Anne Fliotsos

Much More Than a Good Witch: The Career of Actress Billie Burke

Perhaps best remembered for her role of Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, actress Billie Burke had a varied and interesting career over the course of her lifetime.She performed with world-renowned stars: Katherine Hepburn, John Drew, Eva Le Galliene, Will Rogers, John and Lionel Barrymore, and many others.In addition, her career spanned stage, screen, radio, and television, although her early Broadway career is now all but forgotten.Like most actresses of the early twentieth century, she found herself type cast into parts based on her age and appearance; she started by playing adorable ingenues, proceeded to roles of well-meaning mothers, and eventually played befuddled elderly women.Burke was unique, however, in that her career was affected by her marriage to one of the most powerful Broadway producers of the time.Their union created a series of struggles for Burke, who wrote two books and several articles in which she questioned her own values and attitudes about art, career, family, and a woman’s duty in early twentieth century America.

Surprisingly, almost no research has been done on Burke’s career.Her own writings survive as a subjective testament of her life and deserve further scrutiny.The time frame of Burke’s career is particularly significant, as it was a liminal state in American culture as ittransformed from the lingering Victorian conceptions of womanhood to those of the independent New Woman of the early twentieth century.Reexamining Burke’s career through the lens of these changing perceptions of womanhood provides a new understanding of Burke’s struggles as both woman and actress of the early twentieth century.

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Barbara Welter created the term The Cult of True Womanhood to describe the sensibility of the Victorian era, which emphasized “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” as the goals of true womanhood (151).The plays of the period, especially melodramas, were teaming with female protagonists who epitomized the good and virtuous woman of the time.Although all women were held up to societal standards of perfection, married women with children had the biggest burden of this lofty goal:

As a wife she was meek and mild, encouraging rather than scolding her husband and children.She controlled her anger and hid signs of disappointment, suffering in silence rather than creating discord.She obeyed her husband, submitting to his wisdom and will, and looked to him for guidance and direction.She was her husband’s friend and companion, but never his rival. (McFadden 200-01) 

Burke’s mother would have been a product of this era, which taught women to obey their husbands and serve their families above all else. 

In contrast, the decades after 1880 brought tremendous changes for working women, and actresses were no exception.Albert Auster’s study of actresses during this “golden age of players” suggests that 1890-1920 was a period of tremendous change in terms of the cultural and intellectual climate of the United States:

The “New Woman,” as she was referred to in this period, was a product of increased higher education, expanded leisure, and the growth of women in the work force.A major result of these changes was the resurgence of the women’s suffrage movement. . . . Although this phase of the struggle concentrated primarily on the issue of the ballot, the progress of the “New Woman” did raise questions about her relationship to both home and a career, as well as men and marriage.(4-5)

By 1917, the suffrage movement was at its height in Greenwich Village.As an actress and an independent wage earner in New York, Burke would have felt the tug of this mighty wave.As this study shows, the choice of how to live, and perhaps more importantly, how to portray her life was a struggle, and she often vacillated between extremes.

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Burke’s mightiest accomplishment as a New Woman began when as a young, single woman, she established herself as a popular star of the Broadway stage.She began her career as a singer at the London Pavilion before graduating to supporting roles in musical plays and finally landing an ingenue role opposite Charles Hawtry in the comedy Mr. George.Burke “was warmly welcomed” to Broadway in 1907 at age twenty-two, opposite veteran actor John Drew in My Wife, a French farce in which she portrayed Trixie, the ward and later wife of her co-guardian (“Drew”).She clinched her success with her second Broadway play, Love Watches, in which she played Jacqueline, “a flower of a girl whose head is full of sentimental fancies.” The New York Times proclaimed her a star and secured her future as an ingenue, calling her “the daintiest imaginable picture, wistful, alluring, bright, vivacious, and full of life and go.” Thanks to her representation by famed producer Charles Frohman, Burke went on to play leads on Broadway in Mrs. Dot, Suzanne, The Runaway, The ‘Mind-the-Paint’ Girl, and The Land of Promise from 1910-1913, along with a supporting role in the revival of Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Amazons.

