HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNA HELD
(March 19, 1872 - August 12, 1918)

She was known for her bawdy songs ("I just can't make my eyes behave") flirtatious nature and willingness to show her legs on stage.  Touring through Europe, she was appearing in London in 1896 when she met Florenz Ziegfeld who asked her to return to New York City with him.  He set about creating what we today would call a 'buzz' about her and feeding stories (mostly untrue) about her to the American press.  From 1905 she enjoyed several successes on the Broadway stage and suggested the format for what would become the famous Ziegfeld Follies which debuted in 1907.

She spent the years of World War I working in vaudeville, touring France, performing for French soldiers and raising money for the war effort. She came to be regarded as a war heroine for her contributions and highly praised for the courage she displayed in traveling to the front lines.

Luise Rainer won an Academy Award for her performance as Anna Held in the film The Great Ziegfeld (1936) which was a sanitized version of their relationship. They were never legally married but lived as common law partners.  He was known for his infidelity and ultimately married Billie Burke. But it was Anna Held who through her popularity as a musical comedy soubrette helped bolster his career and make millions. The American poet Carl Sandburg wrote a memorial poem for her after her death entitled appropriately An Electric Sign Goes Dark, in the collection Smoke and Steel.