Sybil Carmen

Sybil Carmen, born Carmen Regina Attkisson on December 23, 1896, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, was an American actress, dancer, and Ziegfeld girl whose Broadway career spanned from 1915 to 1920. She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Russell Attkisson and Agnes Gertrude Attkisson (née Haggerty, 1875–1952), and grew up alongside two brothers, Charles and Edgar, and a sister, Dagmar. As a young woman, Carmen relocated to New York City to pursue a career as a dancer.

Her Broadway work centered on two productions mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Her first appearance came in the 1915 Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, where she served as a principal performer in the role of a "balloon girl," sharing the bill with The Dolly Sisters, Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, and Olive Thomas. In 1918, she performed in a rooftop revue at the Century Grove. Carmen returned to the Ziegfeld fold for the Ziegfeld Girls of 1920, again as a principal player, on a program that also featured Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, and Lillian Lorraine. Beyond the stage, she appeared in two silent films, A Romance of the Underworld (1918) and Experience (1921), both of which are now considered lost.

On September 8, 1919, Carmen married writer and film executive Maurice Sydney Revnes. The couple had two children: a daughter, Carmen, born in 1921, and a son, Richard, born in 1923 and died in 1990. In 1926, the family relocated to France, where Maurice Revnes represented Pathé Studios. Sybil Carmen died of pneumonia on April 14, 1929, at 7:30 P.M., at 8 Rue Quentin-Bauchart in Paris. She was cremated on April 20, 1929, and her ashes were scattered in New York City.