“In almost 80 movies she was a pixie with a canny charm. Her bubbly, breathless tremolo and her fluttery delicacy were endearing rather than exasperating. There was really no one like her.” – Hollywood biographer Donald Spoto on Billie Burke

Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke was born in Washington DC and had a childhood touring the US and Europe as her father, internationally known English clown Billy Burke, worked for Barnum and Bailey’s circus. The family settled in London where Billie Burke was forced into the theatre by her mother. Despite her fears and her lifelong sense of inadequacy she made her debut in 1903 as one of the five American Girls in The School Girl, staged at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the West End.

Her London career ended when she returned to the US, appearing in the Broadway production, My Wife as Beatrice “Trixie” Dupre at Charles Frohman’s Empire Theatre, 1430 Broadway in August 1907. Charles Frohman influenced Billie Burke’s career with starring roles in his productions such as Mrs Dot (1910), Suzanne (1910-11), The Runaway (1911), The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl (1912-13) and Jerry (1914). Charles Frohman was drowned when the Lusitania, on which he was travelling, was torpedoed by a German submarine which presaged the United States declaration of war on Germany two years later. Several of his stars organised memorial services in the US and London, Billie Burke arranged the service in Tacoma.

When playing in The Amazons (1913) at the Empire Theatre Billie Burke was noticed by producer and impresario Florenz Ziegfield Junior who was in a common-law marriage with the Polish-French singer Anna Heid. Flo Ziegfield was especially known for his stage spectaculars, known as the Ziegfeld Follies, began with Follies of 1907, which opened on July 7, 1907, and were produced annually until 1931. These extravaganzas, with elaborate costumes and sets, featured beauties chosen personally by Ziegfeld in production numbers choreographed to the works of prominent composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern. The Follies featured the famous Ziegfeld girls, female chorus dancers who wore elaborate costumes and performed in synchronization. The Follies made him a very rich man. Burke and Ziegfield married in April 1914.

Billie Burke made her film debut in 1915 in the silent comedy feature Peggy (aka The Devil’s Pepper Pot) as Peggy Cameron, a young, high spirited American debutante who is sent to visit her Uncle Andrew (William H. Thompson) and cousin Colin (Charles Ray) in Scotland. The $40,000 she was paid for eight weeks work was the largest salary ever paid up to that point to an actor for a single film.

She starred in the 15 part serial, Gloria’s Romance (1916). Gloria was an adventurous young Floridian who gets lost in the swamps, finds adventure and ignites the rivalry of two men who each fall in love with her. Each episode was a two-reeler and originally 20 episodes were filmed, 960,000 feet of film was used. Billie Burke wore many of her own clothes in the picture, her wardrobe was valued at $40,000 and the pyjamas she wore, one-piece with ruffles around the ankles, became a popular style named after the actress. For her work over the 40 reels she was paid $300,000. Some posters bore the legend £Georger Kleine Presents (by arrangement with F Ziegfield Jr) Bille Burke”, Ziegfield was already beginning to influence his wife’s career.

From 1917 to 1921 Billie Burke starred mainly in provocative society dramas and comedies, similar in theme to The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl, her most successful American play. Among the films in which she appeared during this period were Arms and the Girl (1917), The Mysterious Miss Terry, Let’s Get a Divorce (1918), Good Gracious, Annabelle (1919), Away Goes Prudence (1920) and The Frisky Mrs Johnson (1920). The critics felt that marriage to Ziegfeld gave her roles that she did not have to work for but Burke vehemently denied this.

Burke had signed with Jesse L Lasky in 1915 and at one point became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Her star image relied heavily on her lifestyle and her fashion sense; much of her wardrobe (on-screen and off) was provided by the leading European couturier Lucile (in private life Lady Duff Gordon), whose New York branch was then the fashion mecca for socialites and entertainment celebrities. Billie Burke returned to the stage, resuming her Broadway career in plays such as A Marriage of Convenience (1918), The Intimate Strangers (1921-22), Rose Briar (1922-23) The Marquise (1927-39) and The Happy Husband (1928). The last was perhaps ironic, all was not well with showbiz’s glittering couple; Billie Burke had poured her own cash into Ziegfeld’s magnificent, money-burning productions, She also discovered that she had married a man who could not leave chorus girls alone. Despite violence and blazing arguments, Burke was unable to leave her husband It was more than needing to stay together for their daughter, Patricia. Flo and Billie were a team, the king and queen of the Jazz Age. It all came crashing down in 1929 when Ziegfeld lost almost all his fortune in the stock market crash.

