn Show'', won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award. Background Wynn was born Isaiah Edwin Leopold in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His father, Joseph, a milliner, was born in Kingdom of Bohemia, Bohemia. His mother, Minnie Greenberg, of Turkish Jews, Turkish and Romanian Jews, Romanian descent, came from Istanbul. Wynn attended Central High School (Philadelphia), Central High School in Philadelphia until age 15. He ran away from home in his teens, worked as a hat salesman and as a utility boy, and eventually adapted his middle nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marilyn Miller
Marilyn Miller (born Mary Ellen Reynolds; September 1, 1898 – April 7, 1936) was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. She died suddenly from complications of nasal surgery at age 37. Early life Marilyn Miller was born in 1898 in Evansville, Indiana, the youngest daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a telephone lineman, and his first wife, the former Ada Lynn Thompson.Staff (March 20, 1942"Marilyn Miller's Mother Dies"''The New York Times'', p.19 The tiny, delicately featured blonde was only four years old when she debuted in the role of Mademoiselle Sugarlump at Lakeside Park in Dayton, Ohio, performing as a member of her family's vaudeville act, named The Columbian Trio. That act, which included her stepfather Oscar Caro Miller a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise Brooks
Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an cultural icon, icon of the flapper culture, in part due to the bob cut, bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career. At the age of 15, Brooks began her career as a dancer and toured with the Denishawn school, Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts where she performed opposite Ted Shawn. After being fired, she found employment as a chorus girl in ''George White's Scandals'' and as a semi-nude dancer in the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' in New York City. While dancing in the ''Follies'', Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and signed a five-year contract with the studio. She appeared in supporting roles in various Paramount films before taking the heroine's role in ''Beggars of Life'' (1928). During this time, she became an intimate friend of actress Marion Davies and join ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Morgan (singer)
Helen Morgan (née Riggin; August 2, 1900 – October 9, 1941) was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s. She starred as Julie LaVerne in the original Broadway production of Hammerstein and Kern's musical ''Show Boat'' in 1927, as well as in the 1932 Broadway revival of the musical, and appeared in two film adaptations, a part-talkie made in 1929 (prologue only) and a full-sound version made in 1936, becoming firmly associated with the role. She suffered from bouts of alcoholism, and despite her notable success in the title role of another Hammerstein and Kern's Broadway musical, '' Sweet Adeline'' (1929), her stage career was relatively short. Helen Morgan died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 41. She was portrayed by Polly Bergen in the ''Playhouse 90'' drama ''The Helen Morgan Story'' and by Ann Blyth in the 1957 biopic based on the televi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Bolger
Raymond Wallace Bolger (; January 10, 1904 – January 15, 1987) was an American actor, dancer, singer, vaudevillian, and stage performer (particularly musical theater) who started his movie career in the silent-film era. Bolger was a major Broadway performer in the 1930s and beyond. He is best known for his roles in '' The Wizard of Oz'' (1939) as the Scarecrow and in Walt Disney's holiday musical fantasy '' Babes in Toyland'' in 1961 as the villainous Barnaby. Bolger was the host of '' The Ray Bolger Show'' on TV from 1953 to 1955, originally titled ''Where's Raymond?'' Early life Raymond Wallace Bolger was born at 598 Second St., South Boston, Massachusetts, into a Catholic family of Irish descent. He was the son of James Edward Bolger and Anne C. (née Wallace). His father, James, was a first-generation American of Irish descent, who was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. Bolger's mother "Annie" was born into a large Irish-American family in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Will Rogers
William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), and is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son". As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in northern Alaska. Rogers began his career as a performer on vaudeville. His rope act led to success in the '' Ziegfeld Follies'', which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Hope
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared in Bob Hope filmography, more than 70 short and feature films, starring in 54. These included a series of seven ''Road to ...'' musical comedy films with Bing Crosby as his partner. Hope hosted the Academy Awards ceremony a record 19 times. He also appeared in many stage productions and television roles and wrote 14 books. The song "Thanks for the Memory" was his signature tune. He was praised for his comedic timing, specializing in one-liners and rapid-fire delivery of jokes that were often self-deprecating. Between 1941 and 1991, he made 57 tours for the United Service Organizations (USO), entertaining military personnel around the world. In 1997, Congress passed a bill that made him an honorary veteran of the Armed Forces. Hope was bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
