Eddie Foy

Eddie Foy, born Edwin Fitzgerald on March 9, 1856, in New York City, was an American actor, comedian, dancer, and vaudevillian who performed on Broadway between 1899 and 1912. His parents, Richard and Mary Fitzgerald, had emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1855, settling first in the Bowery and later in Greenwich Village. After his father died in 1862 from syphilis-induced dementia in an insane asylum, his mother relocated the family to Chicago, where she reportedly cared for the mentally ill widow of Abraham Lincoln at one point.

Foy began performing in streets and saloons at age six to help support his family. By fifteen he had adopted the stage name Foy and was dancing in bars alongside a partner, traveling through the western United States. He worked as a supernumerary in theatrical productions during this period, sharing stages with leading actors of the era including Edwin Booth and Joseph Jefferson. With a later partner, Jim Thompson, Foy traveled west again and built his earliest professional reputation performing in mining camps and frontier towns. In Dodge City, Kansas, he became acquainted with Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday. He is also rumored to have been in Tombstone, Arizona, in October 1881, at the Birdcage Theater at the time of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26 of that month.

In 1879, Foy married Rose Howland of the singing Howland Sisters, who were traveling the same performance circuit. Three years later, he and his troupe relocated to Philadelphia and joined the Carncross Minstrels. That same year Rose died in childbirth, along with the child she was delivering. After two seasons with the troupe, Foy returned to the road, joining David Henderson's company and performing comedy, dance, and farce across the country. In San Francisco in 1882, he met Lola Sefton, with whom he was romantically involved for ten years until her death in 1894. The two were never married but had a daughter, Catherine, who was raised by Foy's sister Mary.

Foy returned to Chicago in 1888 as a star comedian in variety shows and revues. In 1889 he achieved significant success starring in the musical Blue Beard, Jr., which premiered at the Grand Opera House in Chicago and subsequently toured nationally, with stops at Boston's Tremont Theatre in 1889 and Broadway's Niblo's Garden in 1890. In 1896, he married his third wife, Madeline Morando, a dancer in his company. Together they had eleven children, seven of whom survived childhood: Bryan (1896–1977), Charley (1898–1984), Mary (1901–1987), Madeline (1903–1988), Eddie Jr. (1905–1983), Richard (1905–1947), and Irving (1908–2003).

Between 1901 and 1912, Foy performed leading comic roles in a succession of Broadway musical productions. His credits included The Strollers (1901), The Wild Rose (1902), Mr. Bluebeard (1903), Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!! (1904), The Earl and the Girl (1905), The Orchid (1907), Mr. Hamlet of Broadway (1908–09), Up and Down Broadway (1910), and Over the River (1912). He also appeared in An Arabian Girl and 40 Thieves during his Broadway years.

While touring with Mr. Bluebeard, Foy was present at the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago on December 30, 1903. A malfunctioning spotlight ignited backstage scenery, and Foy remained onstage attempting to prevent the audience from panicking as burning debris fell around him. He ultimately escaped by crawling through a sewer. The theater's locked exits, inadequate safety features, and untrained personnel contributed to a death toll of at least 600 people. Survivors credited Foy for his efforts to keep the crowd calm during the disaster.

Between 1910 and 1913, Foy formed a family vaudeville act with his children called Eddie Foy and The Seven Little Foys, which became a national sensation and toured successfully for over a decade, also appearing in one motion picture. His wife Madeline died in 1918. In 1923, Foy married Marie Reilly Coombs, after which the children gradually pursued separate careers, though four of the younger ones — Charley, Mary, Madeline, and Irving — continued performing together until the mid-1930s. Foy himself continued appearing in vaudeville and starred in the Broadway comedy The Fallen Star in 1927.

Following Foy's death on February 16, 1928, from a heart attack at the Hotel Baltimore in Kansas City, Missouri, while headlining on the Orpheum circuit, his seven children reunited for a 1928 Vitaphone short titled Chips of the Old Block. The family's story was later dramatized in the 1955 film The Seven Little Foys, with Bob Hope portraying Foy and James Cagney as George M. Cohan, narrated by Charley Foy. Eddie Foy Jr. portrayed his father in four films — Frontier Marshal (1939), Lillian Russell (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and Wilson (1944) — and reprised the role in a 1964 television version of The Seven Little Foys with Mickey Rooney as George M. Cohan. A stage musical adaptation of The Seven Little Foys, written by Chip Deffaa, premiered at the Seven Angels Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 2007 and was revived at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2008, with Ryan Foy, Foy's great-grandson and grandson of Irving Foy, in the cast. Eddie Foy Jr.'s son, Eddie Foy III, worked as a casting director at Columbia Pictures for more than forty years.