Fifi d orsay biography books
Although she made her career playing the quintessential Parisian coquette, Fifi D'Orsay was actually a Canadian. She was born Yvonne Lussier in Montreal, Québec, in At the age of 20 she arrived in New York, determined to become an actress. She was met by Helen Morgan, whom she knew from Montreal. Morgan put up the young Yvonne and taught her the ropes about finding jobs. She was soon hired to appear in The Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang "Yes! We Have No Bananas" in French and told the director that she was an ex-Follies Bèrgere showgirl from Paris. The director renamed her Mademoiselle Fifi". During the run she became involved with vaudeville veteran Edward Gallagher (who, with Al Shean, formed the hit comedy act "Gallagher and Shean"), who was 37 years her senior. He taught her "all the little tricks of the business". She said, "I wanted to learn everything about show business and he taught me - believe me!" She and Gallagher put together a vaudeville act and worked together for two years. When they parted ways, she was teamed with Herman Berrans by noted vaudeville sketch writer Herman Timberg. They put together an act that featured Fifi as a saucy music student and Berrans as her teacher, and it soon became a hit on the Orpheum circuit. Hollywood beckoned and on the strength of a favorable screen test, she dumped her fiancé (Berrans' brother Freddie) and took off for Hollywood. By this time she had adopted the last name "D'Orsay", after her favorite perfume. She continued her career in movies, alternating them with highly paid appearances in vaudeville. In the Palace Theatre revived vaudeville and Fifi returned to sparkling acclaim. She was one of the first major stars to appear on television in its early days, and later acted in such series as Bewitched (), Adventures in Paradise () and Perry Mason (), among other shows. In , at the age of 67, she appeared o Mademoiselle Fifi was one of the last gals out of the gate with that old vaudeville spirit. Her character was a complete invention. She was actually Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier () and she was from Montreal, not Paris as she liked to give out. She came to New York in , where she auditioned for John Murray Anderson, producer of the Greenwich Village Follies, by singing “Yes, We Have No Bananas” in French. She claimed to have come straight from the Folies Bergère. Why not? Anderson named her “Fifi”. Shortly thereafter, Gallagher and Shean joined the show and Fifi became Gallagher’s apprentice – in love as well as in work. She was in his vaudeville act for two years, learning the ropes, but also functioning as his common-law wife. From there, she went on to a Herman Timberg sketch with Herman Berrens called “Ten Dollars a Lesson.” After this she worked solo, singing and telling jokes well into the thirties at the same time she was starring in movies for Twentieth-Century Fox, such as They Had to See Paris (), Those Three French Girls, and Young as You Feel (). Her last film was What a Way to Go! (). She continued to perform live through the s, notably in the original production of Stephen Sondheim’sFollies (). To learn about vaudeville and stars like Fifi D&#;Orsay please read No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. Fifi D&#;Orsay: &#;Paris&#; By Way of Montreal
Related
The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville
The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville provides a unique record of what was once America's preeminent form of popular entertainment from the late s through the early s. It includes entries not only on the entertainers themselves, but also on those who worked behind the scenes, the theatres, genres, and historical terms. Entries on individual vaudevillians include biographical information, samplings of routines and, often, commentary by the performers. Many former vaudevillians were interviewed for the book, including Milton Berle, Block and Sully, Kitty Doner, Fifi D'Orsay, Nick Lucas, Ken Murray, Fayard Nicholas, Olga Petrova, Rose Marie, Arthur Tracy, and Rudy Vallee. Where appropriate, entries also include bibliographies. The volume concludes with a guide to vaudeville resources and a general bibliography.
Aside from its reference value, with its more than five hundred entries, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville discusses the careers of the famous and the forgotten. Many of the vaudevillians here, including Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jimmy Durante, W. C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and Mae West, are familiar names today, thanks to their continuing careers on screen. At the same time, and given equal coverage, are forgotten acts: legendary female impersonators Bert Savoy and Jay Brennan, the vulgar Eva Tanguay with her billing as “The I Don't Care Girl,” male impersonator Kitty Doner, and a host of “freak” acts.
D&#;Orsay the artist
Count d’Orsay, who died on this day in , was variously described as “the prince” or – more prosaically – “the last” of the dandies. The phenomenon of the dandy piqued intellectual curiosity in the count’s native France, where he was the subject of at least one book-length study in the 19 century. In his adoptive England, the scene of his social triumphs, he was confined to walk-on parts in numerous chronicles of the age while also appearing as a thinly-veiled character in contemporary fiction.
To the best of my knowledge, W. Teignmouth Shore’s D’Orsay, or The Complete Dandy was the first English biography of the great post-Regency fashion plate, appearing almost 60 years after his death. I’ve already quoted from Shore’s book, in which he describes d’Orsay’s toilet and high-handedly dismisses his lodgings which we visited in London (a journey which might have been lightened had I been aware of another Shore volume, Touring London with W. Teignmouth Shore; a little book of friendly guidance for those who visit London & those who dwell in London).
The arch, prolix prose of Shore’s endlessly entertaining biography seems to belong more to the count’s own era than the eve of the Great War. “Though there is not any authority for making the statement,” he avers in his opening remarks, “we do not think that we are wrong in asserting that on the day when Adam first complained to Eve that she had not cut his fig-leaf breeches according to the latest fashion dandyism was born.”
The undisputed daddy of the dandies, Beau Brummell, was already London’s most influential dresser when Gédéon Gaspard Alfred de Grimaud (also listed as Alfred Guillaume Gabriel), Comte d’Orsay, was born in Paris in D’Orsay made his own entry into the city 20 years later, by which time Brummell had been hounded into exile by his creditors, and it would be longer still before the count took up residence. His unconventional romantic encounters – including a long a