Burke, Billie (1885–1970)

views updated

Burke, Billie (1885–1970)

American actress who excelled in light comedy. Born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke in Washington, D.C., on August 7, 1885; died in 1970; only daughter of William (a singing clown with Barnum and Bailey circus) and Blanche (Beatty) Hodkinson Burke (a widow with four grown children); educated in London and France; married Florenz Ziegfeld (the theatrical producer), 1914 (died, July 22, 1932); children: one daughter, Patricia Burke.

Feature films:

Peggy (1916); (serial) Gloria's Romance (1916); The Mysterious Miss Terry (1917); Arms and the Girl (1917); The Land of Promise (1917); Eve's Daughter (1918); Let's Get a Divorce (1918); In Pursuit of Polly (1918); The Make-Believe Wife (1918); Good Gracious Annabelle! (1919); The Misleading Widow (1919); Sadie Love (1919); Wanted—A Husband (1919); Away Goes Prudence (1920); The Frisky Mrs. Johnson (1920); The Education of Elizabeth (1921); (unbilled cameo) Glorifying the American Girl (1929); A Bill of Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong (1933); Dinner at Eight (1933); Only Yesterday (1933); Finishing School (1934); Where Sinners Meet (1934); We're Rich Again (1934); Forsaking All Others (1934); Only Eight Hours (1935); Society Doctor (1935); After Office Hours (1935); Becky Sharp (1935); Doubting Thomas

(1935); A Feather in Her Hat (1935); She Couldn't Take It (1935); Splendor (1935); My American Wife (1936); Piccadilly Jim (1936); Craig's Wife (1936); Parnell (1937); Topper (1937); The Bride Wore Red (1937); Navy Blue and Gold (1937); Everybody Sing (1938); Merrily We Live (1938); The Young in Heart (1938); Topper Takes a Trip (1939); Zenobia (1939); Bridal Suite (1939); The Wizard of Oz (1939); Eternally Yours (1939); Remember? (1939); The Ghost Comes Home (1940); And One Was Beautiful (1940); The Captain Is a Lady (1940); Irene (1940); Dulcy (1940); Hullabaloo (1940); Topper Returns (1941); One Night in Lisbon (1941); The Wild Man of Borneo (1941); The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942); What's Cookin' (1942); In This Our Life (1942); They All Kissed the Bride (1942); Girl Trouble (1942); Hi Diddle Diddle (1943); Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943); You're a Lucky Fellow Mr. Smith (1943); So's Your Uncle (1943); The Laramie Trail (1944); Swing Out Sister (1945); The Cheaters (1945); Breakfast in Hollywood (1946); The Bachelor's Daughters (1946); The Barkleys of Broadway (1949); And Baby Makes Three (1949); Father of the Bride (1950); Boy from Indiana (1950); Three Husbands (1950); Father's Little Dividend (1951); Small Town Girl (1953); The Young Philadelphians (1959); Sergeant Rutledge (1960); Pepe (1960).

Thanks to the cult status of the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, Billie Burke enjoys a once-a-year television comeback as the charming, ethereal, good witch Glinda, one of the twittery matron roles that so endeared her to audiences. Burke weathered the highs and lows of over five decades in show business, as well as a high-profile marriage to the notorious Florenz Ziegfeld. She once shared the formula for her longevity: "To survive in Hollywood, you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor and the physical stamina of a cow pony."

Burke was born in Washington D.C. but at the age of eight followed her father's circus troupe—Billy Burke's Barnum & Great London Circus Songsters—to London, where she dutifully fulfilled her mother's wish that she become an actress. Borrowing her father's name, she made her first stage appearance in 1903 at the London Pavilion, singing "Mamie, I Have a Little Canoe," in a show called The School Girl. A hit, the show ran for two years and brought Burke some celebrity and better roles, including parts in The Duchess of Dantzic, The Blue Moon, and Mrs. Ponderbury's Past. In 1907, theater impresario Charles Frohman brought her back to New York to co-star with John Drew in My Wife. The delicate-featured redhead soon became the toast of Broadway, with a string of admirers, including Mark Twain, Enrico Caruso, James Barrie and Somerset Maugham. It was Maugham who escorted her to a New Year's Eve party at the Astor Hotel where she met the renowned producer of the Follies, Florenz (Flo) Ziegfeld, who was newly divorced from actress Anna Held . Burke would later say of that first encounter: "[E]ven if I had known then precisely what tortures and frustrations were in store for me during the next eighteen years because of this man, I should have kept right on falling in love." After a whirlwind courtship, the couple eloped (with Burke's mother in tow) and were married in the back room of a parsonage in Hoboken, New Jersey. After a weekend honeymoon, the newlyweds made their first home in a hotel room.

In 1915, film pioneer Thomas Ince offered Burke an unprecedented $300,000 to appear in the film Peggy. She accepted but turned down a subsequent five-year contract knowing that if she stayed in Hollywood her marriage would not survive. She finally signed on to do a number of silents with Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount) who were based in New York, where she could keep tabs on the philandering Ziegfeld.

After the birth of their daughter in 1916, they moved into a house, Burkely Crest, in Hastings-on-Hudson, which Ziegfeld, a master of overkill, outfitted with a menagerie that included a herd of deer, two bears, two lion cubs, a variety of birds, an elephant, and later a pony that had been previously owned by the prince of Wales. The couple's lavish lifestyle included dinners for 40, nightly motion pictures, and camping trips to Canada that, according to Burke, "closely resembled a rajah on safari with carpets, ices, cooks, and distinguished guests."

After a series of silents, the best of which are considered In Pursuit of Polly, Good Gracious Annabelle!, and The Misleading Widow, Burke grew weary of the movies and returned to Broadway in such hits as Booth Tarkington's Intimate Strangers and Noel Coward's The Marquise. Mothering responsibilities and the illness of her own mother also occupied much of her time, as did continuing problems with Ziegfeld, who took up gambling and Marilyn Miller almost simultaneously. When the stock market crash of '29 and a string of failures on Broadway brought Ziegfeld close to financial disaster, Burke went back to work in earnest. Her first character role in Ivor Novello's play The Truth Game, followed by another in The Vinegar Tree, led to a new image for the actress as a scatterbrained comedienne.

After Ziegfeld's death in 1932, the movies beckoned Burke once again, and she embarked on the second phase of her career, playing what she referred to as "my silly women." "These characters," she wrote, "these bird-witted ladies whom I have characterized so often … derived from my part in The Vinegar Tree. I am neatly typed today, of course, possibly irrevocably typed, although I sincerely hope not, for I should like better parts."

With Bill of Divorcement considered her talkie debut, other memorable efforts of this period were Topper, its sequel Merrily We Live (which earned her an Academy Award nomination), and the role of Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. Burke cited Glinda as her favorite film part—nearest to her stage roles. In 1936, she was an advisor on the film The Great Ziegfeld, in which she was portrayed by Myrna Loy . Burke tried a straight role in The Cheaters in 1945, but audiences did not want to take her seriously, perhaps because they'd grown accustomed to her comedy, perhaps because her voice, always slightly high pitched, became more "birdy" with age.

In 1949, Burke wrote the first of her memoirs, With a Feather on My Nose. By that time, she had moved to a modest home in West Los Angeles, next door to her daughter and three grandchildren. Still busy, she continued to work until her retirement in 1953, after which she was lured out for only a few plays in stock, including The Solid Gold Cadillac, and some very small movie roles. Her second autobiography, With Powder on My Nose, was published in 1959, 11 years before her death in 1970.