ABSTRACT
Dark and diminutive, with a voice unequal to her charms, Anna Held was a Polish-Parisian import of the young impressario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Together, they burst into the New York theater scene with Ziegfeld’s 1896 revival of Charles H.Hoyt’s farce, A Parlor Match, in which Held made a brief appearance singing, “Won’t You Come and Play with Me.” She was naughty enough to be beloved by the public and beautiful enough to be accepted by the critics, who nevertheless seriously questioned her acting and singing abilities. After Ziegfeld designed an elaborate publicity campaign that included reports about her bathing in milk and saving an elderly judge from death when his coach went out of control, and stunts like kissing contests and three hundred men pulling Anna’s hansom cab up Broadway, Anna Held became a household name with hordes of manufacturers seeking her endorsement on their products. Anna had arrived in every way but artistically. She was paid extravagant sums to showcase her talents in musicals (La Poupée) and farces (A Gay Deceiver, The French Maid), but the results were always the same: bad reviews for everything but her appearance. Her (common-law) husband, Ziegfeld, finally went to his old acquaintance Harry B.Smith for a solution to the problem. If he wanted a musical designed to make the most of Held’s strengths, who better than Smith, whose career was spent writing for stars and their particular talents.
