Born August 7, 1884 in Washington, D.C, Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke spent her early life touring the world with her father, the famous clown, Billy Burke. Eventually settling in England, the redheaded beauty became a star on the London stage in 1905 and returned to America in 1907 to star opposite John Drew in My Life on Broadway.

After starring in a number of plays, she became even more famous when she married impresario Florenz Ziegfeld in 1914. Hollywood beckoned and she made her first screen appearance as the star of 1916’s Peggy. After several years of alternating between stage and screen, she decided to concentrate on her stage appearances and made her last silent film in 1921. The stock market crash of 1929 and Ziegfeld’s failing health forced her to rethink Hollywood where the pay was more substantial than on Broadway.

Having made her Broadway debut opposite stage great John Drew, Burke made her talkie debut opposite his grandson, John Barrymore in 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement with Katharine Hepburn in her screen debut as their daughter. She was making her second talkie, Christopher Strong, in which she plays the wife of the man (Colin Clive) with whom Hepburn has an affair, when Ziegfeld died.

It was her next film, the 1933 all-star cast Dinner at Eight in which she created the screen persona that would sustain her through several decades, that of the ditzy, fluffy and scatterbrained woman of indeterminate age. Similar roles followed, most notably in 1937’s Topper and its sequels; 1938’s Everybody Sing; Merrily We Live and The Young in Heart; 1942’s The Man Who Came to Dinner; 1945’s The Cheaters and 1950’s Father of the Bride and its 1951 sequel, Father’s Little Dividend.

Occasionally she was given the opportunity to play something different, most notably Glinda the Good Witch in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, and Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland’s hypochondriac mother in 1942’s In This Our Life.

She was played by Myrna Loy in the heavily fictionalized 1936 Oscar winning film, The Great Ziegfeld.

Popular on radio, she even had her own show, The Billie Burke Show, from 1943 to 1946, and was one of the first film stars to wholeheartedly embrace TV in its early days. She was especially memorable in a 1955 version of Arsenic and Old Lace with Helen Hayes, Orson Bean, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Edward Everett Horton.

Her last three screen appearances featured some of her best work. Suffering from memory loss, or what today would probably be diagnosed as early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, director Vincent Sherman let her improvise her lines in 1959’s The Young Philadelphians to marvelous effect. Although there is no record of such, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to learn that John Ford allowed her to do the same in 1960’s Sergeant Rutledge. Her last film was Pepe, also released in 1960, in which she played herself in that otherwise insufferable film’s best cameo opposite Charles Coburn.

She was expected to appear at the opening of New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre in 1969, but was unable to make it due to failing health. She died in 1970 at 85.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), directed by George Cukor

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s acclaimed stage play is marvelously enhanced for the screen by Frances Marion and Herman Mankiewicz, with an assist from Donald Ogden Stewart, and the all-star cast has great fun with it under Cukor’s astute direction.

Burke plays the supercilious social climbing wife of ship magnate Lionel Barrymore who plans a dinner party that will include actors John Barrymore and Marie Dressler, and uncouth nouveau riche business tycoon Wallace Beery and his dumb blonde wife, Jean Harlow, among others. All the actors have their moments, especially Dressler, Harlow, Lee Tracy and both Barrymores, but Burke shines above them all, especially in her breakdown scene, carrying on as if she and her silly problems were the center of the universe while her husband, unbeknownst to her, has serious health and financial issues, and may be dying of a heart ailment.

TOPPER (19437), directed by Norman C. McLeod

This lighter-than-air comedy spawned two sequels, a 1950s TV show, and made Cary Grant a superstar. He and Constance Bennett play Marian and George Kirby, recently deceased ghosts who can only be seen by henpecked banker Cosmo Topper. Roland Young garnered his only Oscar nomination in the title role and Burke is equally impressive as his wife. Bennett, Young and Burke reprised their role in 1938’s Topper Takes a Trip and Young and Burke reprised theirs yet again in 1941’s Topper Returns. Robert Sterling, Anne Jeffreys, Leo G. Carroll and Lee Patrick starred in the TV series which ran from 1953-1955.

MERRILY WE LIVE (1938), directed by Norman C. McLeod

A variation on the 1936 classic, My Man Godfrey, this one features Brian Aherne as the wealthy man who takes a job as a servant to see how the other half lives. Constance Bennett is the daughter of the house with whom he falls in love and Burke, in her only Oscar-nominated performance, is at her best as the daffy society matron who employs him. The first rate supporting cast includes Tom Brown, Patsy Kelly, Alan Mowbray and Clarence Kolb.

THE CHEATERS (1945), directed by Joseph Kane

Yet another variation on My Man Godfrey, but a much more gratifying film, this one stars Joseph Schidkraut as an alcoholic ex-actor, down on his luck, who an eccentric family takes in for Christmas. Burke and Godfrey’s Eugene Pallette are the couple. Long a guilty pleasure for many, this is a superb holiday film that no one should feel at all guilty about liking. It compares favorably to the following year’s It’s a Wonderful Life. All three stars are at their absolute best.

THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS (1959), directed by Vincent Sherman

Burke came out of retirement to play the eccentric wealthy old lady who handpicks Paul Newman as her new lawyer, much to the consternation of the Philadelphia establishment. Flustered and frustrated over her inability to remember her lines, director Sherman suggested that instead of trying to remember them word for word that she simply express herself in the way she thought a woman in her character’s position would. The result was one of her most charming, self-effacing performances ever. It seemed as though we were getting the real Burke here, and indeed, as Sherman revealed years later, we were.

BILLIE BURKE AND OSCAR

• Best Supporting Actress: Merrily We Live (1938)