Although the successful career of the actress attested to her independence as well as her talent, the roles Burke portrayed were typical ingenues, with little consideration for conceptions of the new, liberated woman.Years later Burke recalled in With a Feather on My Nose,“They were gay girls who moved lightly through society with bright lines to say, expensively gowned and accompanied always by the handsomest and most skillful leading men Charles Frohman could buy” (102-103).She eagerly accepted such roles.As her statement represents, the plays on Broadway at the time were geared toward light entertainment rather than education or social change.Critic Brooks Atkinson insinuated that Burke’s fate in casting was a product of her manager’s taste, stating, “Although Frohman’s taste in stars was excellent, his taste in plays was indifferent” (43).Despite the old-fashioned conceptions of the women she was portraying and the questionable artistic merit of the plays, Burke was flourishing in her popularity.

A second measure of Burke’s early success was her earning power. As she explains in With Powder on My Nose, her salary catapulted from $500 per week to $1,500 a week, plus ten percent of the gross during this early period of her career (98-100).As a testament to her phenomenal success, Burke built a lavish home in nearby Hastings-on-Hudson, which she named Burkeley Crest.Complete with swimming pool, tennis courts, servants, and “22 apartments,” her new home was prominently featured in Theatre Magazine (17 Jan. 1913).Clearly, the actress had reached an enviable level of financial success in her chosen field.

In addition to financial status, Burke enjoyed social status as a single young woman.Her circle of friends included the likes of Mark Twain, Somerset Maugham, and an amorous Enrico Caruso (With a Feather on My Nose 103-05).She professed that her popularity was so great that her name became a part of the language.For example, as Patricia Ziegfeld explains, to billieburke was “to behave adorably” and a billieburke was “a dream girl” (19).Someone nicknamed Burke “The American Flapper,” and she suggests in With a Feather on My Nose (29) that she might be responsible for the origin of that term, although many others have claimed that distinction.In addition, she took credit for setting several fashion trends, such as Billie Burke curls and dresses.In her autobiography she explains, “The styles of 1907 were in general quite ugly.Women wore heavy dark clothes.But I always appeared on stage in light, close-fitting things, with point d’esprit lace, white with a rose sash, a hat ruffled with Valenciennes and crushed ribbons.Before I knew it, I was setting styles” (79). Her sense of fashion, along with her great beauty and ardent stream of admirers kept Burke at the center of attention in popular magazines and on photo postcards of the time.

The expectation at the time for such a beautiful, vivacious young actress was that she would find a husband—especially since Burke lived in a large, lavish house with only her mother for companionship.But Burke had a different idea about marriage at this point in her successful career, and she shared it with her public.In an interview with Theatre Magazine in November 1908, Burke began thinking about an actress’s responsibility to her art.She reasoned that having a family and having a stage career were mutually exclusive:

I think when an actress marries she should leave the stage.She cannot be happy if she is married and remains on the stage.She must care more for her art or for her husband. . . . If I ever loved a man better than I love my art I should marry him and leave the stage.But I have never met such a man. (300-01)

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Burke was fortunate to have one of the top producers as a manager of her career, but she was also faced with an utterly controlling tyrant in Charles Frohman.Brooks Atkinson described Frohman as “prudish and chauvinistic” (43).Her manager not only dictated her career choices, but also her personal life.In her autobiography she recalls that Frohman asked her to choose between her career and marriage while still in her twenties.Burke had chosen her career, calling off her engagement to a prominent Englishman (whom she refused to name).At that point, Frohman insisted that she sign a contract agreeing not to marry for five years.When her five years were up in 1914, and Burke had to face the choice again,she encountered pressure from Frohman to forego marriage in order to further her career.

In the face of male authority figures, Burke stood her ground for her right to decide her own fate.From the beginning of her relationship with Florenz Ziegfeld, Burke had to contend with incredible pressure from Frohman, for he disliked Ziegfeld’s reputation as a womanizer and tried in vain to stop the relationship.Instead, the courtship continued in secret, forcing the couple into many clandestine rendezvous.According to Burke’s autobiography, Frohman continually threatened her, warning that her future was in jeopardy.He and colleague Alf Hayman invaded her home at Burkeley Crest, taunting her by saying that Ziegfeld was not yet divorced from Anna Held and was still in love with Follies beauty Lillian Lorraine.They argued that Ziegfeld was broke, would drop her after several months, and would leave her career in ruins.An enraged Burke stood her ground and defended both Ziegfeld and her right to control her private life.She chastised them for their behavior and commanded them to leave.Years later, Burke recalled in With a Feather on My Nose, “I think this strange argument told me much more clearly and much more convincingly what it might have taken me far longer to think out for myself.It told me how deeply I wanted Flo Ziegfeld” (129). Choosing Florenz Ziegfeld proved to be the decision that marked a turning point in Burke’s professional career.

