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.
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 ingenue.
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 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 ingenue.
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."
