Avonne Taylor

Avonne Taylor, born Evangeline Taylor on February 12, 1899, in Springfield, Ohio, was an American showgirl, actress, and model who worked in both stage and film. The daughter of Clifford and Diane Howe Taylor, she relocated with her family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1913. Following World War I, she traveled to New York in pursuit of an entertainment career. The day after an interview with producer Florenz Ziegfeld, she began performing in his Midnight Frolic production.

Taylor's Broadway career spanned from 1920 to 1922 and centered on Ziegfeld productions. Her stage credits included the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic of 1919, a subsequent Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic in 1920, and the 1920, 1921, and 1922 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. Among the 85 showgirls featured in the 1922 Follies, Taylor was designated the most beautiful, and the Prince of Wales identified her as the most beautiful woman he had seen on a stage.

By October 1923, Taylor had departed the Follies and joined the Famous Players–Lasky motion picture company. In 1927 she signed a film contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her film appearances included Zaza (1923), After Midnight (1927), My Best Girl (1927), Honor Among Lovers (1931), and Money and Marriage (1931). She ceased working in films in 1931. Also in 1923, Taylor served as the advertising model for Yeast Foam Tablets, with Ziegfeld quoted in the newspaper advertisement describing her as the most perfect type of the natural girl of 1923. That same year, the San Francisco Chronicle published a full-page feature in which Taylor offered beauty advice to women. In March 1923 she stated, "I do not care for the stage."

Taylor's personal life included five marriages. Her first, in 1917, was to Leslie B. Rosecrans, a name she later said she could not recall; they divorced around 1920. On July 24, 1925, she married Louis Gess, the Follies' musical director, in a private ceremony in Jersey City, though news of the wedding quickly reached their Broadway associates. That marriage ended in divorce in 1928. On May 21, 1931, Taylor married Thomas F. Manville Jr. in New York City. The two had renewed their acquaintance in Paris and initially attempted to marry in Europe, but after encountering difficulties obtaining the required legal documents, they returned to the United States and were wed by a city clerk in a municipal wedding chapel. They divorced on November 28, 1931. Taylor then married actor Carlyle Blackwell on March 25, 1933, in Reno, Nevada; they divorced in 1936. In her eighties she married George Robb, a longtime friend, and that marriage ended with his death in 1986.

Taylor's financial history included notable gains and losses. In 1923, robbers posing as florist delivery workers entered her apartment and stole $50,000 worth of jewelry. She earned and subsequently lost $500,000 in the stock market. In July 1940 she filed suit in Springfield to recover $1,489 she had loaned to an uncle by marriage who died on January 20, 1940. Taylor had made the loan believing him to be destitute, but upon his death discovered he held $6,072 in a bank account and $990 in a safe-deposit box. The uncle's executrix had rejected her claim.

Over the course of her later life, Taylor resided in Europe, New York City, and Palm Springs, California. She returned to Cleveland in 1989 and lived with relatives before moving to Hamlet Manor in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. She died there on March 20, 1992, at the age of 93.