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— J — tlgavgn Will protect thg Working Girl A nna Held s stardom burst onto the new century like a fireworks display . For that brief prewar period known as La Belle Epoque, Anna represented everything that was glamorous about Broadway, everything that was naughty about Paris. Backed by the demented zeal of her husband, producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., she sang and danced and flirted from one hit show to another. A later Ziegfeld star, Eddie Cantor, reminisced about the impact of Anna s stardom. "For a generation America succumbed to the Anna Held craze/' he wrote in 1934. "There were Anna Held corsets, facial powders, pomades, Anna Held Girls, Anna Held eyes and even Anna Held cigars. She toured the country like a conqueror and no matter where her private car stopped, she had to step out on the observation platform and greet laborers and shop girls who waited since daybreak to catch a glimpse of her before reporting for work. Anna Held was the most buoyant and cheerful spirit that ever swept across our stage. To this day stage-hands throughout America doff their hats at the mention of her name" This carefree, lighthearted Parisienne lived the life of an empress for more than a decade. But her working life began in the sweatshops of the garment industry and ended in the frontline trenches and field hospitals of wartime France. The Anna Held of the fabled milk baths and champagne giggle died a decorated war heroine. But while she played, she held the world in the palm of her hand. Anna Helds birthdate and hometown are a dark mystery, thanks to her own mythmaking. Theatrical history books claim she was born in Paris on March 18, 4 ANNA HELD 1873.This is certainly not the case. Actresses can be forgiven for lying about their age, and Anna was no exception: N o birth certificate exists, but a careful look at Annas early career suggests that she was born closer to 1870. Her gravestone reads 1872, but gravestones are notoriously inaccurate. Jacob Shatzky of the Institute for Jewish Research wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1956 claiming that Anna had been born in 1865. But Shatzky offered no sources for his assertion , and this date seems a little too early when taking into consideration Annas career and the testimony of her neighbors. Even her birthday is somewhat cloudy, as one newspaper report has her celebrating it in November rather than March. Equally problematic is Anna s nationality, as she was the very embodiment of France to prewar Americans. Called "the musical comedy Sarah Bernhardt," Anna spoke and sang in a heavy French accent, vacationed in Paris every summer, and virtually gave her life for France in World War I. "I was born in Paris," she stated point-blank in 1907. "VoilalThat is settled. For they have had me born everywhere else, even in Indiana They have had me from Poland, but that was not I but my mother. And my birth the chroniclers had made to occur in London. But I did not see London until I was twelve years old. It was Paris, Paris, Paris." It was Warsaw, actually. Her passport and the reminiscences of childhood neighbors and early coworkers all give lie to her almost violent claims of French birth. But Anna s early escape from Poland with her family was so hair-raising, and her experiences in London so hellish, that it s no wonder she claimed Paris for her own. In one very real sense, "Anna Held" was born there. Her father was a modestly successful glovemaker, Shimmle (he later anglicized his first name to Maurice) Held; her mother, Yvonne Pierre, was later described by Annas daughter as conservative, "rather helpless," and very religious . Anna later said that her father was probably of German origin, accounting for the name Held (which means "hero" in German). If he had emigrated, mid-nineteenth-century Warsaw was not an unfriendly place for Jews. Poland was occupied by Russia, where the liberal Czar Alexander II had been in power since 1855. Alexander II lightened some of the harsher laws against Jews; they were allowed into universities, into more professions and towns. By the late nineteenth century, Warsaw was 40 percent Jewish, and most of its citizens felt secure in their own little world. It never paid for Jews to get too secure, of course. They were still not officially citizens and had few recourses to law. Poland was...

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