Zieg a Zieg, uh

Doris Eaton Travis, the last of Flo Zeigfeld’s chorus girls, has died of an aneurysm at the age of 106. From 1907 to 1931, Zeigfeld handpicked 3,000 “Ziegfield Girls” out of the hundreds of thousands who dreamed of a better life in the Jazz Age. The Ziegfeld Follies were lavish spectacles with hundreds of girls measuring precisely 36-26-38 underneath towering, glittering feathered headdresses, performing with Will Rogers and Fanny Brice and entertaining the biggest celebrities of the day, from President Woodrow Wilson to Babe Ruth. Travis, coming from a celebrated stage family that entertained George Gershwin and Charles Lindbergh, was among the youngest, lying about her age and name to get in at 14. After 3 years, Travis performed on stage and in silent films and later ran 18 Arthur Murray dance studios in Michigan, and continued as a link to the past for most of the century, when she wasn’t getting her high school diploma in her 70s, graduating cum laude from the University of Oklahoma at 92, starting her memoirs, getting an honorary degree from the University of Oakland at 100. At an AIDS benefit 2 weeks before her death, she danced on stage, performing several kicks, and apologizing that she no longer does cartwheels.