Jeanne Devereaux, Prima Ballerina of Vaudeville and Broadway: "She Ran Between the Raindrops"

by Kathleen Menzie Lesko

Overview

International vaudeville star and Broadway prima ballerina Jeanne Devereaux performed for millions across America and Europe from age eleven until her retirement at forty. A headliner at Radio City Music Hall, she led a large group of performers on one of the first USO Camp Shows tours to Japan. Born Jean Helman, she entered showbiz as a dancing trouper performing in palatial theaters and was one of the last vaudevillians surviving into the 2010s. In her later years living in Pasadena, California, Devereaux indulged her passion for research and writing in the Huntington Library's Rothenberg Reading Room, losing none of her intelligence and wit despite a fading memory. Drawing on personal interviews, theatrical programs, and her diary and letters, this biography illuminates the life and career of one of vaudeville's stars of stage, film, and television.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476666945
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	05/10/2017
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A former faculty member and administrator at Georgetown University, Kathleen Menzie Lesko is a research scholar at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. She served as an administrator for the National Endowment for the Humanities and as chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, DC. She lives in Pasadena.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Anthony Slide
A Note on the Text
Prologue
Introduction
 1 • Family Life in St. Louis, Missouri
 2 • The Making of a Ballerina
 3 • New York and the Circuits
 4 • Hollywood, a Fanchon and Marco Tour and Pasadena
 5 • The Roxy and the Circuits
 6 • The London Palladium
 7 • A Royal Command Performance and a European and North African Tour
 8 • Touring the British Provinces with George Ahoy!
 9 • International Casino and a Royal Performance in Paris
10 • Radio City, Brazil and Lean Times
11 • Aunt Lenore’s Dream House and Performing at the St. Louis
Muny
12 • Touring with Earl Carroll’s Vanities
13 • Radio City and Clifford C. Fisher’s Folies Bergère
14 • Hollywood and Summer Operettas
15 • A USO Camp Shows Tour to Japan
16 • Radio City, Summer Operettas and the Milton Berle Television Show
17 • Final Year in New York
18 • Marriage and Four More Careers
Epilogue
Afterword by Jeanne Devereaux Perkins
Appendix One: Sample of Jeanne’s Poetry
Appendix Two: Jeanne’s World War II Legacy
Appendix Three: Jeanne’s Research on Grace Nicholson
Appendix Four: Sarkis Badalyan’s Commemorative Poem
Written for Jeanne’s Celebration of Life at the Huntington
Library, October 2011
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index