Barbara Newberry

Barbara Newberry (1910–1986) was an American actress, dancer, singer, and choreographer born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Max Wilford Newberry and Elizabeth Fay Wiley. By 1918 she was living in the Bronx section of New York City, and by early 1925 she had relocated to Chicago, Illinois, before returning to New York City later that same year.

Newberry's performing career began in childhood. At age eight, in 1918, she was cast in a significant child role in the Winthrop Ames New York production of Maurice Maeterlinck's The Betrothal. At the time she was described as a pupil of Mme. Voerhoeven of the Metropolitan Opera company and Miriam Nelke of the Belasco dramatic school. In January 1925, she appeared at the Capitol Theater in Chicago, where she danced with a ballet backup of twelve performers. Later that year, The Chicago Tribune noted that she had been cast in the 1925 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies, identifying her as "a Chicago beauty."

Her Broadway career spanned from 1925 to 1933, during which she appeared regularly in musical productions. Following the Ziegfeld Follies of 1925, Newberry performed in No Foolin' (1926), Golden Dawn (1927–28), Good Boy (1928–29), Heads Up, and Show Girl (1929), among other productions. In 1929, producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. declared that she had "the most beautiful legs in America," a characterization that was repeated extensively in press coverage of Newberry throughout her career. Her Broadway credits also include the musicals A Little Racketeer, Pardon My English, and Take a Chance.

Cole Porter engaged Newberry, alongside Carl Randall, to serve as choreographer for Gay Divorce (1932–33), the Broadway production starring Fred Astaire in his final Broadway show. Newberry and Randall subsequently choreographed the London production of Gay Divorce at the Palace Theatre, which ran from 1933 to 1934. In November 1933, the two also produced and starred in The Monte Carlo Follies at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Their collaboration ended in April 1934 following a reported dispute in which Randall, strongly opposed to a proposed marriage between Newberry and British suitor George Farrar, reportedly brought her back to America, dissolving what had been a long and successful professional partnership. Newberry's final major stage engagement was Love Laughs in 1935 at the London Hippodrome, where she performed alongside British dancer, choreographer, actor, and producer Laddie Cliff.

In her personal life, Newberry married actor Eddie Foy, Jr. on May 12, 1930; they divorced in 1932. On December 28, 1935, she married Robert Bagley Foster, a business executive and former Olympic swimmer, and that marriage ended in divorce in February 1950. In March 1950, she married Paris Singer, grandson of Isaac Merritt Singer, the developer of the Singer sewing machine; they divorced in 1953. Newberry died in New York City in October 1986.