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Always the dedicated performer, Burke eloped with Ziegfeld between the matinee and evening performances of her play Jerry.Two days later, on 13 April 1914, the papers announced the marriage.Looking back, Burke commented on their newly found covenant: “I at first thought that our lives would be closely connected because of our similar work, but it has proved to be the reverse.We are in the same profession, yet we have strangely diverse interests. . . . Where there are two personalities like ours in a family, one of them is bound to be called on to sacrifice” (Burke Collection n. p.). The sacrifice was to be hers.Although she continued working as an actress, Burke’s theatrical star did not glimmer as brightly once she married Ziegfeld.

Burke and Ziegfeld were both prominent, independent people with active careers in the theatre; the odds against such a marriage were enormous.Given that her husband had a history of affairs with the beautiful women in his productions, the odds were even higher.As she explained in her book With Powder on My Nose,“When my husband left for work, he left to work with the Ziegfeld Follies Girls. . . . Under the circumstances, I considered itpart of my job to hold my husband—and this is not exactly a part time job” (33, 35).

Despite her earlier statement about choosing either marriage or work, Burke endeavored to embrace both.In retaliation for her marriage, Frohman sent Burke on the road with Jerry, first to Chicago, then to seventy-two one night performances.Ziegfeld, who was in debt, remained in New York, although he traveled to meet her on occasion.Once her tour ended in California, film maker Thomas Ince tempted Burke with large sums of money to play the lead in Peggy.Burke reasoned that her star’s salary would alleviate Ziegfeld’s financial problems as well as introducing her to a new audience.After nasty threats from the Frohman office(Frohman himself had sunk on the Lusitania, but Alf Hayman was still there), Burke broke with her manager and signed a contract to film Peggy, for which she received the generous salary of$10,000 per week.Although the money kept the Ziegfelds in their lavish lifestyle, the choice to make a film also meant the new couple became bi-coastal.Burke summarized this transitional period in her career, writing:

My progress in the theatre seemed to come to a halt shortly after my marriage.I finished my tour of Jerry, and in the late summer went to California for my first picture, Peggy.I should have stayed there and continued my work, only it was too far from the gentleman whose name I bore, and his interests.It was the beginning of trying to compromise—home ties and one’s work—success is difficult to accomplish at all times; rarely does it come without giving up something for it, and though I continued in pictures for quite a while, I did not do the work I should have done had my whole heart and soul been in them.(Burke Collection 7)

After filming Peggy, Burke had another challenging dilemma: whether to stay in Hollywood and make movies or return to her husband in New York.Ince offered her a five year contract which could have made her a movie star, but threatened her marriage to the New York-bound Ziegfeld.While filming Peggy, a friend wired Burke that Ziegfeld was having an affair with Olive Thomas, a performer in his employ.No doubt this news influenced her decision to dismiss the five year movie contract and fight for her marriage.Burke remembers in With a Feather on My Nose, “I chose my husband over my career.Not, however, without prayer and tears, and not without several troublesome scenes” (171).Although she sacrificed money and stardom, leaving the movies behind did not trouble Burke artistically.Part of her longed to return to the stage and to the rewards of a live audience.Of her experience with Peggy, Burke wrote, “It was like turning out shirts at a factory.I could not bear it” (Burke Collection 17). She did, however, bear it for her next project, Gloria’s Romance, filmed in Florida for the sum of $300,000.

