Burkeley Crest: The Great Ziegfeld's estate was the lair of lions and Glinda and bears — Oh, my!
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| Billie Burke (right) is shown in character as "Glinda, the Good Witch of the North,"
with Judy Garland as "Dorothy Gale" holding her Cairn Terrier "Toto" in the 1939
MGM classic musical “The Wizard of Oz.” A little trivia: The real name of the
dog that played Dorothy Gale's Toto was Terry, but she was cited as “Toto” in “Oz” credits. Two of the stars of the film, Burke and Frank Morgan, who played multiple roles including the wizard, both lived in Hastings, their homes only about a
half mile apart. Burke named her 22-acre estate between Broadway and Farragut Avenue Burkeley Crest. It was her home from 1910 to 1932. She moved to Los Angeles in 1932 but owned Burkeley Crest until it was sold at auction in 1940.
(Photo courtesy Everett Collection)
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Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke, best known as stage and film actress Billie Burke, made her namesake estate in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., a fixture in the annals of that lower Hudson River Valley village 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. She might best be known today for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in the 1939 MGM feature film The Wizard of Oz.
The American-born actress had left the U.S. to tour Europe and perform with her father, William Ethelbert "Billy" Burke, an American Civil War veteran who forged an entertainment career as a singer and clown. The family — which included mother Blanche "Beatty" Burke — settled in London where Billy Burke produced his own act. Daughter Billie left the act at age 19 in 1903 to begin a career of her own on the London stage.
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The property was originally developed by shoe merchant William A. Hall as a 10-acre estate on the east side of Broadway directly across from the quarry where the mansion's marble was cut. The quarry site also stood beside an astronomical observatory and was property of New York University scientist John William Draper. The eventual Burkeley Crest was directly west of the farm of Martin Lefurgy, flanked on the north by the estate of Hastings sugar mill owner Edward F. Hopke and to the south by the 32-acre estate of grocery wholesaler M.A. Happock (later the property of famed silversmith, art collector and Metropolitan Museum of Art benefactor Edward Chandler Moore).
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The marble mansion at Burkeley Crest, home of Billie Burke and Florenz Ziegfeld, is shown in 1930. Burke bought the estate in 1910. The marble was quarried just blocks away in Hastings. (Photo by A.C. Langmuir, courtesy Hastings Historical Society)
After Hall’s death in 1880, his widow Susan B. (Kirkham) Hall inherited the property where her brother Augustus Kirkham was already living. Augustus had started his working life as a clerk in brother-in-law William Hall’s firm and quickly rose up the Hall, Southwick ranks. He eventually ran the Hastings estate with Susan remaining in the main house until Kirkham and Susan Hall sold the estate and moved to the tony Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan.
Kirkham died two years later and Hall in 1916.
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A four-horse stagecoach plies Broadway c. 1900 in front of the entrance to the Hall-Kirkham estate that would become Burkeley Crest after its purchase by actress Billie Burke in 1910. Records of stagecoaches on Broadway at the turn of the century are limited at best, but the nearby Ardsley Casino in southern Irvington-on-Hudson ran a weekday stagecoach named “Tally Ho!” through 1905 between its clubhouse just above the then-private Ardsley-on-Hudson railroad station on the Hudson River to Fifth Avenue's Hotel Brunswick at Madison Square Park in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Burke's career was in its ascendancy. She continued to land starring roles on Broadway under the management of impresario Charles Frohman who brought her back to the U.S. Frohman was a major producer of the age, his most successful production being Sir James M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan in London and New York. On New Year's Eve 1913, Burke attended a costume party at the Hotel Astor on the arm of playwright W. Somerset Maugham who'd penned The Land of Promise, her Broadway starring vehicle of that year. Maugham introduced her to newly divorced Broadway producer and impresario Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. and the pair eloped just over three months later, marrying on April 11, 1914 in a civil ceremony in Hoboken, N.J.  Actress Billie Burke and entertainment impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. met and formed a lasting partnership on the dance floor of the Hotel Astor’s Grand Ballroom (shown here, c. 1909) on New Year’s Eve 1913. Burke was escorted to the party by writer W. Somerset Maugham while Ziegfeld brought his girlfriend of the day, actress Lillian Lorraine. Ziegfeld’s ex-wife Anna Held was also on hand in costume as Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife Josephine, reportedly to take one last (failed) stab at a reconciliation with Ziegfeld. The hotel was on the city block fronted by Broadway between 44th and 45th streets, site since c. 1970 of One Astor Plaza, an office tower at Times Square. (Photo courtesy Architects' and Builders' Magazine, February 1910, Wikimedia Commons public domain)Burke later told friends she was warned of Ziegfeld's womanizing ways and her mother warned her to run, not walk. She ignored the naysayers, saying later she had fallen for him head over heels.  