Evan-Burrows Fontaine
| Evan-Burrows Fontaine | |
|---|---|
Library of Congress
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| Born |
October 3, 1898 Huron, Hill County, Texas, USA |
| Died | December 27, 1984 (aged 86) Winchester, Virginia, USA |
| Occupation | Dancer |
| Years active | 1914 - ? |
Evan-Burrows Fontaine (October 3, 1898 – December 27, 1984) was an American Denishawn-trained interpretive dancer and actress whose career suffered after she became entangled in a breach of promise lawsuit with a member of one of America's wealthiest families.
Evan-Burrows Fontaine was born on October 3, 1898, at Huron, Texas, a present-day ghost town with the Cedar Creek Baptist Church as its last surviving structure. She was the daughter of William Winston Spotswood Fontaine, an accountant who would later become general manager of the Alamo Cottonseed Company and Florence West Evans, the daughter of a Dallas life insurance agent. Her family later moved to Dallas, where by the turn of the twentieth century they were boarders at a rooming house owned by her maternal grandparents. Fontaine's paternal 3rd great-grandmother was Martha Henry, daughter of American founding father Patrick Henry. Her grandfather, William Winston Fontaine, served in the American Civil War as a colonel under Confederate generals, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. After the war he taught at Baylor Female College in Independence, Texas and later held the chair of Latin for a decade at the University of Texas. Not much is known here about Fontaine’s early life except that by 1915 she was living with her mother in New York City and that at an early age she traveled to California where she became a protégée of dancer Ruth St. Denis. Later she would claim she was also trained by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, but this has yet to be verified.
Fontaine was taught the Dance Egyptienne by St. Denis’ husband, choreographer Ted Shawn, one of several dances Shawn would teach her based on his interpretation of Javanese ceremonial dancing. Fontaine’s stage debut may have occurred on December 16, 1914, when she performed Shawn’s Syvillia in a production staged by St. Denis’ company at the Ye Liberty Playhouse in Oakland, California. The next year she was booked to perform the traditional Jockey Dance at an annual celebration that follows the running of the Saratoga Cup in upstate New York. Fontaine went on to tour nationally with dancer and future film actor Kenneth Harlan before joining the Ziegfeld Follies where she would later shine in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Follies (1919). Around this time she also appeared in The Ed Wynn Carnival as the Queen of the Nile at New York’s Amsterdam Theater. Fontaine was among a group of entertainers who in 1919 donated their talents to a benefit costume ball held on behalf of blind war veterans at Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton. The next year at the Casino Theatre (Broadway) Fontaine helped put on a memorial charity show that honored the actor Frank Carter on the first anniversary of his death. In 1920 Fontaine worked on three motion pictures,Madonnas and Men, playing the dual roles of Nerissa and Ninon, Women Men Love as Moira Lamson, and as a dancer in A Romantic Adventuress. Within a few years though, Fontaine would be limited to performing her “Oriental style” dancing at cabarets and nightclubs as her sensational court battles with a member of one of America’s wealthiest families most likely derailed any chance she had of attaining future stardom in New York or Los Angeles.
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