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Ziegfeld and BC/EFA’s Doris Eaton Travis “Stops the Show” at By Andy Smith Lots of people bounce back from illness, but when Doris Eaton Travis wasn’t able to perform at the 2007 Easter Bonnet Competition, friends and fans worried that the 103-year-old hoofer might be hanging up her dancing shoes. We were wrong. Travis, now 104, was back onstage at the Minskoff Theater on April 28th and 29th, swing dancing with partner Bill George and eight current Broadway “gypsies” all not even one-third her age and regaling the audience with the story of how she introduced the now classic song “Singin’ in the Rain” in The Hollywood Music Box Revue of 1929. By the time she energetically finished the second chorus, 1,800 members of the Broadway community and VIPs were stand and cheering, many with tears in their eyes.
Easter Bonnet Competiton 2008 Video This year marked Travis’s 10th Easter Bonnet Appearance, having made her Bonnet debut in 1998. That year, she walked onstage and shared the spotlight of The New Amsterdam Theatre (the refurbished home of the original Follies) with four other original Ziegfeld girls: Nona Otero Friedman, Yvonne Arden Hyde, Eleanor Dana O’Connell and Lucile Layton Zinman.
After the event, Travis informed BC/EFA Executive Director Tom Viola that she could still dance. So, in 1999, she returned, dancing nimbly to Irving Berlin’s “Mandy,” a soft shoe number she’d done in the Follies of 1919! Since then, Travis has become the event’s “lucky charm,” winning the largest ovations ever heard at any BC/EFA event. And the choreographers of Easter Bonnet have given her the opportunity to showcase a variety of moves, from teaching “Thoroughly Modern” Sutton Foster the “Black Bottom” (a 20s dance similar to the Charleston), celebrating her 100th birthday on the stage of the New Amsterdam, and synchopatin’ to “Ballin’ the Jack” with her younger brother Charlie. Recently, we spoke with Mrs. Travis – accompanied by George, her friend, chef and dance partner – from her Ranch in Norman, Oklahoma, where she and her late husband bred and raised champion quarter horses for more than 20 years. Memories of Ziegfeld and Company At 14, Eaton won a spot in the Follies of 1918. “I was a chorus girl. In 1919 I was a ‘special girl,’ and the third year (1920) I was a principal,” she remembers. That year, her roles included understudying headliner Marilyn Miller, a performer she remembers as polite, but not overly friendly. Her memories of Rogers, later a major star in films such as State Fair (1933), were similar. “Will Rogers came on, did his show and got off. He didn’t seem to make any close friends in the cast. He was polite, but distant,” she remembers.
Comic Fanny (Funny Girl) Brice was another matter. “Fanny was friendlier. She became a family friend. Fanny and my sister Pearl became good friends and they both had daughters about the same age, who became friends,” she says, adding, “Later, in California, they had houses next to each other.” Also a Follies dancer, Pearl Eaton went on to become a respected choreographer, working on countless RKO musicals during the early days of talking pictures, 1929-31. Although he’s been played by William Powell in the biopic The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Walter Pidgeon in Funny Girl (1968), few people are around who actually remember the real Florenz Ziegfeld, who died in 1932. Mrs. Travis, however, recalls the dapper impresario well. “He was a quiet man. I remember him attending a number of rehearsals. He wanted things to be just right. We knew he wanted quality to come through all the performances,” she says. “Mr. Ziegfeld was interested in all the performers, the chorus, the dancers and the comedians,” she remembers with clarity. “With the comedians he was very particular about their conversation. He wanted it kept on a high level.” “Nothing smutty!” Throughout the 1920s, Eaton continued to have success as a featured and supporting player, enjoying a long Broadway run in the comedy Excess Baggage (1927). In films, she played an ingénue to serial queen Pearl White (best known for The Perils of Pauline) in the 1923’s The Broadway Peacock, made a film in England (which included location work in Egypt) and appeared in two early talkies: Street Girl and The Very Idea (both 1929). Theatrical success was