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Anna Held

Anna Held
Anna Held 1902.jpg
Anna Held, 1902
Born Helene Anna Held
(1872-03-19)19 March 1872
Warsaw, Congress Poland
Died 12 August 1918(1918-08-12) (aged 46)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Cause of death Multiple myeloma
Resting place Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven
Occupation Actress, singer
Spouse(s) Maximo Carrera (m. 1894; div. 1908)
Partner(s) Florenz Ziegfeld
Children 1

Helene Anna Held (19 March 1872 – 12 August 1918), known professionally as Anna Held, was a Polish-born French and later Broadway stage performer and singer, most often associated with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, her common-law husband.

Born in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, Anna Held was the daughter of a German-Jewish glove maker, Shimmle (aka Maurice) Held, and his French-Jewish wife, Yvonne Pierre. Sources of her year of birth range from 1865 to 1873, but 1872 has been accepted in general. In 1881, antisemitic pogroms forced the family to flee to Paris, France. When her father's glovemaking business failed, he found work as a janitor, while her mother operated a kosher restaurant. Held began working in the garment industry, then found work as a singer in Jewish theatres in Paris and, later, after her father's death, London, where her roles included the title role in a production by Jacob Adler of Abraham Goldfaden's Shulamith; she was also in Goldfaden's ill-fated Paris troupe, whose cashier stole their money before they ever played publicly.

As a young woman in France, Held converted to Roman Catholicism. She remained so the rest of her life, and declined even to acknowledge her Jewish heritage.

Her vivacious and animated personality proved popular, and her career as a stage performer began to gain momentum. She was soon known for her risqué songs, flirtatious nature and willingness to show her legs on stage. Around this time, she became the wife of a much-older Uruguayan playboy, Maximo Carrera, with whom she had a daughter, Liane (1895–1988), shortly after their 1894 marriage, and who became an actress and producer, sometimes billed as Anna Held, Jr.

Touring through Europe, Held was appearing in London in 1896 when she met Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld asked her to return to New York City with him and she agreed. He set about creating a wave of public interest in her, by feeding stories about her to the American press, such as her having had ribs surgically removed. By the time Held and Ziegfeld arrived in New York, she was already the subject of intense public speculation. When she finally performed (in a revival of A Parlor Match), the critics were dismissive of her, but the public liked her.


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