Anna hero
Anna Held (born March 8, 1873 in Warsaw , † August 2 or August 12, 1918 in New York City ) was an actress who is best known today for her connection with Florence Ziegfeld junior .
Life
Anna Held was born in Warsaw, the daughter of a French woman and a Jewish German, possibly five to eight years before her officially published date of birth in March 1873. When Poland was hit by anti-Semitic pogroms in 1881 , the family fled to Paris . There Anna Held and her mother had to help support the family when the father got health problems. Anna Held sometimes worked as a street singer.
After her father's death in 1884, Anna Held and her mother moved to live with relatives in London . There she began her stage career as an actress in the theaters of Avram Goldfadn and Jacob P. Adler . On returning to Paris, she became known as a chanteuse in cafes. Habits such as riding in the manor, cycling and driving increased their popularity.
Around 1895 she married the player Maximo Carrera. This marriage served on the one hand to legitimize her daughter Liane († 1988), who she did not raise herself, on the other hand it allowed her to convert to Catholicism and thus hide her origins. In 1896 she performed in London's Palace Music Hall, among others. There she was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld junior for a Broadway production. For her appearances in A Parlor Match she was supposed to get 1500 dollars a week and Ziegfeld's advertising apparatus prepared her career in the USA so that she was already celebrated as a star when she arrived on September 15, 1896. On September 21, 1896, she made her US debut at the Herald Square Theater in New York. The song Won't You Come and Play With Me? became a hit; After the premiere, the horses were unhitched from their carriage and admirers, who might have been paid for by Ziegfeld, pulled them through the city in triumph.
A hoax that Ziegfeld put into circulation made them even better known. Ziegfeld claimed that his star bathed in milk every day, but had received a delivery of sour milk from a supplier who was now protesting against this allegation. The dispute over this alleged sour - and unpaid - milk bath made the headlines several times. Another of Ziegfeld's advertising ideas was to spread the fact that Anna Held had overtaken, caught, tamed and thus saved a human life with her bicycle.
In the following twelve years, Anna Held appeared regularly in Ziegfeld productions.
She finally divorced Carrera and announced to friends that she now considered herself married to Ziegfeld. However, there was no official marriage and later Ziegfeld's financial attacks and his relationship with Lilliane Lorraine led to a crisis in the relationship between Anna Held and Florenz Ziegfeld, who married Billie Burke in 1912 .
In 1897 Anna Held was seen in La Poupee , 1899 in Papa's Wife , 1901 in The Little Duchess , 1903 in Mam'selle Napoleon , 1904 in Higgledy Piggledy , 1906 in The Parisian Model and 1908 in Miss Innocence (1908). After separating from Ziegfeld in 1912, she continued to work as a vaudeville star. In 1916 she appeared in Follow Me , a production by the Ziegfeld rival Shubert Brothers, in the same year the film Madame la Presidente came out, in which she played a role.
During the last six months of her life, Anna Held suffered from cancer. She died at the Hotel Savoy in New York and was buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne , Westchester County .
Afterlife
Anna Held was portrayed in the 1936 film Der große Ziegfeld by Luise Rainer , who received an Oscar for best actress for this performance. In 1976, her daughter set up an Anna Hero Museum in San Jacinto .
Filmography
- 1910: The Comet
- 1916: Madame la Presidente
Web links
- Anna Held in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- New York Public Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to the New York Public Library ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. contrary to numerous other sources.
- ↑ a b Anna Held to be Married
- ^ Ziegfeld 101 Anna Held by John Kenrick at musicals 101.com.
- ↑ a b c Ziegfeld's escapades
- ^ Review of Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway.
- ↑ Oxford Companion to American Theater: Anna Held
- ↑ Anna Held's Debut in a Screen Play; Those Eyes Express Every Degree of Demureness in “Madame la Presidente” In: The New York Times , film review February 7, 1916
- ↑ Anna Held - Bibliography at: Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hero, Anna |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | actress and singer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 8, 1873 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Warsaw |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 2, 1918 or August 12, 1918 |
| Place of death | New York City |