This image of Billie Burke, hand-colored by S. Knox, was created to promote her appearance in a 1912-13 Sir Arthur Wing Pinero play about musical comedy actresses at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway. In the era before color photography, this illustration offers an idea of Burke's complexion and hair color at age 28. (January 1913 edition of The American Magazine, Phillips Publishing) Ziegfeld had been divorced by Warsaw-born Polish-French actress and singer Anna Held a year earlier. The pair had been together for about 16 years, since Held's discovery by Ziegfeld in Paris nightclub. He convinced her to come to America to star in one of his Broadway productions. Trouble was, she had already been married to Uruguayan playboy Maximo Carrera for two years and shared a daughter, Liane, with Carrera. She also happened to be under contract to the famed Folies Bergere in Paris and needed Ziegfeld to buy out that contract. Ziegfeld did just that and brought Held to the U.S. Daughter Liane, who was in the care of nuns in France, would eventually join the couple in New York where Held, with publicity orchestrated by Ziegfeld, was the talk of the town before 1900. Standing a petite 5-feet tall, she was known for her 18-inch waist and hourglass figure. Men flocked to her erotically charged performances.  Anna Held is shown in a c. 1900 photo. (Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library Digital Collections) Ziegfeld's publicity stunts were subtle but legendary. He sued a milk company for delivering sour milk to the hotel suite he shared with Held. He told the press that Held bathed in gallons of milk daily to enhance her soft skin and complexion. Asked about her hourglass figure, Ziegfeld explained that Held had had ribs removed to accentuate it. Headlines and box office lines ensued. The milk and ribs claims have never been substantiated. When judging Ziegfeld's truthfulness, consider that as a youngster Chicago, Ziegfeld had bilked friends out of their pocket change, charging them to see his school of invisible fish — actually just a bowl filled with water. The impresario and actress became wealthy during their partnership. It was Held who supposedly convinced Ziegfeld to create his own version of the Folies Bergeres in New York and he did just that in 1907. He created a new Ziegfeld Follies each year through 1927 and a last one-off under his leadership in 1931.  Composer Irving Berlin (seated at piano), producer/impresario Florenz Ziegfeld (left of Berlin), entertainer Eddie Cantor (left of Ziegfeld) and choreographer Sammy Lee (peering over piano behind Berlin) are shown at a rehearsal for the stage production The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927. Behind them are some of the famed Ziegfeld Girls. Cantor, Berlin and many other Follies stars including Will Rogers and W.C. Fields, were regular guests at Ziegfeld’s Burkeley Crest estate. Like all but the 1921 Follies from 1913 to 1927, the 1927 Follies was staged at the New Amsterdam Theatre in Times Square, the oldest Broadway theater in operation today. Its most recent musical production is Disney’s Aladdin. (Photo courtesy New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Division) The shows were a combination vaudeville meets variety show extravaganza with chorus lines of Ziegfeld Girls presented as eye candy. Comic relief was provided by the likes of Will Rogers, W.C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope. Music was by composing greats including Irving Berlin and singers including Sophie Tucker. While Held and Ziegfeld never legally married (they couldn't while Held was still married to Carrera), the law considered them wed after they'd cohabitated for seven-plus years. Carrera died in 1908, but Ziegfeld and Held, while calling themselves married, never made it official.  Billie Burke is pictured at the wheel of a Packard next to a pet dog at Burkeley Crest in 1912, two years after purchasing the Hastings-on-Hudson estate and while she was still single. The photo showed some of the renovations she'd made to the former Hall-Kirkham mansion, including enclosing the covered porches (left rear) and extending the porte cochere (right rear). Burke was an avid motorist and automobile collector throughout her time in Hastings. (Photo by Byron Co., N.Y., courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.)Ziegfeld and Held shared a 13-room, ninth floor suite with Held's daughter Liane Carrera at the Hotel Ansonia on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Broadway between 73rd and 74th streets after its 1903 opening. But it was the 10th floor suite in which Ziegfeld discovery Lillian Lorraine resided that raised eyebrows. Only 17 or so, she was likely in a relationship with Ziegfeld from 1909 to about 1912. Held knew about it and eventually filed for divorce. Held died of cancer at age 46 in 1918. Lorraine "wed" the already married Frederick M. Gresheimer whom she met on a beach in March 1912. She legally married him a year later after he divorced, but that marriage was annulled three months in at her request. She and Ziegfeld continued to see each other until the impresario's death. She died of natural causes at age 62 in 1955. The hotel, now known as The Ansonia, has been converted to a condominium building at 2109 Broadway and still exists. It has housed many luminaries, including actors Sarah Bernhardt, Angelina Jolie and Richard Dreyfuss, baseball great Babe Ruth, tenor Enrico Caruso, boxer Jack Dempsey, conductor Arturo Toscanini, composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff, soprano Roberta Peters and composer/conductor Gustav Mahler.  