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Ziegfeld Follies Girls "Glorifying the American Girl"
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Helene Anna Held (March 8, 1873 -- August 12, 1918) was a Polish-born stage performer, most often associated with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, her common-law husband.
Thanks to the Ziegfeld Follies, a wildly popular string of revues from the early 1900s, the name of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. is familiar to many theater devotees. Somewhat less well known, however, is Anna Held.
Ziegfeld got his taste in clothes, knowledge of stage presentation, and even the idea for his Follies from her. She was one of the first celebrities to win transatlantic fame, and a leading musical stage star for more than two decades. It is no exaggeration to say that she was one of the most remarkable women of her time.
According to Ziegfeld, it was Held who first suggested that he should stage a Folies Bergere-style revue in New York. His first Follies (1907) featured "The Anna Held Girls" without Anna, who was still touring in Miss Innocence. In fact, her only appearance in the Follies series would be was as a flying comet in a film used in the 1910 edition. But Held had done so much to enrich Ziegfeld's sense of fashion and entertainment that it is fair to say she was part of every Follies.
She collapsed onstage in 1918 and died after a few months from multiple myeloma at age 45. She is interred at Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. Ziegfeld was castigated by the media he had so studiously courted, for his mistreatment of Held and apparent indifference to her illness, and his notable absence from her funeral.
In 1976 Anna Held's daughter, Liane Carrera (died 1988), opened a museum of her mother's personal and stage items in San Jacinto, California. The museum was looted by robbers and all the displayed material was stolen a few years after it opened.
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Helene Anna Held (March 8, 1873 -- August 12, 1918) was a Polish-born stage performer, most often associated with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, her common-law husband.
Thanks to the Ziegfeld Follies, a wildly popular string of revues from the early 1900s, the name of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. is familiar to many theater devotees. Somewhat less well known, however, is Anna Held.
Ziegfeld got his taste in clothes, knowledge of stage presentation, and even the idea for his Follies from her. She was one of the first celebrities to win transatlantic fame, and a leading musical stage star for more than two decades. It is no exaggeration to say that she was one of the most remarkable women of her time.
According to Ziegfeld, it was Held who first suggested that he should stage a Folies Bergere-style revue in New York. His first Follies (1907) featured "The Anna Held Girls" without Anna, who was still touring in Miss Innocence. In fact, her only appearance in the Follies series would be was as a flying comet in a film used in the 1910 edition. But Held had done so much to enrich Ziegfeld's sense of fashion and entertainment that it is fair to say she was part of every Follies.
She collapsed onstage in 1918 and died after a few months from multiple myeloma at age 45. She is interred at Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. Ziegfeld was castigated by the media he had so studiously courted, for his mistreatment of Held and apparent indifference to her illness, and his notable absence from her funeral.
In 1976 Anna Held's daughter, Liane Carrera (died 1988), opened a museum of her mother's personal and stage items in San Jacinto, California. The museum was looted by robbers and all the displayed material was stolen a few years after it opened.