Anna Held

Anna Held, born Helene Anna Held on 19 March 1872 in Warsaw, Poland, was a Polish-born French stage performer of Jewish origin who became one of Broadway's most prominent leading ladies between 1896 and 1916. Her father, Shimmle (also known as Maurice) Held, was a German Jewish glove maker, and her mother, Yvonne Pierre, was French-Jewish. In 1881, anti-Semitic pogroms drove the family to relocate to Paris, where her father's glove business eventually failed, leading him to work as a janitor while her mother ran a kosher restaurant. As a young woman in France, Held converted to Roman Catholicism.

After working in the garment industry, Held found employment as a singer in Jewish theatres in Paris. Her roles included the title character in a production of Abraham Goldfaden's Shulamith, directed by Jacob Adler. She also participated in Goldfaden's Paris troupe, which collapsed before ever performing publicly when its cashier absconded with the company's funds. Following her father's death, she continued performing in London, where her animated stage presence and willingness to perform risqué material built her a following. In 1894, she married Maximo Carrera, a much older Uruguayan playboy, and the couple had a daughter, Lianne, born in 1895, who later worked as an actress and producer under the name Anna Held Jr.

It was during her London engagement in 1896 that impresario Florenz Ziegfeld encountered Held and brought her to America, where she became his common-law wife. Before she had performed a single night in New York, Ziegfeld had already generated substantial press coverage around her, planting stories in American newspapers — including the claim that she had ribs surgically removed to achieve her famously narrow waist. Her Broadway debut in a revival of A Parlor Match drew critical skepticism but attracted public enthusiasm. From that point forward, Held was presented in a succession of musicals as a coquettish Parisian singer and comedienne, and several of her productions set house attendance records for their time. Her Broadway career included appearances in Higgledy-Piggledy, The Little Duchess in 1901, A Parisian Model during the 1906–1907 season, and Miss Innocence in 1908–1909, among other productions. The success of these shows made Held a millionaire in her own right while also substantially increasing Ziegfeld's fortune.

Held's performance style and stage persona directly influenced the format of what became the Ziegfeld Follies, which launched in 1907. She was unable to appear in the first edition of the Follies. Her daughter Lianne later claimed in an unpublished memoir — also published under Held's name as Anna Held and Flo Ziegfeld — that Ziegfeld compelled Held to terminate a pregnancy in late 1908 so that it would not interfere with Miss Innocence. However, authors Richard and Paulette Ziegfeld concluded that Held did not write the memoir and that Lianne was its actual author. Held's biographer Eve Golden assessed Lianne's abortion claim as likely fabricated, motivated by Lianne's deep animosity toward Ziegfeld.

In 1909, Ziegfeld began an affair with actress Lillian Lorraine, and he subsequently became involved with actress Billie Burke, whom he married in 1914. After Miss Innocence, Held departed Broadway. During the years of World War I, she performed in vaudeville and traveled to France to entertain French soldiers and raise funds for the war effort, including traveling to the front lines. She was regarded as a war heroine for these contributions. In 1917, she toured the United States in a production of Follow Me until deteriorating health forced her to close the show in January 1918. That same year, New York entertainment entrepreneur Oliver Morosco had cast her in the lead role of Madame la Presidente in 1916, for which she was paid $25,000 according to an interview she gave to Motion Picture Classic.

After closing Follow Me, Held checked into the Hotel Savoy in New York City. She had been battling multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, for approximately a year. On 12 August 1918, her physician declared her dead and alerted the press; roughly two hours later she revived, only to die shortly thereafter. Her funeral was held on 14 August at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. Florenz Ziegfeld did not attend, as he had a phobia of death and never went to funerals. Held is interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Her legacy extended beyond her lifetime. The 1936 MGM film The Great Ziegfeld depicted a fictionalized version of her relationship with Ziegfeld, with Luise Rainer portraying Held and winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role; William Powell and Myrna Loy played Ziegfeld and Billie Burke respectively. In 1978, Columbia Pictures released the television film Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women on NBC, in which Barbara Parkins portrayed Held. American poet Carl Sandburg wrote a memorial poem for her, An Electric Sign Goes Dark, published in his collection Smoke and Steel. In 1976, her daughter Lianne Carrera opened a museum dedicated to Held's personal and stage memorabilia in San Jacinto, California.