Wednesday, May 12, 2010

RIP: LAST SURVIVING ZIEGFELD GIRL

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's Broadway will dim its lights on Wednesday to mark the death of the last of the famed Ziegfeld showgirls, performers renowned for their lavish costumes and elaborate stage routines.

Doris Eaton Travis died at age 106 on Tuesday in Michigan of undisclosed causes just two weeks after she last appeared on stage in New York, according to a statement on the website of Broadway public relations firm Boneau/Bryan-Brown.

She was one of the performers who rose to fame in the Ziegfeld Follies, a series of elaborate theater productions on Broadway that began in 1907 and remained popular until 1931. The show was inspired by the Folies Bergeres of Paris.

Many top entertainers of that era such as comedians W.C. Fields and Will Rogers appeared in the shows that were famous for their chorus girls in lavish costumes and feathered headdresses who became known as the Ziegfeld girls.

Travis joined the Ziegfeld Follies as the youngest ever showgirl in 1918 at the age of about 14, following in the footsteps of her sister Pearl. Four Eatons were in the Ziegfeld Follies over the years.

She performed with the Ziegfeld girls until 1920 then went on to star in various stage productions and silent films in the 1920s and 1930s before becoming a dance instructor after the Great Depression took its toll on Broadway. In her retirement she began a horse ranch in Oklahoma with her husband.

She returned to the spotlight in 1997 after she and four former Ziegfield girls reunited for the reopening of the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York, joking that she was the only one still able to dance.

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