travsd

Frances White (M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I)

Diminutive and child-like, Frances White (born today in 1896) is best known for her coy rendition of the song represented above. A Seattle native, she was a chorus girl in San Francisco when she teamed up with William Rock of Rock and Fulton. By the mid teens they were stars of big time and Broadway revues. White was the favorite with audiences however; by 1919 she split with Rock and went on her own. For a time, she was married to Frank Fay; in 1922 she was spoken of in connection with film star Raymond McKee. She retired from show business in 1932 and lived another 37 years.

The attached clip may demonstrate why her day in the sun was so short:

To find out more about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

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Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.

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