Frances Dewey

Frances Dewey Wormser (June 23, 1903 – January 28, 2008) was an American stage actress, vaudeville performer, and entertainer whose career spanned the 1920s and 1930s. Born in New York City, she was the daughter of Alfred James Dewey (1874–1958), a California artist recognized as the "dean" of an early art colony in Sierra Madre, California. Dewey later took up painting herself.

Dewey's professional career began in the mid-1920s and extended across Broadway, touring productions, and vaudeville circuits. She played the lead role in the 1925 Broadway revival of Sally, Irene and Mary, one of several productions in which she held a leading part. Her performance in The Girl Friend in 1926 drew the attention of producer Lew Fields, who created the Dewey and Gold Revue specifically for Dewey and her performing partner, Al Gold. The two toured together on the Pantages Circuit in 1927 and 1928. In 1929, Dewey toured in Good Boy. Later that year, in late 1928, she appeared in an out-of-town tryout of Boom Boom alongside Cary Grant, then still performing under his birth name Archie Leach, and Jeanette MacDonald.

Her Broadway credits included the 1931 revue Shoot the Works, written by Heywood Broun, and the first edition of Leonard Sillman's New Faces in 1934, which also featured Henry Fonda and Imogene Coca. That production marked the inaugural entry in what would become a franchised series introducing emerging Broadway talent. Coca became a lifelong friend of Dewey's. She also appeared in the musical New Faces of 1943, extending her association with the series. Dewey officially retired from entertainment during the later 1930s and worked as a buyer for Jane Engel, a women's clothing company, around the same period.

In her personal life, Dewey married her first husband, Orin Zoline, in the later 1930s, roughly coinciding with her retirement from performing. Zoline died in the 1950s, and she subsequently married Morton Wormser during the same decade. The couple lived in Sarasota, Florida, for more than twenty-five years. Morton Wormser was an avid tennis player and supporter of the sport, and as a result of that connection, professional tennis player Martina Navratilova lived with Frances and Morton when she first arrived in the United States in the early 1970s. Frances and Morton Wormser traveled around the world on their honeymoon. She took her last major trip to visit friends in Maui at the age of 100.

Among her other associations, Dewey counted Leo Lerman, former editor of Vogue Magazine and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, as a professional confidant. Lerman died in 1994. She was also a major contributor to the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula, which she supported in honor of her brother, pilot Jim Dewey. Frances Dewey Wormser died on January 28, 2008, from natural causes in Santa Paula, California, at the age of 104. She had no children.