Flo Ziegfeld-Billie Burke papers, 1907-1984

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Flo Ziegfeld-Billie Burke papers, 1907-1984

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Collection Data

Description: The collection consists mainly of materials from Billie Burke's career, which include her play, radio, and film scripts, and a relatively small amount of clippings, photographs, and business papers. Materials relating to her career predominate, but there is material relating to Ziegfeld's later career as well.
Names: Burke, Billie, 1885-1970 (Creator); Ziegfeld, Flo, 1869-1932 (Creator)
Library locations: Billy Rose Theatre Division; Shelf locator: *T-Mss 1987-010
Topics: Motion pictures -- California -- Los Angeles; Theater -- New York (State) -- New York; Burke, Billie, 1885-1970; Ziegfeld, Flo, 1869-1932; Held, Anna, 1877?-1918; Erlanger, Abraham L., 1859-1930; Cantor, Eddie, 1892-1964; Brice, Fanny
Genres: Documents; Clippings; Photographs; scripts (documents)
Notes: Content: 8.25 linear feet (17 boxes, 1 slipcase and 1 oversized portfolio); Biographical/historical: Florenz Ziegfeld (1867-1932) has become a mythical figure in the annals of American show business. Born in Chicago, the son and namesake of a classical musician and music teacher, he opted for a career in popular entertainment, first as a booker of vaudeville acts and later, as the producer of a number of plays mainly to showcase the talents of his first wife Anna Held. He found his true niche as the synthesizer of a form of revue which became known as the Follies. Produced without a thought to expense, the Follies were the benchmark against which other producers' revues were measured. From the first Follies in 1907 to the last lavishly produced under his aegis in 1931, he succeeded in perfecting the form and making his shows the launching pad for such talented performers as Nora Bayes, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Bert Williams, Fanny Brice, amid countless others. In addition to the Follies, Ziegfeld presented a number of book musicals, the most famous of which was Show Boat, long considered the watershed in the development of the American musical form. Billie Burke (1885-1970) was born Mary William Ethelburt Burke in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a charismatic singing clown with the Barnum and Bailey Circus named Billy Burke and a fortyish widow with four children. Their only child was a red-headed girl, who was nicknamed "Billie" for her father. Mrs. Burke became the quintessential stage mother, pushing her daughter on the stage at an early age. After attending school in England and France, Billie made her debut at the age of 14 in a London musical titled The School Girl. Gradually getting more and more substantial parts, she was spotted by American producer Charles Frohman, who lured her and her mother to New York with an offer to play opposite the matinee idol John Drew in the play My Wife. From this point on, she starred in a number of Broadway productions under Frohman's management, but after her marriage to Florenz Ziegfeld in 1914, her husband became her manager. In 1916, she began a movie career simultaneously with her stage performances and by the arrival of talking pictures, she shuttled back and forth from the movies to the stage during the rest of her career. Her most famous movie roles were as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz and as the wife of Cosmo Topper in the famous film series Topper. She wrote her autobiography With a Feather on my Nose in 1949 and a book of self-improvement With Powder on My Face in 1959.; Content: The Florenz Ziegfeld-Billie Burke Papers covers Burke's career approximately from the time when she first went on the stage in the early years of the twentieth century until her retirement, and superficially covers that portion of Ziegfeld's career and life after Burke and he were married. Although there are scripts included that represent Ziegfeld productions, most of them concern Burke's career as a stage actress and later, as a radio and film actress. The business papers are especially noteworthy because they include several contracts between Ziegfeld and A. L. Erlanger and other producers and also because there are financial records of some of the Ziegfeld productions.
Type of Resource: Text
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b15072968; MSS Unit ID: 21559; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 0acc4d80-66a0-013a-ecf9-0242ac110004

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Flo Ziegfeld-Billie Burke papers, 1907-1984

Collection Data