The bud of True Womanhood blossomed further when Burke found herself with yet another distraction to her career: the birth of her daughter Patricia in 1916.Her obligation to motherhood was quite clear to her.Burke wrote, “If there were the two of us alone, then there would be some compromise of give and take.But where there is a third, the stress is on the giving” (Burke Collection n.p. ).Pictures of her in the magazines now featured her with her daughter. In 1923 Theatre Magazine called her “a woman of the family. . . . Now she stands for domesticity.”They commented on her dedication to daughter Patricia, reporting, “She says she will play for two more years.I predict that the stage will lose her to domesticity” (“Mirrors of Stageland” 64).Once defensive about career versus family, Burke now promoted a new attitude that marriage and motherhood helped rather than hindered the actress.In 1917, a year after Patricia’s birth, Burke published her views in Theatre Magazine, opening the article, “Do Players Seldom Marry?” by stating, “Until an actress has know the joys of wifehood and motherhood her emotional education is incomplete, the full meaning of her life has not been realized.Marriage will refresh her womanhood, amplify her art, expand her power of artistic expression” (144).

Although Burke wrote two books and several articles, she did not often address the topic of women’s suffrage which was sweeping the country.Her second book, With Powder on My Nose, would be seen by most women as backward, recalling the Victorian ideals of the Cult of True Womanhood in the nineteenth century.Burke wrote of wifely duty to the husband, especially in terms of grooming, appearance, and behavior.For example, she instructed all wives to awaken ten minutes before their husbands in order to wash up and change clothes.Burke felt a husband should be greeted with a fresh and beautiful wife in the morning.Despite this overarching attitude of wifely subservience and duty, there was a certain dichotomy in Burke: half of her felt bound to her husband at all costs, accepting extreme sacrifice for the sake of keeping him happy, while the other half was fiercely independent, standing up to any male figure in authority and acting on her own accord.Her struggle to contend with both domains is evident in her statement:

This is an era of woman’s work in many spheres of activity—of independent thought and individual achievement in the arts and sciences and learned professions, as well as the humbler, but not more self-sacrificing fields of usefulness.But every woman pursues the eternal quest for love, for sympathy, for understanding, for happiness, and in her heart is the great, holy yearning for motherhood. (“Do Players Seldom Marry?” 144)

She continues by extolling the positive attributes of both her loves, family and stage career,reflecting:

No woman has less temptation to seek matrimony from sordid motives of selfishness or convenience.The actress is an absolutely independent wage-earner, and better compensated than the great majority of women who make their own livelihoods.She need not marry for money, or social position, for these are her natural possessions. . . . There is no reason why marriage should necessarily compel an actress to forego her career.An actress who has the gift of swaying the emotions of an audience, of compelling tribute of tears, or of moving the public to joyous merriment, cannot always be satisfied to set aside her whole career, in the work that she loves, simply because she is married.(144)

In 1930 Burke took the defense of her profession one step further.In keeping with her role as a mother, Burke wrote “Your Daughter on the Stage—Why Not?”Long considered a sordid profession for women, theatrical careers were gaining respect in the early part of the twentieth century, losing some of the stigma of lasciviousness that had clung for centuries in the past.Although her daughter Patricia never pursued a stage career, Burke argued that she should have both the right and the support to do so.Extolling the many virtues of a theatrical career, Burke dismissed the myths of sexual misconduct, or at least put them on even ground with other occupations:

It is absurd to say that a girl cannot succeed on the stage without “sacrificing the best in her,” because a genuinely good girl’s discriminating taste is her safeguard anywhere.If distasteful circumstances should arise, one can always leave the stage, justas a stenographer or a saleslady can leave her employer. . . . And rarely does anything but the strictest business decorum exist.(60)

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As a mother an wife, Burke stayed in New York and made about a dozen silent films in an Astoria studio, none of them noteworthy.Once Ziegfeld took over the management of her career, Burke continued to perform on stage, albeit less frequently and with less fanfare than before.In contrast, Ziegfeld was at the peak of his career in the 1920s, churning out the Follies as well as hit musicals such as Showboat, Sally,Whoopee, and The Three Musketeers.Burke recalls in With a Feather on My Nose, “As my star flickered, Flo’s activities in the theatre assumed even greater importance.He was so busy and his enterprises were so enormous that my interrupted career, although he occasionally tried to set it straight, began to swing exclusively in a tight little orbit around his”(201). Her career objective was to make a comeback, but through what vehicle?

In 1921The Heraldproclaimed “Miss Billie Burke to Build Theatre for Her Own Plays,” a project which never came to fruition.According to the article, Burke intended to start a repertory theatre and produce The School for Scandal, for which she would play Lady Teazle.In addition, she expressed interest in portraying Nora in A Doll’s House, in playing Shakespearean roles, and in supporting new American authors in a special matinee series.All of these events could have contributed significantly to her credibility as a respected actress and producer of the day, but the plans fell through, most likely for financial reasons.