a family affair and Doris points out that she wasn’t the biggest star in the group. In 1924, four Eatons (Doris, Pearl, Charlie and Mary) were appearing on Broadway. Charlie created the role of Andy Hardy in the comedy hit Skidding (1928), while Mary was a headliner, showing her singing and singular dancing skills as the title character in the 1927 smash The Five O’clock Girl. …Another Door Opens Appearing at the studio without an appointment, she encountered the man himself, who was standing behind the receptionist. After a brief interview, Murray hired the unemployed dancer and told her to start the next day. Soon, her tap-dance card was full with a solid roster of students, but she developed a curiosity about the finer aspects of social dancing. “In between lessons, I was on the floor whenever a male instructor of social dancing needed a partner to practice with,” she remembers. “So I began to learn social dancing that way; I liked it very much.” During this period, a strong entrepreneurial spirit emerged as well. “As time went on, Cy, the social dance teacher who had taken me on as a partner, had asked Mr. Murray if he could open a dance studio someplace. Finally Mr. Murray said ‘yes,’” she remembers. “Cy opened one at the Statler Hotel in Detroit and asked if I would go with him.” “So he, his wife and I got in his broken down Ford, drove to Detroit and opened the first Arthur Murray branch studio,” she says. “We were very successful. A few years later, Cy and his wife moved to California and I took over the Michigan franchise.” “At one time, I had 18 Arthur Murray Studios throughout the state of Michigan. I loved those years.” Her brothers Charlie and Joe joined her in Michigan, both becoming Arthur Murray dance instructors. During the 1940s and 50s, Doris and Charlie went to Cuba on a number of occasions to study with the best instructors. “Our studio in Detroit became the best Latin Dance School in the country,” she says. “Mr. Murray would send instructors to our studios from all over the country to learn more about the Rumba.” She also traveled to Argentina to master the authentic tango, and Brazil to learn the Samba. During the late 1940s, Eaton also found time to marry entrepreneur Paul Travis, who shared her love for dancing. The owner of five mills that made specialty parts for the automotive industry, Travis developed a keen interest in quarter horses and eventually the couple bought a ranch in Norman, Oklahoma, selling the paper factories and moving there to live year-round in 1970. Around this time, retirement age for most, Doris decided to balance her work on the ranch with formal education. “Paul had two degrees and I always felt inferior because I didn’t have a high school education. For years I’d say, ‘I wish I had a college education,” she says. “Finally, he said, ‘For heaven’s sake, I’ve been hearing you gripe since I’ve known you. We’re 15 minutes from the University. Either put up or shut up,” she recalls. She put up, completing a high-school equivalency program, followed by enrollment at the University of Oklahoma. In 1992, at 88, she became the school’s oldest graduate, completing her bachelor’s degree with a 3.6 GPA, earning Phi Beta Kappa membership. “Teaching him was a terrible struggle,” she jokes. “I hired Bill as a cook. A few months after he’d been with us, I passed the kitchen and saw him doing a few fancy steps,” the Arthur Murray instructor remembers. “So I started teaching him in the afternoon. I taught Bill a great deal of the social dances, foxtrot, rumba, and swing and it gave me a chance to practice.” “Now he’s my dance partner wherever I go.” Bill and Doris practice three to four times a week, she says. “We just practice a half hour here in the foyer—foxtrot, rumba and swing. We’ve never done much with tango; I guess we’ve got to work on that.” Ziegfeld Club Administrator Nils Hanson says that after her health problems in 2007, Mrs. Travis has enjoyed a resurgence of energy this spring. “When she was in town for Easter Bonnet, we had a dinner for 20 people at Chez Josephine. She was table hopping the whole night; she didn’t to overlook anyone.” Eaton credits her healthy longevity to work, exercise and education. “Keep your mind active,” she suggests. “I’m learning all the time and I’ve done that all my life.”
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