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Cpiloga^: Th£ Melody h>\ng^rs On Annas death was hardly unexpected, so her funeral was a well-planned and celebrity-studded event, thanks to Lillian Russells expert arrangements. Annas coffin, draped in the French and American flags, was on view at Campbells Funeral Church, at Broadway and Sixty-sixth Street. On August 13 crowds lined up by the hundreds to view the celebrities arriving for the 11:30 services, read by the Reverend John Murphy of Baltimore. Russell, Eva Davenport, Gertrude Hoffmann, BertWilliams, Lew Fields, Lee Shubert, and Charles Evans of A Parlor Match were among the famed attendees—Florenz Ziegfeld, with his horror of death and funerals, merely sent a huge floral arrangement of orchids, lillies of the valley, and roses, with a note reading "Flo."The Witmark Quartette serenaded the crowd with "Nearer, My God, To Thee" and "Lead Kindly, Light." That night, Campbells stayed open till 2 A.M. to accommodate the thousands of fans who filed by to pay their respects. On Wednesday, August 14, Anna was taken to Greenmount Cemetery in White Plains, New York, where a temporary plot was acquired. Lillian Russell later bought a site in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Mt. Pleasant, New York, where Anna was eventually interred. She was one of the first people to be buried in the just-dedicated cemetery, which was owned by St. Patrick s Cathedral . She was later joined there by such famous neighbors as James Cagney, Babe Ruth, Dorothy Kilgallen, Sal Mineo, and Dutch Schultz. Lillian Russell did right by Anna: Her attractive, Empire-style grave boasts a stone arch and two benches. Annas forlorn suitor, Charles Hanlon, was her executor. At the time of 216 EPILOGUE her death, she owned 86 rue Faubourg Saint-Honore, the chateau in Compiegne, shares in several Parisian grocery stores, nearly $290,000 in liquid assets, and a huge amount of jewels (many of which were left specifically to friends). After her bills had been settled, her estate was auctioned off in September I9I9:The jewelry brought in $71,000. The estate auction was a sad and shabby affair, held in suite 117 of the Waldorf-Astoria. One newspaper described "a row of trailing, bedraggled gowns, a worn hat or two on a chair, a little pile of soiled satin shoes in the centre of the room Those tiny ... shoes lying there in the centre of the room struck me as being unusually pathetic.They seemed so little, so helpless, with their high French heels." A.J. Adelson, who was conducting the sale, told the reporter, "It is funny how many come here just as souvenir seekers. Yesterday a woman came in and bought some shoes. She must have worn size eight herself, and Miss Held s are threes, but the woman explained that she had always heard that Miss Held was lucky, and that she wanted some of her things." The reporter overheard another shopper say enthusiastically, "My little girl is going to be married, and this is the most wonderful place for bargains!" Annas evening gowns and stage costumes sold from $25 to $300.The auction brought in $145,900, which went to Liane, after probate, in December 1920. Annas friends agreed that the real tragedy of her death was its timing: She missed seeing the end of the war by only three months. The ferocity continued right up to the Armistice, which was signed on November II, 1918, in the forests outside Compiegne—walking distance from the chateau that Anna had bought, where she would have been with bells on, no doubt, had she been alive. After theTreaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, it was estimated that the war had cost 8,600,000 soldiers* lives (not including civilian casualties). France alone had lost 1,384,000 in battle. It wasn't only Anna who didn't survive the Great War; neither did her brand of musical theater. The revue format lived on, with Ziegfeld's Follies and such worthy competition as George White's Scandals (1919-39), the Greenwich Village Follies (1919-28), and the Music Box Revues (1921-24). But these never pretended to have plots; they were just glorified vaudeville. George M. Cohan had started something, and with the onset of peace, his baton was taken up by Gershwin, Kern, and Wodehouse. Snappy, modern musicals like Oh, Boy! (1917), Lady, Be Good! (1924), No, No, Nanette (1925), Good News and Funny Face (both 1927) took over where Annas...

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