Billie Burke is shown on a veranda at Burkeley Crest with her small dogs in 1912. (Arthur Vitols, Byron Co., photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)Since it was Ziegfeld himself casting the Ziegfeld Girls, it wasn't surprising that he wound up having affairs with at least a few of them. The fact that Burke was living at Burkeley Crest basically fulltime during the time the couple was in New York and Ziegfeld was living for a time at the Ansonia while maintaining a private office in the New Amsterdam Theatre to oversee his productions made it easy for him to live a double life. In 1915, Ziegfeld began an affair with 21-year-old chorus girl Olive Thomas. Shortly thereafter, Thomas introduced her childhood friend Anna Daly to the producer. Thomas left Ziegfeld in 2016 to marry actor Jack Pickford, brother of famed actress Mary Pickford, known as "America's Sweetheart" during the silent film era. Daly, 19, began an affair with Ziegfeld concurrent with his dalliance with Thomas. Ziegfeld broke if off a year later. This is a link to the complete Olive Thomas 1920 silent film The Flapper. After this film, the word "flapper" became synonymous with a young woman flouting convention. Thomas was one of many Florenz Ziegfeld paramours that pre- and post-dated his marriage to Billie Burke. In 1918, Ziegeld discovery Marilyn Miller, 20, became another paramour. Ironically, Miller left him a year later to marry and after her husband died, she married Jack Pickford, a widower after the death of Thomas. Thomas died on Sept. 20, 1920, poisoned — accidentally it was ruled, intentionally it was suspected — by ingesting mercury dichloride, Pickford's pre-antibiotics era syphilis medication. Thomas was 25. Ten days later, Daly poisoned herself with an overdose of Veronal, the first commercially available barbiturate, which was used as a sleep aid, and died. She left a suicide note reputedly referring to Ziegfeld. It read: "He doesn't love me anymore and I can't stand it and Olive is dead." Daly was 23. In the late '20s and early '30s when Burke was spending most of her time in California chasing film roles, stories abounded of Ziegfeld hosting Prohibition-era liquor-fueled orgies at Burkeley Crest with friends and chorus girls from his shows. His "casting couch" at the New Amsterdam was also very much in use in those pre-#MeToo days according to his staff.  Actress Marilyn Miller is shown in a 1918 photo, when she was first featured in Florenz Ziegfeld's Broadway empire. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York) While Ziegfield's wandering eye may have caused problems, he and Burke welcomed their only child, Patricia, in 1916. They doted on their daughter. Burkeley Crest caretaker John Condon recalled that when Patricia was 11, she chased a butterfly across the property, but couldn't corral it. She tearfully told her father the story and he presented her a living $500 ($9,000 today) collection of butterflies he'd immediately ordered. The family was well cared-for at Burkeley Crest, employing some 17 servants at any given time during their annual eight-month stay on the estate. Even during the Prohibition era, 1920-33, the Ziegfelds were well-known for their "gin-soaked" parties featuring live entertainment — often musicians from Ziegfeld's Broadway show orchestras along with cast singers and composers, including the likes of Irving Berlin — and their celebrity friends at Burkeley Crest during their spring through autumn stays. The family wintered in Palm Beach, Fla., the other four months of the year. Ziegfeld and Burke built a state-of-the-art projection room at Burkeley Crest where they could watch the latest films. Burke filled the mansion with Italian and English antiques, Ziegfeld with a massive collection of elephant statuary and knick-knacks. Ziegfeld loved flowers and the gardens around the property were massive, planted with hyacinths and daffodils for spring color and annuals for interest through the summer and fall. Flowers were grown year-round by gardeners in the estate's greenhouse where they would be available for arrangements in the living areas as well as to replant the estate's flower beds seasonally, keeping something in bloom at all times. Ziegfeld, who was said to abhor a wilted flower, was known, too, to frequent area florists. On the professional front, Ziegfeld took over his wife's career management after May 7, 1915 when Charles Frohman died in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat during World War I. Frohman had introduced Burke to the film world in 1914 when she played herself in a cameo appearance in an episode of the weekly silent film serial Our Mutual Girl distributed free to theaters to promote its parent Mutual Film Co. offerings. But it was under Ziegeld's direction that Burke became a movie star. She made her film debut as the star of Peggy in 1915, signing a $40,000 contract ($1.1 million in 2023 adjusted for inflation). For a brief period around that time she was the highest paid actress in the world.  