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Mary William Ethelbert Appleton " Billie" Burke (August 7, 1884 – May 14, 1970) was an American actress, who was famous on Broadway and radio, and in silent and sound films. She is best known to modern audiences as Glinda in the MGM film musical The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Burke was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live (1938). She had appearances in the Topper film series.
She was married to Broadway producer and impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. from 1914 until his death in 1932.
Burke was signed for the movies and made her cinematic debut in the title role of Peggy (1915). Her success was phenomenal, and she was soon earning what was reputedly the highest salary of any film actress up to that time. She followed her first feature with the 15-part serial Gloria's Romance (1916). By 1917, she was a favorite with silent-movie fans, rivaling Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Clara Kimball Young and Irene Castle. She starred primarily in provocative society dramas and comedies, similar in theme to The "Mind-the-Paint" Girl, her most successful American play. Her girlish charm rivaled her acting ability, and as she dressed to the hilt in fashionable gowns, furs and jewelry, her clothes sense also won her the devotion of female audiences. Among the films in which she appeared during this period were Arms and the Girl (1917), The Mysterious Miss Terry, Let's Get a Divorce (1918), Good Gracious, Annabelle (1919), Away Goes Prudence (1920) and The Frisky Mrs. Johnson (1920). As a nod to himself for his wife appearing for Zukor and Lasky, Ziegfeld insisted on promotions for each of the films to carry the tag "By Special Arrangement with Florenz Ziegfeld".
Burke's beauty and taste made her a major trendsetter throughout the 1910s and 20s. As early as 1909, following her Broadway performance in My Wife (1909), department stores began carrying the "Billie Burke Dress" with a signature flat collar and lace trim. During this time, much of Burke's on- and off-screen wardrobe was provided by the leading European couturier Lucile (in private life, Lady Duff Gordon), whose New York branch was the fashion Mecca of socialites and entertainment celebrities. Burke reflected on her reputation as "a new kind of actress, carefree, and red-headed, and I had beautiful clothes."
In 1917, Burke endorsed Pond's Vanishing Cream.
Despite her success in film, Burke eventually returned to the stage, appearing in Caesar's Wife (1919), The Intimate Strangers (1921), The Marquise (1927) and The Happy Husband (1928).
When the family's investments were wiped out in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Burke and her husband moved to the west coast so that Burke could resume screen acting to aid their debt.
Burke made her Hollywood comeback in 1932, when she starred as Margaret Fairfield in A Bill of Divorcement, which was directed by George Cukor. She played Katharine Hepburn's mother in the film, which was Hepburn's debut. Despite the death of her husband Florenz Ziegfeld during the film's production, she resumed acting shortly after his funeral.
In 1933, Burke was cast as Millicent Jordan, a scatterbrained high-society woman hosting a dinner party in the comedy Dinner at Eight, directed by George Cukor, co-starring with Lionel Barrymore, Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery. The movie was a great success and revitalized her career. She subsequently starred in many comedies and musicals, typecast as a ditzy, feather-brained upper-class matron, with her high-pitched voice.
In 1936, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filmed a biopic of Florenz Ziegfeld ( The Great Ziegfeld), a film that won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actress (Luise Rainer as Ziegfeld's common-law wife, Anna Held). William Powell played Ziegfeld and Myrna Loy played Burke; this infuriated Burke, who was under contract to the studio and believed she could have played herself. MGM, however, considered her too old to cast in the part of her younger self.
Burke appeared in Topper (1937) in which she played the twittering and puritanical Clara Topper, who is married to a man haunted by socialite ghosts played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett. She returned to the role in the film's sequels. Her next performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live (1938) resulted in her only Academy Awards nomination. In 1938, she was chosen to play Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical The Wizard of Oz (1939), directed by Victor Fleming, starring Judy Garland. She had previously worked with Garland in the film Everybody Sing, in which she played Judy's histrionically hysterical actress-mother. Director George Cukor offered her the role of Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she declined it. The role went to Laura Hope Crews, in a performance that Cukor wanted to be played in a "Billie Burke-ish manner" with "the same zany feeling". Another successful film series followed with Father of the Bride (1950) and Father's Little Dividend (1951), both directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor. Burke also portrayed Mrs. Ernest (Daisy) Stanley in the 1942 film The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Burke wrote two autobiographies, both with Cameron Shipp, With a Feather on My Nose (Appleton 1949) and With Powder on My Nose (Coward McCann, 1959).
On television, Burke starred in her own talk show, At Home with Billie Burke, which ran on the DuMont Television Network from June 1951 through the spring of 1952. She was one of the first female talk show hosts, after the hostesses of the earlier DuMont series And Everything Nice (1949–50) and Fashions on Parade (1948–49) which both include talk show segments.
Billie Burke starred in an adaptation of Dr. Heidegger's Experiment on the TV version of Lights Out on November 20, 1950.
Burke made her final screen appearance in Sergeant Rutledge (1960), a Western film directed by John Ford.
In 1910, Burke bought the Kirkham estate on Broadway in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and renamed the mansion, Burkeley Crest.
In April 1914, Burke married Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1916, Burke had a daughter, Patricia Burke Ziegfeld.
In 1921, Burke retired to raise her daughter Patricia, but resumed work after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
In 1932, Burke moved from New York to Beverly Hills, California, after the death of Ziegfeld.Mitchell Owens, Legendary Hollywood Stars at Home, Architectural Digest
Burke died in Los Angeles of natural causes on May 14, 1970, at the age of 85, and she was interred beside Ziegfeld at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, Westchester County, New York.
For her contributions to the film industry, Burke was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 with a motion pictures star at 6617 Hollywood Boulevard.
The Academy Film Archive houses the Florenz Ziegfeld-Billie Burke Collection, which consists primarily of home movies.
On November 4, 2015, the crater Burke, near the north pole of the planet Mercury, was named after Billie Burke.
Burke is referenced in the horror film The Exorcist III (1990). The character Kinderman says, "I have hobbies. In the meantime, we have cancer and mongoloid babies and murderers, monsters prowling the planet, even prowling this neighborhood, Father... right now, while our children suffer... and our loved ones die, and your God goes waltzing blithely through the universe like some kind of cosmic Billie Burke."
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