Burke’s subservience to Ziegfeld as both her husband and manager is apparent in her candid (unpublished) telegrams to him in January through March of 1923.Her stress over money is immediately obvious, as is her devotion to Ziegfeld and her need for his consent regarding both household matters and career decisions.Once or twice a month, the telegrams relay bills of $3,000 or more arriving at Burkeley Crest and her desire to get out of debt.In two messages, she conveys a diagnosis from her doctor: her thyroid is overworked and her weakened condition is the result of worrying:“Rest will help.I am down to 118 and can’t put on any flesh, but the bills from $5,000 came in Saturday. . . . They must be paid.If you really mean I can have my 6 weeks pay it would take away all my anxiety. . . . I am more miserable then I have dared tell you.”Her tone is often that of extreme thanks and neediness.On 28 February she writes, “When I think you don’t care what I am going through, I just don’t want to live.I am very happy and very, very grateful and terrible [sic] anxious to see you.Devotedly, Billie.”Her telegrams describe her concern over her career as well.In February she writes, “Sorry business is so bad.Let’s do a musical comedy with lots of comedy.If I have a funny face, we may as well use it.”The last telegram of the collection, dated 10 March 1923, put her stalled career in perspective:“I only hope someday to prove to you that I am a real star.”

In a crucial turn of events in 1923, Burke received an offer from producer Gilbert Miller to star in The Swan, by Ferenc Molnar.Although it was the perfect opportunity for her to gain respect on the stage, Ziegfeld flatly refused.Burke recalled in her autobiography, “Our arguments about thiswere athletic.I broke some china.I swept a whole sideboard bare of chinaware and I shrilled about my career.”Later, in With a Feather on My Nose, she wrote the reason for his decision—jealousy:“He had produced plays for me, and although none of them had failed, none of them had advanced me.He was jealous of Gilbert Miller” (205).Eva Le Gallienne got the part instead, and it contributed significantly to her laurels.New York Times critic John Corbin heralded The Swanas “a play of literary art.”Burke’s anger at Ziegfeld must have intensified as she read Corbin’s review, which outlined her lost part and Le Gallienne’s fine performance:

The Princess of Eva Le Gallienne is admirable alike for its artistic restraint, its renunciation of all easy and obvious effects, and for the potency of its inward fires.A character drawn with exquisite tenderness, with unfaltering veracity to the given mood and moment, is rendered . . . more than adequately at every phrase. (15)

Brooks Atkinson called it one of two performances that clinched Le Gallienne’s success on Broadway; in short, it was a career-makingrole (358).Ziegfeld later admitted he was wrong not to allow Burke to take the role, but the all-important opportunity was lost.

Although Burke reveled in her role as wife and mother, she was distraught about the artistic life she sacrificed, for she had become a part-time artist at best.Writing about the many summers of camping with the family, she stated, “There was always in my mind the conviction that I was not being true to myself, that I had not yet attempted the tasks that I must try in the theatre.I was gnawed constantly by the realization that I must be an actress now or never at all” (With a Feather on My Nose 205).All of that changed with the crash of the stock market.

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In 1929 Ziegfeld had three hit shows on Broadway, and, as daughter Patricia recalled, “Money was pouring in a golden, rushing stream” (109).Ziegfeld was both heavily invested in the stock market and heavily in debt for his opulent productions and lavish lifestyle. After the crash, he was more than one million dollars in debt, but Burke had a half-million dollars in bonds and securities which her managers had laid aside for her early in her career.They mortgaged Burkeley Crest, and she did her best to bail him out of debt.They were sued for non-payment by several creditors.For example, one headline in 1932 read, “Florist Sues Ziegfeld” for $1,267 on an unpaid promissory note.

When Ziegfeld fell ill, Burke was torn between staying in New York to comfort her husband and taking a role in Los Angeles in a play called The Vinegar Tree to help pay the bills.She chose California and eventually landed a role in George Cukor’s film, A Bill of Divorcement (1932) starring John Barrymore and introducing Katherine Hepburn.As Ziegfeld made one last trip to California, Burke found out that Flo’s manager had died.Soon business decisions fell to her.Despite her efforts to be with her husband until the end, Burke failed.Ziegfeld died while she was making a screen test, and she suffered from guilt that he died alone.

