Geneva Duker

Geneva M. Duker Schissel (March 5, 1905 – July 14, 1976) was an American dancer, actress, and diver who performed on the vaudeville stage and in multiple Broadway productions during the 1920s. Born in Boston to William John Duker and Ellen McMenamin Duker, she developed her swimming and diving skills at the Boston Municipal Baths and later graduated from Notre Dame Academy in Boston.

Duker came from a family with established ties to performance. Her older sisters Susan, Alice, and Jessie maintained a vaudeville diving act billed as the Duker Sisters, which Duker occasionally joined. In 1921, she appeared as a featured dancer in a children's pageant titled Secrets of the Sun Dial, staged in Boston to raise funds for the Near East Relief Fund. She also performed as an entertainer for World War I veterans during this period. Beyond the stage, Duker worked as an artist's model and performed in a high-diving stunt act with her sisters at the New York Hippodrome. Her name and image appeared in hosiery advertisements in 1924.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1922 to 1928 and encompassed five productions. She appeared in the musical Better Times in 1922, followed by Earl Carroll's Vanities in 1925 and the revue The Great Temptations in 1926. She also appeared in the musical The Desert Song, which ran from 1926 to 1928, and the musical Cross My Heart in 1928. Outside of her verified Broadway credits, she also appeared in the Greenwich Village Follies of 1924 alongside her sister Alice, and in Sammy's Sally in 1928.

In 1928, Duker married Edmund Schissel, a salesman. The couple had two children, Edmund and Geneva. She died on July 14, 1976, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, at the age of 71.