Anna Held

Held spent the years of World War I working in vaudeville and 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 was highly regarded for the courage she displayed in traveling to the front lines, to be where she could do the most good. She returned to the United States and starred in the film Madame le Presidente (1916). Read Less

She is interred at Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. Ziegfeld was castigated by the media -- the same media he had so studiously courted -- for his mistreatment of Held and apparent indifference to her illness, and his notable absence from her funeral.

The film The Great Ziegfeld (1936) tells a sanitized version of the story of the Ziegfeld-Held relationship. Luise Rainer won an Academy Award for her performance as Held. Ziegfeld and Burke were played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. In 1978 Columbia Pictures released a made-for-television film, Ziegfeld: The Man & His Women. first telecast on NBC. This was a much more open and perhaps truthfully told movie about Ziegfeld and the women in his life, than the 1936 film. Anna was portrayed by Barbara Parkins.

The American poet Carl Sandburg wrote a memorial poem for Anna Held after Held's death, An Electric Sign goes Dark, in the collection Smoke and Steel. Read Less