Naomi Johnson

Naomi Johnson (c. 1909 – ?) was an American showgirl and Ziegfeld Girl whose Broadway career extended from 1922 to 1930. Born around 1909 in New York City, Johnson began working as a model while still in high school, posing for Ben Ali Haggin, who designed the elaborate tableaux staged in Ziegfeld productions. She made her stage debut at age 16 in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Johnson's professional Broadway career began in 1922, when she played the role of Ann in the musical Just Because. That same year she joined the ensemble of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922, initiating a sustained association with producer Florenz Ziegfeld. She went on to perform in the Summer Edition of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 and in both the regular and summer editions of the 1925 Follies.

In 1927, Johnson appeared in the musical Rio Rita, performing as one of The Gringitas, the Cabaret Girls, while also serving in the ensemble. Ziegfeld arranged for her to appear in two productions on the same evening, with Johnson performing in Rio Rita during the first part of the night and in Show Boat during the second. She was not sent on tour with either production. The following year, Johnson took on her first significant dramatic role, playing Zoe, the sweetheart of Planchet, in The Three Musketeers at the Lyric Theatre.

Also in 1928, Johnson departed Ziegfeld's organization to join Earl Carroll's productions. Variety identified her among several performers it called "Zieggy deserters" who were "wild about Carroll," and noted that Carroll had given her a more substantial speaking part than she had held in Show Boat. The publication also described Johnson as the showgirl "with brains." She appeared in The Earl Carroll Vanities in 1928, and her final Broadway credit was Artists and Models in 1930, in which she played a character named Naomi.

Johnson was extensively photographed by Alfred Cheney Johnston, who worked under contract to handle all of Ziegfeld's photography. Johnston described her as "the most beautiful of all Ziegfeld's beauties, past or present" and produced numerous promotional and publicity photographs of her. A collection of Johnston's nude photographs of Johnson, undiscovered during his lifetime, was not published in the 1920s. The Library of Congress holds photographs of Johnson as part of Johnston's donated collection, and artist J. Knowles Hare created pastel portrait illustrations of her based on Johnston's images. Johnson's photographs by Johnston have appeared in modern publications on the Ziegfeld era, including Robert Hudovernik's Jazz Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston.

Contemporary press coverage noted Johnson's abilities in dancing and singing, as well as her skills in swimming and golf, and described her as having "a well-balanced head" unlikely to be affected by fame. On July 21, 1926, she married John Murinelly Cirne, a foreign delegate to the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in a ceremony held in New York City.