Doris E. Travis, Last of the Ziegfeld Girls, Dies at 106

TotallyOz · May 15, 2010

For a quarter century, Florenz Ziegfeld auditioned hundreds of thousands of young women vying to become chorus girls, the Ziegfeld Girls, those lace and chiffon visions of glamour who were as much a part of the Jazz Age as Stutz Bearcats, the Charleston and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Doris Eaton Travis may have been the youngest Ziegfeld Girl.

In all, from 1907 to 1931, he picked about 3,000, and on Tuesday the last Ziegfeld Girl died. She was Doris Eaton Travis, and she was 106. She died of an aneurysm in Commerce, Mich., a nephew, Joe Eaton, said.

Beneath towering, glittering, feathered headdresses, the Ziegfeld Girls floated across grand Broadway stages in lavish pageants known as the Ziegfeld Follies, often to the wistful tune that Irving Berlin wrote just for them: “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.”

They were former waitresses, farmers’ daughters and office workers who had dreamt of becoming part of Ziegfeld’s own grand dream of “glorifying the American girl” (preferably with exact measurements of 36-26-38) in splendiferous spectacles.

They performed with the likes of Will Rogers and Fanny Brice, and everyone flocked to see them, including President Woodrow Wilson and Babe Ruth.

“It was beauty, elegance, loveliness,” Mrs. Travis recalled in an interview with The New York Times in 2005, “beauty and elegance like a French painting of a woman’s body.”

Mrs. Travis may have been the youngest Ziegfeld Girl ever, having lied about her age to begin dancing at 14. She was part of a celebrated family of American stage performers known as “the seven little Eatons.” George Gershwin played on her family’s piano, and Charles Lindbergh dropped by for “tea,” Prohibition cocktails.

After three years with the Ziegfeld troupe, Mrs. Travis went on to perform in stage productions and silent films. In 1938, in Detroit, she opened the first Arthur Murray dance studio outside New York. She eventually owned 18 Murray studios in Michigan.

Mrs. Travis never stopped performing. In 2008, at age 104, she danced at the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS annual Easter benefit, something she started doing in 1998. But no spotlight was as bright as the one she basked in as an ingénue.

In her book about Mrs. Travis, “Century Girl” (2006), Lauren Redniss quoted a Chicago critic: “Mine eyes are yet dim with the luminous beauty of a girl named Doris.”

Doris Eaton was born on March 14, 1904, in Norfolk, Va. She was 5 when she made her first public performance, in “The Cupid Dance,” a routine she could replicate a century later.

In 1911, she and her sisters Mary and Pearl were hired for a production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play “The Blue Bird” in Washington. By 1916, the three were out-earning their father, a newspaper linotype operator.

The sisters, their younger brother Joe and their cousin Avery appeared regularly in plays. In her memoir, “The Days We Danced” (2003), Mrs. Travis wrote that producers knew that “if you needed three or four more children, you could call Mama Eaton and get them all in one place.”

Four Eatons were in the Ziegfeld Follies, and five appeared on Broadway, sometimes three or more at once.

Doris was introduced to the Follies in 1918 by her sister Pearl, who by then was a dance director for the troupe. Arriving for a rehearsal, Doris ended up being hired for the summer tour, starting the day she finished eighth grade. Besides inflating her age, she used pseudonyms to avoid problems with child-labor laws.

Doris began as a chorus girl and understudy to the show’s star. In 1919, she wore a red costume and played the paprika part in the salad dance. In 1920, she had a solo, a jazzy tap dance.

She left to be in silent movies, plays and musical revues, one of which was the Gorham Follies in Hollywood. She married the owner, Joseph Gorham, who died six months later.

In 1926 she joined the Hollywood Music Box Revue, “patterned after the Follies, only not so grandiose,” she told Interview magazine in 1999. While appearing in the show she fell in love with the songwriter Nacio Herb Brown, who with Arthur Freed wrote “Singin’ in the Rain” for the revue. Mrs. Travis said she was the first to sing it, surrounded by a chorus of eight men.

Mrs. Travis’s relationship with Mr. Brown lasted intermittently for eight years but never led to marriage. Mr. Brown himself married five other women all told, divorcing all of them.

As the Depression deepened, show business opportunities dried up. Mrs. Travis rejected burlesque and was almost ready to become a dime-a-dance girl in the city’s dance halls when Arthur Murray hired her to teach ballroom dancing in Manhattan. She taught 70 hours a week until moving to Michigan to start the new franchise.

One student was Henry Ford II. Another was Paul Travis, who made a fortune by inventing a door jamb for cars. She and Mr. Travis married and later moved to Norman, Okla., where they bred quarter horses.

Mr. Travis died in 2000. Mrs. Travis had no children and left no immediate survivors.

She proved conclusively that one is never too old to learn. In her 70s she earned a long-delayed high school diploma. She then devoted 11 years to acquiring a college degree, taking a course or two a semester at the University of Oklahoma. She graduated in 1992 at the age of 88 with a history major and a Phi Beta Kappa key. She was halfway to a master’s degree when she decided to focus on her memoirs instead.

In 2007, Oakland University in Michigan gave Mrs. Travis an honorary doctorate. She responded by singing and dancing “Ballin’ the Jack,” a song popularized by Lillian Lorraine, a renowned Ziegfeld Follies’ star.

A little more than two weeks ago Mrs. Travis returned to Broadway to appear again at the annual Easter Bonnet Competition held by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, this time at the Minskoff Theater. She did a few kicks, apologizing that she no longer performed cartwheels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/arts/dance/12travis.html