May 13, 2010--Doris Travis: The Last of the Salad Dancers

And here I thought it special that my mother is about to turn 102. And a wonderful 102 at that. Fully compus mentus and in terrific physical shape for someone even two-thirds her age.

Then I read about Doris E. Travis who died this week at 106. A remarkable 106, but even more remarkable was the life she led.

Among other things, she was the last surviving Ziegfeld Follies girl. Between 1907 and 1931 there were about 3,000 of them. Those magnificent showgirls who strutted their stuff in gauze and feathers all to the tune, "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody."

According to the New York Times obit linked below she was the youngest Ziegfeld Girl ever, having lied about her age to try out. She was only 14! But some 14. Like the others, she had what was considered ideal measurements--36-26-38. Not today's ideal, not the 38 at least, but just right for the times.

Doris came from a showbiz family. She was one of the Seven Little Eatons, sort of the successors to the Seven Little Foys, who were well enough known that George Gershwin came by to noodle on the family piano and Charles Lindbergh stopped in for tea. But Doris wanted a career separate from the family and so she ran off to try out for the Follies.

Flo himself auditioned and hired her and then put her right to work as an understudy to the show's headliner. But while waiting for her star to be born, Doris tap danced on stage as part of the Salad Dance. Yes, the Salad Dance where she played the paprika part. Times were simpler then. Just think about Lady Gaga's act.

But life as a Ziegfeld Girl didn't last forever. Time can be cruel to such performers, but Doris didn't just look to marry a rich Stage Door Johnny. Though she could have. Instead, after an indifferent career in silent movies and small parts in other shows on Broadway (though in 1926 she was the first to sing "Singin' In the Rain" in the Hollywood Music Box Review), when the Depression hit, though she had opportunities to work in burlesque or as a dime-a-dance girl, after the glory of working for Ziegfeld, she chose not to do that but instead took an opportunity that presented itself and opened the first Arthur Murray dance studio in Detroit where Henry Ford II was one of her most devoted students.

Another student, Paul Travis, who invented a new kind of door jam for cars and made a fortune from it, fell in love with Doris and they subsequently married and moved to Oklahoma where they settled in and bred quarter horses. By all appearances they were a happy, childless couple.

Life on he ranch, though satisfying, was not quite enough for Doris. And so, in her 70s, she decided to work on a high school diploma, something she missed along the way when she ran off to Broadway. After earning that, not to be stopped, she enrolled as a part-time student at the University of Oklahoma and 11 years later, at 88, earned an undergraduate degree in history. She did well enough to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

In 2007, at age 103, Oakland University in Michigan gave her an honorary doctorate. She accepted while singing and dancing "Ballin' the Jack."

But her performing career was not over even at that advanced age. Just two weeks before she died, she appeared as she had in previous years at the Minskoff Theater, not far from the site of the original Ziegfeld Theater, at the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefit where she once again sang and did a few kicks. That last time apologizing that she no longer did cartwheels.

Inspired by her example, I may try a few later today.