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May 13, 2010

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Travis, last of the Ziegfeld Follies girls, dies at 106

DORIS Eaton Travis, one of the legendary Ziegfeld Follies chorus girls, who wore elaborate costumes for the series of lavish Broadway theatrical productions in the early 1900s, died on Tuesday at age 106, public relations firm Boneau/Bryan-Brown said. It didn't say where or how she died.

Travis, who was from West Bloomfield, Michigan, also was a supporter of the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising organization and appeared often in its Easter Bonnet Competition.

She continued to work long after her Follies days ended, with annual appearances on Broadway, a small role in a Jim Carrey movie and a memoir, "The Days We Danced: The Story of My Theatrical Family From Florenz Ziegfeld to Arthur Murray and Beyond."

Interest in the 1.57-meter centenarian piqued after a 1997 reunion with four other Ziegfeld Follies Girls for the reopening of the New Amsterdam Theatre, where she danced 80 years earlier.

"I was the only one who could still dance," she said then.

Even after more than 90 years as a hoofer, dancing still came easy to Travis, who appeared in the extravagant Ziegfeld Follies show that enchanted Broadway from 1907 into the 1930s.

"I'm the last of the Ziegfeld Follies Girls now," she said when she was 102. "It's an honor in a way. I certainly didn't think that would happen."

She was born in Norfolk, Virginia.


 

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