Florence O'Denishawn

Florence O'Denishawn, born Florence Andrews on July 21, 1897, in Shreveport, Louisiana, was an American actress, dancer, and model whose Broadway career spanned from 1918 to 1926. The daughter of a banker, she trained in dance under Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis at their Denishawn school in California and became one of the first group of dancers associated with that institution. When she entered professional performance, she sought billing as "Florence of Denishawn," but a printing error rendered the name as "Florence O'Denishawn," and she continued working under that form throughout her career.

O'Denishawn's Broadway credits included the revue Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, the revue Hitchy-Koo of 1920, the play Rose Briar, the musical revue Music Box Revue of 1922–23, and the musical Honeymoon Lane of 1926. Her appearance in the Music Box Revue drew notice from critic George Jean Nathan, who remarked that her "umbilical revelations are so familiar by this time that one wishes she would put on a dress." Beyond Broadway, she appeared in two silent films: Lawful Larceny in 1923 and Monsieur Beaucaire in 1924, the latter of which featured her dancing alongside Rudolph Valentino. In 1925, she headlined vaudeville engagements in New York and Baltimore alongside dancers Nelson Snow and Charles Columbus, and she subsequently toured with Snow and Columbus in 1927 and again in 1930.

O'Denishawn also participated in several benefit performances during this period. In 1926, she performed at a benefit for the Episcopal Actors' Guild. The following year, she danced at a midnight cabaret to raise funds for the Association for the Aid of Crippled Children, and in 1930 she appeared in a variety show benefiting the Bide-A-Wee Home for Animals.

Her work extended into the visual arts as well. She posed for photographer Nickolas Muray and for sculptor Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, serving as the model for two bronze statues by Frishmuth titled "Papillon" and "Scherzo," both commissioned by Wilbur Foshay for Foshay Tower. She also gave a celebrity endorsement to a brand of footcare plasters.

In 1927, O'Denishawn began studying aviation, stating that "there is nothing that can beat an aeroplane for grace." From the late 1930s into the 1950s, she transitioned away from performance and worked in retail, operating her own store in Greenwich Village and serving as head of the lingerie department at Porter's department store on Madison Avenue. She died on March 15, 1991, in New York at the age of 93. A file of her correspondence with Ted Shawn is held in the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival archives in Becket, Massachusetts.