Nan Halperin

Nan Halperin (1898 – May 30, 1963) was a Russian-born singing comedian who built a career in American vaudeville and Broadway musical theater. Born in Odessa, Russia, she emigrated with her family to the United States in 1900, and the family settled in Minneapolis. Her father, Samuel Halperin, worked as a confectioner, and her mother was Rebeka Rose Halperin. She had two brothers and two sisters, and her sister Sophie occasionally accompanied her on tour. Though her family was Jewish, Halperin received her formal education at Holy Angels Academy, a Catholic school, where she learned to sing and play piano. She began appearing in local stage productions at the age of six, including a starring role in Alice in Wonderland.

Halperin entered vaudeville at fifteen, performing an act in which she impersonated a child. She worked in stock companies across the western United States and Mexico, and at one point served as the soubrette in a musical comedy company performing Forty-five Minutes from Broadway, based in San Francisco and touring the Pacific coast. She married songwriter and vaudeville producer William Barr Friedlander, who composed the songs she used in her act. Friedlander also produced a tab show called Nan Halperin and Her Suffragettes, in which Halperin led a group of women performing a suffragette-themed skit. She developed a comedic persona that satirized the manners of the typical American woman, and was among the first women to adopt a bobbed hairstyle. Standing 5.2 feet tall, she wore high heels to add height on stage.

Her first Broadway appearance was alongside Emma Carus in A Broadway Honeymoon. In February 1915 she performed as a headliner at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. The following year, in 1916, she became the first vaudeville performer to receive a three-year contract from the United Booking Office, under the direct management of Edward Franklin Albee II. That same year she began performing a burlesque song cycle depicting five stages of girlhood, ranging from a child to a bridesmaid to a blasé divorcée. The New York Dramatic Mirror of December 21, 1918, described her work as dramatic satire effectively done. In 1919 she introduced a new song cycle centered on a reluctant debutante pressured by her parents into wearing fashionable clothes in pursuit of a husband. By that year she ranked among the highest-paid female performers in vaudeville. She also starred in the musical comedy The Frivolities of 1919 and the drama The Girl in the Stage Box.

Halperin's Broadway career concentrated in the early 1920s, during which she appeared in three productions. Between April 13 and July 1, 1922, she headlined the revue Make It Snappy alongside Eddie Cantor, J. Harold Murray, and Lew Hearn, which ran approximately 90 performances at the Winter Garden Theatre. On July 6, 1922, she opened in the revue Spice of 1922, also at the Winter Garden, with Lew Hearn, Georgie Price, and Valeska Suratt. Her most prominent Broadway credit came on August 15, 1923, when she starred in the musical farce Little Jessie James, which opened at the Longacre Theatre in New York. Despite its title, the show was not a western but was set in an apartment overlooking Central Park. The production featured a single set and eight chorus girls, and Halperin starred opposite Jay Velie, with support from Miriam Hopkins and Allen Kearns. In the show, Halperin and Velie introduced the song I Love You, with music by Harry Archer and lyrics by Harlan Thompson. Little Jessie James ran through the entire 1923–24 season and was considered the biggest hit of that season, with I Love You becoming the most successful song from any musical that year.

Halperin returned to vaudeville in the later 1920s and also performed regularly on radio, where she portrayed historical women ranging from Lucrezia Borgia to Martha Washington. In June 1932 she headlined at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. She continued performing between film screenings at movie theaters through the 1930s, ending her professional stage career in 1934. She divorced Friedlander and married Ben Thomson on December 21, 1927. Following Thomson's death, she married Edgar D. Gould on January 4, 1934. Halperin died on May 30, 1963, on Long Island, New York.