Gilda Gray
| Gilda Gray | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Marianna Michalska October 24, 1901 Kraków, Galicia-Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) |
| Died | December 22, 1959 (aged 58) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Gilda Gray (October 24, 1901 – December 22, 1959) was an American actress and dancer who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions.
Gilda Gray was born as Marianna Michalska in Kraków (then part of Galicia-Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, now part of Poland) on 24 October 1901, to Max and Wanda Michalski. After being orphaned, she emigrated with her foster parents to the United States in 1909 and settled in Wisconsin. She had one sibling, Josephine.
At 14 or 15 years of age, she entered into an arranged marriage with John Gorecki. Gorecki, a concert violinist, was the son of Socialist and union leader Martin Gorecki. The couple, who divorced in 1923, had one son, Martin Gorecki, who became a bandleader under the name Martin Gray. An obituary published in Time magazine said that Gilda Gray was reportedly married at 11 and became a mother at 12.
Although the shimmy is said to have been introduced to American audiences by Gray in New York in 1919, the term was widely used before, and the shimmy was already a well-known dance move. Gray appropriated it as her own, saying that she had accidentally invented the shimmy while dancing at her father-in-law's saloon and "shaking her chemise" (or her "shimee", as her Polish accent rendered it).
Her desire to continue her burgeoning career (she used the professional name Mary Gray for a while) and her faltering relationship with her husband prompted her to relocate to Chicago where she was noticed by a talent agent, Frank Westphal, who took her to New York and introduced her to his wife, singer Sophie Tucker. It was Tucker who prompted her to change her first name to Gilda. By 1919, she was appearing in a J.J. Shubert show, The Gaieties of 1919. By 1920, Gilda had found a new manager, Gaillard T. "Gil" Boag (d. 1959). She was hired by Florenz Ziegfeld to perform in the 1922 Ziegfeld Follies, and her shimmy became a national craze.
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