Stars of Vaudeville #129: Anna Held
Today is Anna Held’s birthday, she of the famous milk baths. Before becoming Flo Ziegfeld’s second great entrepreneurial project (after strongman Eugene Sandow) the Polish-born Held was a star of the Parisian variety stage. Ziegfeld discovered her there in 1896 and brought her back to the states, where together they made millions of dollars on Broadway. Their most famous publicity stunt had Held taking frightfully decadent baths in in tubs full of milk carted in daily from a local dairy. Her pregnancy in 1908 kept her out of the first Follies (the format of which she is said to have suggested) and then caused Ziegfeld to dump her in favor of Lilliane Lorraine. Whereupon she went back to vaudeville, touring the U.S. and France throughout WWI. She died of cancer in 1918. The moral? Milk gives you cancer.
To learn more about the roots of variety entertainment, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
March 16, 2010 at 3:14 pm
[...] repertoire grew over the years to include: Vesta Victoria, Eddie Foy, Eva Tanguay, Ethyl Barrymore, Anna Held, Harry Lauder, Irene Franklin, Pat Rooney, Frank Tinny, George M. Cohan, Sarah Bernhardt, Nazimova, [...]
April 12, 2010 at 10:19 pm
[...] out of steam and Ziegfeld broke into Broadway musicals, famously making a star of French chorine Anna Held, through a barrage of clever stunts such as giving out to the press that she took daily baths in [...]
August 3, 2010 at 5:03 pm
[...] repertoire grew over the years to include: Vesta Victoria, Eddie Foy, Eva Tanguay, Ethyl Barrymore, Anna Held, Harry Lauder, Irene Franklin, Pat Rooney, Frank Tinny, George M. Cohan, Sarah Bernhardt, Nazimova, [...]