Billie Burke was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke on August
7, 1884 in Washington, D.C. Her father was the internationally famous
clown, Billy Burke, and she would spend most of her early years touring
Europe before the family settled in London. In 1903, she appeared on
the stage as an actress and came to America in 1907 to star opposite
John Drew in "My Wife". A red-haired beauty, she became the toast of
Broadway and married promoter
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. in April 1914.
Billie was signed in 1915 to make the film
Peggy (1916). Of the next 15 films that she
made, she would make 14 in New York. In between films, she would return
to the stage which was her first love. Her last films were released in
1921 and she went into semi-retirement until their fortune was wiped
out in 1929. Billie would return to films to support herself and her
husband. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. would
die, a broken man, in 1932.
It was in the comedy drama
Dinner um acht (1933) that
Billie would find the character that she would play the rest of her
career. It is the hapless, feather-brained lady with the unmistakably
high voice who would be more interested in little details than what was
at hand. In some films, like
Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne... (1936), she was
obviously too old for the part, but played it to the hilt. Beginning in
1937, she starred in the "Topper" series of films
(Topper - Das blonde Gespenst (1937),
Topper geht auf Reisen (1938)
and Ich suche meinen Mörder (1941)) for
producer Hal Roach in which she played
Mrs. Topper with her usual fluffy performance. But for most of the
people who were raised on television, she will always be remembered as
Glinda, the Good Witch in
Das zauberhafte Land (1939). She
continued to make films though out the 1940s and started another series
with
Vater der Braut (1950)
and the follow-up
Ein Geschenk des Himmels (1951).
A real trouper, she next went to television with the television series
Doc Corkle (1952). The series was
canceled after three weeks due to poor writing. By 1953, her career was
slowing down and she would only make three more movies in 1959 and
1960. The best remembered one would be
John Ford's Western
Der schwarze Sergeant (1960).
Billie Burke retired for good and lived in Los Angeles, California,
where she died at age 85 of natural causes on May 14, 1970.
