Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke

246 Pages·2009·3.39 MB·English

by  Grant Hayter-Menzies

Mrs. Ziegfeld
ALSO BY GRANT HAYTER-MENZIES
AND FROM MCFARLAND
Charlotte Greenwood: The Life and Career of
the Comic Star of Vaudeville, Radio and Film (2007)
Mrs. Ziegfeld
The Public and Private
Lives of Billie Burke
GRANT HAYTER-MENZIES
Foreword by Eric Myers
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Unless otherwise noted, photographs are from author’s collection.
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Hayter-Menzies, Grant, ¡964–
Mrs. Ziegfeld : the public and private lives
of Billie Burke / Grant Hayter-Menzies ;
foreword by Eric Myers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-3800-6
illustrated case binding : 50# alkaline paper
1. Burke, Billie, 1885–1970.
2. Actors—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
PN2287.B78H39 2009 792.02'8092—dc22 [B] 2008052173
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2009 Grant Hayter-Menzies. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover: Billie Burke in Happy Husband(1928);
Ornamental trim ©2009 Shutterstock
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To the memory of
Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson (1915–2008),
the greatest Ziegfeld Girl of them all,
and Les,
who has more heart, wisdom and courage
than any wizard could give,
and Jessie,
faithful companion on the Yellow Brick Road
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
The writing of a biography, like the staging of a play, requires more than the mere
creative effort of the playwright. For one thing, the playwright makes use of sugges-
tions, impressions, sudden flashes of inspiration, sudden realizations of potential fail-
ure, that are not entirely his own but often come from people around him. He who
thinks he does it alone is not part of the stream of life that is blood to the veins of a
play, symphony, comedy routine, or a book like the one you are holding in your hands.
Without the help of her daughter and son-in-law, Patricia and William Stephen-
son, both of whom I met in their last summer, I could not have hoped to learn about
the warm, wise and very real woman behind the comic concept popularly known as
Billie Burke. And without the generous memories of Billie’s granddaughters Cecilia
Duncan and Susan Plemons, I could never have understood what it was like to grow
up with, be nurtured by, and nurture in their turn a grandmother who to children
around the world was the pink tulle vision of gracious sorcery, Glinda the Good Witch
from The Wizard of Oz. When I first met this family, they had just been to the Los
Angeles production of Wicked—92-year-old Mrs. Stephenson was, in fact, happily
wearing a t-shirt bearing the green profile of the star of the show. On arrival, my brother
and I both stopped as we approached the Stephenson home as we heard from the swim-
ming pool, where Mrs. Stephenson’s great-grandchildren were playing, the Flo-look-
alike great-grandson say to his sister, who had risen from the water with her long red
hair flowing over her shoulders, “You’ve been Glinda-ized!” Had we had any doubts of
the address, we would have known from that remark that we had found the right place.
It was the right place in so many ways—the place to understand Billie Burke, and to
be welcomed into the sort of happy family only a fairy great-grandmother could
bequeath to posterity.
I have many others to thank for helping me along this particular yellow brick road.
Ned Comstock, archivist par excellence at the USC Cinema-Television Archive, Doheny
Library, and all-around great guy, guided me through the forests of clippings, letters
and photographs in the Billie Burke papers and made it possible for me to document
and assess, for the first time, Billie’s early stage stardom, that almost-lost theatre his-
tory that explains so much of her movie persona.
I thank Richard Lamparski, who shared funny and moving memories of afternoon
tea with Billie, and Barbara Rush, who shared with me fond recollections of making a
vii
viii Acknowledgments
film with a woman she regarded as a legend in her own time. (And thanks also to an
autodidact after my own heart, Kendall Hailey, who kindly put me in touch with Ms.
Rush.) And I thank Jim Crabtree, producing director of the Cumberland County Play-
house in Crossville, Tennessee, who described for me his childhood experience of play-
ing opposite a woman who, despite the passage of time, never stopped being a star.
Without Peter Fitzgerald, whose documentary The Making of ‘The Great Ziegfeld’
and, especially, his generous sharing of his contacts with Billie’s family, this book could
not have been written. Without John Fricke, the real wizard of Oz, who shared his vast
knowledge of the 1939 film and Billie’s role (and singing) in it, the richness of her con-
tribution could never have been so clear to me or so beneficial to the writing of this
book.
My dear brother, Sean William Menzies, not only accompanied me on most of
my forays into archives and libraries, but was there for our special afternoon with Patri-
cia and Bill Stephenson. Luckily for me, he was taking notes when I lost myself in lis-
tening to stories about Billie the mother and grandmother. He allowed me to use him
as a sounding board for the welter of symbols and theories around Billie’s role in Oz
and the ultimate role in our shared human cosmology of Glinda the Good and her
Baumian cohorts. Most of all, he was there in our childhood in front of the flickering
television screen, as we lay side by side in our pajamas watching the annual broadcast
of Oz and crying (as we still do) when Dorothy has to return to Kansas, but glad (as
we still are) that she makes it there at last.
My wonderful cousins, Bob and Roberta Blank, opened their Los Angeles home
to me on my trips back into Billie’s past—I thank them for their hospitality and, above
all, for their belief in me. I thank Corrine Balcaen for her generosity of time and friend-
ship, without which trips to far-flung places to burrow through archives in search of
Billie Burke would not have been possible.
My dear friend, William Luce, the greatest biographer I know, remembered for
me the time he met Billie in Twenty-Eighth Church of Christ, Scientist, in Westwood
Village, California, and how he never forgot her brilliant smile. Bekah and Fern Galindo
kindly shared their first edition of The Wizard of Oz with me.
Dr. Anne Fliotsos’s paper on Billie was the first opening of the door to under-
standing the arc of this woman’s and actor’s life, on stage and off—without Dr. Fliot-
sos’s showing the way, I would never have reached the writing of these acknowledgments.
Very special thanks for advice and encouragement to Muriel Donaldson, Nathalie
Lewis, Patrick McGilligan, William Mann, Judith Mayne and Anthony Slide.
Last but not at all least, I am thankful for the generosity of the Lilly Library, Indi-
ana University, Bloomington, Indiana, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
at Boston University, and the Cinematic Arts Library at the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles.
Any omissions, errors, faults or flubs are my own.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword by Eric Myers 1
Preface 3
• PART I : SAWDUST, STARDUST •
1. “A shy, wistful sort of moppet” 9
2. The Education of an Actress 16
3. Toast of Broadway 28
4. Halcyon Hour 33
5. “There is only one Billie Burke...” 40
6. Soubrette 47
7. Burkeley Crest 54
8. Mr. Ziegfeld 61
9. Mrs. Ziegfeld 73
10. Movie Star 79
11. “...you love others so much, too...” 89
12. “The fine days” 94
13. Flickering Star 101
14. A Beginning, and an End 112
• PART II : SILLY WOMAN •
15. Crash 123
16. Death, Then Life 135
17. “A small, bewildered comedienne...” 142
18. The Great Ziegfeld 156
ix