Mademoiselle Dazie

The storied Ziegfeld Follies began as a replacement show after Anna Held’s A PARISIAN MODEL (1906) closed in June 1907. The New York Times reviewed THE FOLLIES OF 1907, a “musical review,” as “a complete change in the bill” after it opened at the Jardin de Paris, atop the New York and Criterion Theatres, although it shared a chorus with the earlier show. Like Miss Held’s show, it was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.; this program was “another one of those things in thirteen acts.” 

Emma Carus starred as Topsy, “a soubrette lady” (among other roles); the featured performers in the first FOLLIES included Mlle. Dazie as Dolly and as Salome, a dancer.

Mlle. Dazie (Daisy Ann Peterkin, 1884-1952) by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972)

First billed in vaudeville as “The Red Domino” (for a disguising domino mask), she remade herself as Mademoiselle Dazie; this print bears the legend “the toe dancer” (or ballerina) on the reverse. In 1913, she married Cornelius Fellowes, president of the St. Nicholas Hygeia Ice Company, but only announced the event in 1914. (Fellowes sounds like a model for Osgood Fielding in SOME LIKE IT HOT, although this marriage, his second, seems to have lasted.) 

Mademoiselle Dazie’s earliest appearance on Broadway was in 1900, as a specialty dancer in THE BELLE OF NEW YORK.