Ziegfeld’s death brought a new deluge of financial burdens upon the financially and emotionally drained Burke.Accustomed to being pampered, taken care of, and given advice, she now saw herself as forty-seven year old woman with a teenage daughter to support.She wrote in With a Feather on My Nose: “There were six lawsuits against the estate before our tears were dry. . . . All told, there were debts of a half million dollars” (247).Burke herself managed to pay off a hundred thousand, although it took years for her to dig herself out of debt entirely.In 1934, litigation arose when Burke sold the Ziegfeld Follies name to the Shuberts.(In subsequent Follies, she was listed as a co-producer.)By 1940 she sold her $250,000 Burkeley Crestfor a mere $36,000, with a significant past-due mortgage.Curios and furnishings purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars only brought $6,000, mainly from buyers seeking Ziegfeld memorabilia. (“Billie Burke Sells”).Around the time of the sale, headlines attested to Burke’s financial struggles.“Billie Burke Protests Tax Levy” revealed a claim from the Treasury Department that Burke owed $1,136 in past-due income taxes.

Although Burke’s career was forced back on track through financial need, it was not to be the artistic career in theatre for which she yearned.Samuel Goldwyn offered to act as her agent and pay her a regular $300 weekly salary to ease her mind from financial burdens.With the support of Goldwyn, Cukor, Will and Betty Rogers, and her daughter Patricia, Burke began a new phase of her career, dedicated to the movie industry.Unfortunately, Burke soon became typed into the same character parts in movies: that of a flighty, jabbering, doting mother and wife, such as those she played in Topper (1937) and Dinner at Eight (1933).Although she made nearly eighty films, Burke’s discontent with her movie roles was obvious in her autobiography:

And so I began to do my silly women.These characters, these bird-witted ladies whom I have characterized so often . . . derive from my part in The Vinegar Tree.I am neatly typed . . . possibly irrevocably typed, although I sincerely hope not, for I should like better parts, for those are the roles that I was trained in—the gay but intelligent, well-written, funny but believable roles. . . . But if people will laugh at my work and keep a sound roof over my head, who am I to complain? (With a Feather on My Nose 252-53)

She had her own morning radio show, The Billie Burke Show,from 1944-46 and appeared on television from time to time in the 1950s, but her legacy became her role in the classic film The Wizard of Oz.Glinda the Good, which she played in her mid-fifties, was the only film role that gave her a chance to break from the mold of twittering mothers.She listed it as her favorite film role, stating, in With a Feather on My Nose, “this role is as close as I have come in motion pictures to the kind of parts I did in the theatre” (258).It is telling that Burke dismisses her film career in her autobiography, not even mentioning her nomination as Best Supporting Actress by the Academy for Merrily We Live (1938).Her focus, throughout the book, is on her stage career.

At the age of sixty, Burke tried to make a comeback on the New York stage.She starred in two short-lived productions: This Rock, and Mrs. January and Mr. Ex.Although Burke got good reviews, the plays did not.She tried her luck at several plays in California as well, although her mind became clouded, and she had trouble remembering lines.In the 1950s, as Dewitt Bodeen explains, Burke’s memory loss forced her to resign from her role in The Man shortly before opening (340).In 1959 she tried her luck again, joining Eva Le Galliene and Una Merkel in the cast of Listen to the Mockingbird.Tragically, the production that may have provided a successful comeback, at age seventy-five, was ravaged by a fire while in previews in Washington, D.C.The sets, costumes, and electrical equipment were destroyed, and the producers decided to close the production and cut their losses.

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At a time when women were making vast strides in terms of equal rights, Billie Burke fought to live a life which balanced nineteenth century values with those oftwentieth century independence.An examination of Burke’s writing and her eventual submission to her managers reveals a Pygmalion-type creation who succumbs to the ideals of The Cult of True Womanhood after much struggle.Her duty as mother and wife directly conflicted with her sense of artistry: that an artist must never be part-time but must dedicate herself to her art, “forgetting all other consideration.”Burke saw this dilemma not only for herself, but for other women in the arts, writing, in With a Feather on My Nose, “The hard lines of that definition are the barriers which make it supremely difficult for women to be artists.I wanted to be an artist then, as I do now, but in those years I had another job.It was simply to hold my husband” (207).Although pain and regret are evident in her writings, Burke’s love for her husband and daughter are overwhelmingly present in her voice as an author, as is the frustration of seeing her stage career dwindle.Her one critical opportunity to return to the stage in a literary play, The Swan,and regain her flagging career was her ultimate test of character.Although she fought Ziegfeld’s decision, she ultimately accepted it and, ironically, was condemned to play silly wives and mothers for the bulk of her remaining career in film.

