Ethel Levey

Ethel Levey, born Grace Ethelia Fowler on November 22, 1880, in San Francisco, California, was an American actress, singer, and dancer whose career spanned musical theatre and vaudeville. The daughter of David Fowler and Mattie McGee, she adopted a variation of her stepfather Solomon Levy's surname as her professional name. Levey died on February 27, 1955, in New York City at the age of 74.

Levey launched her professional career in San Francisco in 1897, appearing in Charles H. Hoyt's A Milk White Flag. She subsequently became a regular presence on vaudeville programs both in New York and on tour. Her Broadway career extended from 1901 to 1945, encompassing a wide range of musical productions. Following her 1899 marriage to George M. Cohan in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she performed alongside him in several productions, including The Governor's Son, which ran in both 1901 and 1906, Running for Office in 1903, Little Johnny Jones in 1904, and George Washington Jr. in 1906. The couple had a daughter, Georgette, born in 1900, before separating in 1906 and divorcing in 1907.

After her divorce from Cohan, Levey continued building her Broadway career independently. She starred in Nearly a Hero in 1908 and later appeared in Watch Your Step in 1914, Go Easy, Mabel in 1922, Sunny River in 1941, and Marinka in 1945. Her stage work also extended to London, where she appeared in a series of revues including Hullo Ragtime in 1912, Hullo Tango in 1913, Look Who's Here! and Follow the Crowd in 1916, Three Cheers in 1917, Oh! Julie in 1920, and Blue Kitten in 1925. Irving Berlin noted her distinctive interpretation of his song "Alexander's Ragtime Band," recalling his dissatisfaction with her slower rendition while acknowledging that audiences responded to it enthusiastically.

Beyond the stage, Levey appeared in the 1931 film High Stakes and in a 1940 short comedy titled Tattle Television. In 1942, she filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Warner Brothers, alleging invasion of privacy over Yankee Doodle Dandy, a film biography of Cohan in which his domestic life was heavily fictionalized.

Levey's personal life included a second marriage, to English aviator Claude Grahame-White, in London in 1916. During their marriage she flew over wartime France with Grahame-White and regularly traveled by air between Paris and London. Grahame-White objected to her continued stage career, and the couple divorced in 1939. Prior to World War I, Levey and her daughter had lived together in Paris.