Bird Millman

Bird Millman, born Jennadean Engleman on October 20, 1890, in Cañon City, Colorado, was a high-wire performer whose Broadway appearances spanned from 1909 to 1921. She died on August 5, 1940, at the age of 49.

Millman's early life was spent traveling with her parents, Dyke F. Engleman and Genevieve Patton Engleman, in small traveling circuses known as mud shows. By 1904, the family act had entered big-time vaudeville as the Millman Trio, performing at venues including Keith's Union Square and Hammerstein's Paradise Roof Garden. During this period she earned the informal designation "the Eva Tanguay of the Wire." A command performance before the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II at Berlin's Wintergarten Theatre marked a significant moment in her European engagements. After returning to the United States, the act was reorganized under the name Bird Millman & Co., and her performance venues expanded to include the New York Hippodrome and the Palace Theatre on Broadway. One member added during this period, Fern Andra, departed after a brief European tour and subsequently became a star of German silent film.

In 1913, Millman joined the Barnum and Bailey Circus as a center-ring performer, a position she retained following that organization's merger with the Ringling Brothers Circus. Her standing within the combined Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus grew to such prominence that during the 1919 and 1920 seasons, the side rings were left empty while she performed — a distinction shared only by the circus's most exceptional headliners. Among her contemporaries at the circus were equestrienne May Wirth and aerialist Lillian Leitzel. Her reputation rested not on dangerous stunts but on exceptional speed and a quality of apparent effortlessness in her work. She did use a parasol as a balancing implement, contrary to some accounts that suggested otherwise. She also performed high above the streets of New York City on multiple occasions, using such exhibitions to sell war bonds and generate publicity.

During the circus's off-seasons, Millman maintained an active Broadway career. Her verified stage credits include the musical Miss Innocence, the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic of 1919, and The Greenwich Village Follies of 1923. The external biographical record also notes an appearance in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 and multiple editions of Ziegfeld's Frolics, as well as a 1921 appearance in John Murray Anderson's Third Annual Greenwich Village Follies. In 1920, she performed a specialty number in The Deep Purple, a silent film directed by Raoul Walsh.

Millman's personal life included two brief early marriages, one ending in annulment and the other in divorce. Her third husband was Joseph Francis O'Day, a Harvard graduate and military veteran, who died not long after losing his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. Left destitute, Millman returned to Colorado, where she lived with her mother and extended family. She died there of uterine cancer. Her eulogy was composed by author Dixie Willson, the sister of composer Meredith Willson.

In 1961, Millman was inducted posthumously into the International Circus Hall of Fame.