Irène Bordoni

Irène Bordoni (January 16, 1885 – March 19, 1953) was a Franco-American actress and singer whose Broadway career spanned from 1912 to 1950. Born in Ajaccio, France, to Sauveur Bordoni, a tailor, and Marie Lemonnier, she was a great-niece of the 19th-century painter Francis Millet, who perished in the Titanic disaster. Bordoni made her first stage appearance at age 13 at the Variétés in Paris, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot, and worked as a child actor in Paris on stage and in silent films before emigrating to the United States. She arrived on December 28, 1907, traveling in steerage aboard the S.S. La Provence, and initially settled in Reno, Nevada, where her father had reportedly relocated. Though standard theatrical biographies listed her birth year as 1895, her actual birth year was 1885, as confirmed by her age of 22 on the ship's passenger list upon arrival.

Bordoni made her Broadway debut in a Shubert brothers production of Broadway to Paris at the Winter Garden Theatre, establishing herself as a successor to Anna Held in embodying French piquancy and Continental flavor for American audiences. Her early Broadway appearances included the play Miss Information in 1915 and successive productions of Hitchy-Koo in 1917 and 1918. In 1919, she appeared in Sleeping Partners alongside H.B. Warner at the Bijou Theatre, and in 1920 she performed in As You Were at the Central Theater. In 1922, she introduced George Gershwin's song "Do It Again" in The French Doll at the Lyceum Theatre, a role that earned her the nickname "The French Doll." She subsequently starred in Little Miss Bluebeard in 1923 and Naughty Cinderella in 1925, the latter written by Avery Hopwood.

Bordoni is perhaps most closely associated with the 1928 Cole Porter musical Paris, in which she originated the song "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)," which became Porter's first major hit. She also recorded and performed Porter's "Let's Misbehave" with Irving Aaronson and His Commanders, a song later included on the soundtracks of five motion pictures, among them Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972), Pennies from Heaven (1981), and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). Porter paid further tribute to Bordoni by incorporating her name into the lyrics of "You're the Top," from his 1934 musical Anything Goes, with the line "you're the eyes of Irène Bordoni." Throughout her Broadway career she was known for wearing highly stylish costumes, including designs by Erté, and her trademark bangs were widely emulated, including by the budding Broadway actress Claudette Colbert in the late 1920s.

Bordoni made her Hollywood debut in Warner Brothers' Show of Shows in 1928. The following year, her Broadway production of Paris was adapted as a sound film using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and shot in early Technicolor, with Bordoni reprising her starring role. That same year she performed "Just an Hour of Love" for the Warner Brothers film The Show of Shows, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1932, animator Max Fleischer featured her in his follow-the-bouncing-ball Screen Song cartoon Just a Gigolo. In 1940, Bordoni appeared in the Irving Berlin musical Louisiana Purchase on Broadway and reprised her role in the 1941 Paramount Pictures film adaptation alongside Bob Hope. She also performed Irving Berlin's "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow" in London's West End in 1939. During the 1930s she was a guest singer on numerous variety programs and was featured on The RKO Hour.

Among the Broadway productions listed in her verified credits is the play Great Lady, and her career extended to South Pacific, for which she undertook the role of Bloody Mary in the 1951 national tour. During the 1920s, Bordoni appeared in Lucky Strike cigarette advertisements with the phrase "I smoke a Lucky to keep petite," a campaign credited with contributing to a significant rise in women's smoking during that decade. She also invested in Palm Beach real estate during the Florida land boom of the 1920s and maintained homes in multiple New York City neighborhoods as well as in Paris and Monte Carlo.

In her personal life, Bordoni was first married to actor Edgar Becman, from whom she divorced in 1917. On October 24, 1918, she married Broadway producer and lyricist E. Ray Goetz, whose sister Dorothy Goetz was Irving Berlin's first wife; Goetz produced several of Bordoni's Broadway productions, and the couple divorced in 1929. She was later associated with theatrical agent and producer Avery Galen Bogue. Bordoni died on March 19, 1953, at Jewish Memorial Hospital in Manhattan and was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.