Burke’s legacy as a celebrity is created not only from her portrayals of twittering women, but also from her public persona.She was fond of portraying herself as a charming woman with quaint phrases and passionate musings about marriage, motherhood, and acting.Her true demeanor may never be known, but one former employee of Ziegfeld, Bernard Sobel, saw a different side of Burke.He reported that she would not ride in the same cab with her maid and that she treated the chorus girls “like dust”:“Her manner was restrained and straightforward, almost cold.That’s the way I found her. . . . The fluttering, cooing poses and coquetry were all synthetic, a mirror of wish-fulfillment obviously designed for audiences in the Nineteen Hundreds, who liked to think her a perfect specimen for men.” The phrase perfect specimen for men sums up much of Burke’s public image, ranging from her early career as an adorable ingenue and postcard girl to her years as an elderly author, writing of beauty tips and the secrets of a successful marriage.

Although Burke would have us look back on her career and remember her as a talented stage actress, her legacy will forever be as Mrs. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., for it was one of her greatest roles, to which she dedicated a large part of her career. As an actress, her legacy is in film, as twittering mothers and as Glinda the Good Witch.Long forgotten for her stage work, Burke’s photographs and signatures remain popular auction items, sometimes fetching over $200 on internet sites such as eBay.Most postings identify her as “Glinda the Good” or “Oz Star,” but many of the items for auction are actually postcards and memorabilia from her stage career.Burke would have been pleased, however, to be remembered as Glinda, a popular culture icon, rather than asone of the “silly women” she too often played to pay the bills.

Anne Fliotsos

Division of Theatre

Purdue University

West Lafayette, Indiana 47907-1376

Works Cited

Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York: McMillan, 1970.

Auster, Albert. Actresses and Suffragists: Women in American Theatre, 1890-1920. New York: Praeger, 1984.

“Billie Burke Sells Her Estate; many Seek Ziegfeld Mementoes.” New York Times 30 Apr. 1940: n. p.Billy Rose Theatre Collection, NYPL.Clippings, “Billie Burke.”

Bodeen, DeWitt.“Billie Burke.” Films in Review 32 (June/July 1981): 329-49.

“Burke.” Montrose Moses Collection [1923].Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. Duke University, Durham. 

Burke, Billie.“Do Players Seldom Marry?” Theatre Magazine 26 (Sept. 1917):  144-46.

—. Interview with Ada Patterson.“A Sunday Morning Chat with Billie Burke,”Theatre Magazine8(Nov. 1908): 300-01.

—. Unpublished telegrams.Anna Held Museum Papers, Box 1.Billy Rose Theatre Collection, NYPL. 

—. With Powder on My Nose.New York: Coward-McCann, 1959.

—. “Your Daughter on the Stage—Why Not?”Theatre Magazine51(Feb. 1930): 30, 60.

Burke, Billie, with Cameron Shipp. With a Feather on My Nose.New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948. 

Corbin, John.“The Play.” New York Times 24 Oct. 1923: 15.

“Drew Has Success in ‘My Wife’ at Empire.”New York Times1 Sept. 1907: 7.

“Florist Sues Ziegfeld.” New York Times 21 May 1932: n. p.Billy Rose Theatre Collection, NYPL. Clippings, “Billie Burke.”

“The Lady of Burkeleigh [sic] Crest.”Theatre Magazine17 (Jan. 1913): 29-30.

“Love Watches: A Dainty Comedy at the Empire.” New York Times 28 Aug. 1907: 7.

McFadden, Margaret, ed. Women’s Issues.Vol. 1.Pasadena: Salem, 1997. 

“Mirrors of Stageland.” Theatre Magazine37 (Nov. 1923): 22, 64.

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Billy Rose Theatre Collection, NYPL.Clippings, “Billie Burke.”

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