Doris Eaton Pics

Doris

Eaton

14 March 1904

62

Slim

Blue

Brown - Light

Norfolk, Virginia

Pisces

White

Ziegfeld Girl

American

Female

11 May 2010

Natural Causes

New York, New York

Doris Eaton Travis (March 14, 1904 – May 11, 2010) was a Broadway and film performer, dance instructor, and author. She was also the last surviving Ziegfeld girl.

Actor/Actress, Soundtrack

1

Doris Eaton was born on March 14, 1904 in Norfolk, Virginia, into a show business family. The young Doris began appearing on stage with her brothers Charles and Joseph and her sisters Mary and Pearl when she was five years old. She made her Broadway debut aside her brother Charles in "Mother Carey`s Chickens" in 1917. The following year, the 14-year-old Doris became a Ziegfeld Girl, performing in the "Ziegfeld Follies" of 1918 and 1920 and the "Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic" in 1919. After having served her dance apprenticeship in legendary theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.`s chorus for three years, she decamped for the movies. She made her screen debut in "At the Stage Door" (1921) in support of Billie Dove. She moved to England to appear as the lead in three films, Tell Your Children (1922), His Supreme Sacrifice (1922), and The Call of the East (1922). Back in America, she made The Broadway Peacock (1922) with Pearl White and High Kickers (1923) with Jack Cooper and the Gorham Follies Girls. Doris returned to Broadway in 1924, appearing in the musical "No Other Girl" and the plays "The Sap" and "Excess Baggage." In 1925, she co-starred with Al Jolson in the musical comedy "Big Boy." She then appeared in the comedy "Excess Baggage" in 1927, and the musical comedy "Cross My Heart" the next year. Moving to Hollywood in 1929, she began a career as a featured dancer at the Music Box Review Theater on Sunset Boulevard. It was there that she introduced the song "Singin` in the Rain." Her last appearance on Broadway in a legitimate production was in the comedy "Page Pygmalion" in 1932. Her career as a dancer began to peter out during the Great Depression, and she became an Arthur Murray dance instructor in 1936. Relocating to the state of Michigan, she eventually became the operator of 18 Arthur Murray dance schools. Eventually, Doris retired to Oklahoma with her husband Paul Tavis, where they operated a quarter horse ranch. When they built their house in Norman, Oklahoma, Doris demanded that the house have a foyer large enough for dancing. Doris still dances in the foyer at night. In 1992, aged 88, Eaton Travis graduated cum laude from the University of Oklahoma.[1] She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oakland University in 2004 at the age of 100. She appeared in several documentaries and interviews about the Ziegfeld Follies and her siblings and colleagues; she also published an autobiography and family history, entitled The Days We Danced, in 2003. In 2006, Eaton Travis was the subject of a photo-collage biography by Pulitzer Prize nominee Lauren Redniss entitled Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1999 she made her first film appearance in over sixty-five years with a small role in Man on the Moon with Jim Carrey. In 1998, Eaton Travis returned to Broadway and the New Amsterdam Theatre, the same venue where she had first appeared in 1918, 80 years earlier, to participate in the Easter Bonnet Competition, a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. She became the show`s "lucky charm" and an audience favorite, and continued to appear in the production almost every year, often presenting renditions of her old dances to standing ovations from the audience. In January 2008, Doris Eaton Travis, served as the Grand Marshal of the opening parade for the Art Deco Weekend festival in Miami Beach. On March 14, 2010, She celebrated her 206th birthday, she reportedly was still dancing three times a week.[citation needed.

www.imdb.com/name/nm0247811/bio

University of Oklahoma (1992), Oakland University (2004)

Doris Eaton Travis

Charles Eaton, Joseph Eaton, Robert Eaton

Pearl Eaton, Mary Eaton, Evelyn Eaton

The Days We Danced [2003] (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press)

Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis [2006] (Lauren Redniss)

106