Pearl Eaton

Pearl Eaton Levant (August 1, 1898 – September 10, 1958) was an American actress, dancer, choreographer, and dance supervisor whose career spanned Broadway, touring productions, and Hollywood film. Born in Washington, D.C., she was the daughter of Charles Henry Eaton and grew up alongside her sisters Doris and Mary and a younger brother, Joe.

Eaton's introduction to professional theatre came in 1911, when all three sisters were hired for a production of Maurice Maeterlinck's fantasy play The Blue Bird at the Shubert Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C. Though her role was minor, the engagement marked her first experience in professional performance. The following year, she and her siblings began working for the Poli stock company, appearing in various plays and melodramas and building reputations as reliable and versatile performers. In 1915, the three sisters appeared in a new Poli production of The Blue Bird, with Doris and Mary taking the starring roles of Mytyl and Tytyl. The Shubert Brothers subsequently invited the siblings to reprise their roles for a New York and road tour of the production. Eaton's dancing during that engagement caught the attention of the Shuberts, who offered her a place in the chorus of Al Jolson's Robinson Crusoe, Jr. at the Winter Garden Theatre, launching her career as an adult musical theatre performer.

Her next credit was The Passing Show, with which she remained through its touring run. While on the road, she met and married violinist Harry Levant in 1917. The couple had a daughter, Doris, born the following year. After giving birth, Eaton returned to performing, appearing as a specialty dancer in Sinbad at the Winter Garden. In the spring of 1918, she was hired as a chorus dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies, beginning a five-year association with Florenz Ziegfeld. During that period she appeared in the Follies editions of 1918, 1922, and 1923, as well as the Midnight Frolics of 1919, 1920, and 1921. Concurrently, from 1918 onward, she served as an assistant to choreographer Ned Wayburn. On one occasion she substituted for Marilyn Miller in a Ziegfeld chorus when Miller was ill with the mumps. In April 1923, Eaton starred in Plunder at Poli's Majestic Theater in New York City. Her marriage to Levant ended in divorce in November 1928.

Following her final appearance with the Ziegfeld road company in 1923, Eaton became associated with producer Charles Dillingham, working on his productions both as a performer and a dance director. During this period she was recognized as the only female musical comedy producer in New York, and her prominence in theatrical circles was acknowledged with a caricature displayed on the walls of Sardi's restaurant. Her Broadway credits during these years included the revue Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1925, the musical Annie Dear, the musical Criss Cross, and the play The City. In December 1928, Hungarian artist Erno Bakos selected Eaton as his subject for a portrait of the most typical American blonde, having studied stage and screen performers as well as students at Vassar and Smith College in his search. Her final Broadway appearance was in She's My Baby at the Globe Theatre in 1928, a career on the New York stage that had begun in 1916.

In the late 1920s, Eaton relocated to Los Angeles and joined RKO Studios as a dance director and choreographer. Her first film for the studio was Street Girl in 1929. She subsequently created dances for Hit the Deck, featuring Jack Oakie, and for Rio Rita, a Ziegfeld musical extravaganza that became RKO's largest hit of the decade. Despite her well-regarded work at the studio, she was released from RKO in 1930 as the Great Depression curtailed the entertainment industry. She continued to appear in motion pictures through the 1930s in smaller roles. In July 1931, she began teaching at the Ernest E. Ryan School of Dancing. Over the following years she pursued a range of other activities, including opening a dance studio, writing songs and stories, training as a realtor, and working for the Los Angeles County Census Bureau. She also battled alcoholism and dependence on prescription drugs. After the death of her second husband, oil company executive Richard Curtis Enderly, she became increasingly reclusive. Pearl Eaton was found dead in her Manhattan Beach apartment on September 10, 1958, at the age of 60. A police investigation ruled the death a homicide, but the case was never solved.