Both Ziegfeld and Billie Burke had made cameo appearances in a film that was released less than two months after the crash, Glorifying the American Girl (1929). The pre-Code, musical comedy was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and highlighted the Ziegfeld Follies performers. The last third of the film, which was filmed in two-strip Technicolor, is basically a Follies production, with cameo appearances by Rudy Vallee, Helen Morgan, and Eddie Cantor. It is notable for being the first talkie to use the word “damn” (that credit usually goes to either Pygmalion or Gone with the Wind). The word is used on at least one occasion by Sarah Edwards playing Mrs Hughes as well as multiple times in the skit involving Eddie Cantor, Louis Sorin and Lew Hearn.

Billie Burke returned to screen acting in 1932. She was still enough of a name to secure the lead in George Cukor’s A Bill of Divorcement (1932) playing a middle-aged Englishwoman preparing for divorce and a second marriage when her husband is unexpectedly released from the institution in which he had been confined for many years. Florenz Ziegfeld died from pleurisy during filming, Burke left for a while to attend to his affairs and organise the funeral. When she resumed her role she was saddled with Ziegfeld’s substantial debts. She now needed to resume her screen career in earnest.

Billie Burke was paid $1,500 per week for a total of four weeks, while co-star John Barrymore’s contract guaranteed him $50,000 and 15% of the film’s gross. RKO had screen-tested a young stage actress for the part of Burke’s daughter; Katharine Hepburn was paid $1,500 per week for a total of $7,125. The film was well received and made RKO a profit of £110,000 but Billy Burke’s screen return was overshadowed by the critical praise given to Katharine Hepburn.

George Cukor used Billie Burke again in the comedy Dinner at Eight (1933) which also starred Lionel Barrymore, Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery, The film was a financial and critical success with many critics praising Billie Burke’s performance, this film was both the catalyst that reignited Burke’s career and typecast her as the character she had played, a ditzy, fluffy and feather-brained upper-class matron with a high-pitched voice.

As an MGM contract player Billie Burke considered herself a shoo-in for the role of Billie Burke in the biopic of her husband – after all she had the right voice and mannerisms. The Great Ziegfeld (1936) starred William Powell as Ziegfeld. He was personally chosen for the role by Billie Burke, who felt that while Powell did not physically resemble her late husband, he possessed the right manner. “What I tried to do primarily was to get across the essential spirit of the man”, Powell later said, “his love for show business, his exquisite taste, his admiration for the beauty of women. He was financially impractical but aesthetically impeccable—a genius in his chosen field.” To Burke’s dismay Myrna Loy was cast as Billie Burke as Billie herself was felt to be too old for the part. Burke worked as technical consultant, and although she did not object to Ziegfeld’s reputed former mistress Marilyn Miller performing a number, she was influential in the studio’s refusal to give her the higher billing and salary she had demanded, which led to Miller walking away from the film.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars and won Best Picture, Best Dance Direction and Best Actress (Louise Rainer). The critics were mainly positive though, possible to Billie Burke’s wry delight, Myrna Loy’s performance was singled out as lacklustre: Frank S Nugent of The New York Times opined “Miss Loy is a stately Bille Burke, and somewhat lacking, we fear, in Miss Burke’s effervescence and gaiety”, and Cecilia Agner thought she came across as “stilted, like her rigidly waxed and set blonde wig”.

In 1938 Billie Burke landed her favourite film role and the one for which she is best known. She had previously worked with Garland in the film, Everybody Sing (1938), in which she played Judy’s histrionically hysterical actress-mother, now she was asked to appear with the teenage star in an adaptation of L Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) was mainly directed by Victor Fleming (who left production to take over the troubled production of Gone with the Wind) Burke played Glinda the Good Witch of the North, a composite of three characters from the book – the Good Witch of the North and Good Witch of the South and also the novel’s Queen of Field Mice, It has been rumoured that Lorraine Bridges dubbed Billie Burke’s singing voice in the film but Burke did her own singing as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in the number Come Out and speaking in the song Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead, both times with the Munchkins.

The 1940s saw Billie busier than ever–she made 25 films between 1940 and 1949. She made only six in the 1950s, as her ageing became noticeable. Her last screen performance came in 1960 with Woody Strode and Jeffrey Hunter in John Ford’s Western crime thriller Sergeant Rutledge At the time Billie Buke was 76. She was cast as a woman 23 years younger, Cordelia Fosgate who was only 53.

“Age is something that doesn’t matter unless you are a cheese.” – Billie Burke

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