This is a newspaper advertisement for Arms and the Girl, a 1917 silent film drama produced by legendary producer Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky film company and distributed by Paramount Pictures, co-founded by Zukor. Arms and the Girl is the only one of Burke’s 15 silent films to survive today. It was her third silent film, all starring vehicles and under the management of husband Flo Ziegfeld. Burke, already a force on Broadway, had become a film star as well and took top billing on all 15 of her silent films, culminating in 1921's The Education of Elizabeth, shot in 1920 before she retired from the big screen to raise the Ziegfelds' daughter Patricia, then 4, at Burkeley Crest. While Burke paused her film career and the long location shoots that could entail, she remained thoroughly involved on Broadway, starring in stage productions from 1921 through 1929 except the years 1923, 1925 and 1926.  This 1914 hand-drawn map shows the estate of Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke, better known by her stage name Billie Burke. She and husband Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. would go on to purchase the next-door estate of the late Martin Lefurgy by 1920 for $100,000 and add it to the property that Burke had named Burkeley Crest after buying it for $65,000 in 1910. (1914 map by George Washington Bromley & Co., David Rumsey Historic Map Collection) Ziegfeld reached the pinnacle of his professional success in 1927 and 1928 after the Feb. 2, 1927 opening of his own Broadway venue, the $2.5 million ($43.4 million today) Ziegfeld Theatre at 54th Street and the Avenue of the Americas with financial backing from William Randolph Hearst. His first two shows at the new venue were smash hits, Rio Rita followed by the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II classic Show Boat on Dec. 27, 1927. Show Boat made Broadway history as the first musical that merged related musical numbers into the telling of a serious story. Remarkably for the Jim Crow era, the show featured interracial themes, including a mixed-race marrriage, and was the first Broadway musical to feature a mixed racial cast.  Ziegfeld had already broken a racial taboo in his Ziegfeld Follies of 1910 when he hired comedian Bert Williams in a starring role, making the Bahamian-born Williams the first black to perform on Broadway on an equal footing with white stars. Ironically, Williams, who had a light complexion, performed in blackface by his own choice as white actors typically would in minstrel shows of the period. Williams said the makeup helped him get into character. Williams was never thought of as performing to stereotype, rather he appears to have been universally admired for his on-stage wit delivered in a dignified style. Running concurrently with Rio Rita and Show Boat at Broadway theaters besides the Ziegfeld in 1928 were Ziegfeld hits Whoopee!, Rosalie and The Three Musketeers.  Then came 1929, Ziegfeld's nadir. His Show Girl starring Ruby Keeler, who'd married legendary entertainer Al Jolson a year earlier, was a hot ticket until Keeler had to quit the cast for reasons of injury or illness, reports varied. What wasn't debatable was her absence forced the show to close. The ensuing Wall Street crash of Oct. 29, 1929 ruined Ziegfeld's finances. He scrambled to find a hit in 1930 as the Great Depression tightened its grip. With a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Simple Simon (1930) starred comedian Ed Wynn. Concurrently, Smiles (1930) teamed Ziegfeld's old beau, Marilyn Miller, with Fred Astaire and Astaire's older sister, Adele. Both shows closed within weeks and Ziegfeld was left with crushing debt.
Somehow, Ziegfeld managed one last roll of the dice, banking on The Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 to dig him out of his financial abyss. It opened July 1 and closed Nov. 1 before the historically lucrative Christmas season even got underway. It didn't turn a profit. Ziegfeld's secretary, Goldie Clough later said she had to smuggle Ziegfeld out of his office through a fire exit each night to avoid summons servers and creditors awaiting him at the Ziegfeld Theatre door. Meanwhile, Ziegfeld had drained his and Burke's cash reserves. A committed gambler, he was known to lose as much as $50,000 a night at roulette — a 2024 inflation-adjusted $800,000. His Ziegfeld Follies productions had been setting him back $175,000 up front, seven times as much as the average Broadway production of the day. His Broadway musical productions were just as expensive which was fine when they succeeded at the box office, but crippling when they failed. And a number did just that in the mid-1920s and again in 1929 and 1930. He doubled down with big bets on the stock market in the late 1920s, like many other investors buying heavily on margin. When the market crashed on Black Tuesday, Ziegfeld's estimated $3 million fortune was gone, leaving spouse Billie Burke to pick up the financial pieces as best she could.  This miniature version of George Washington’s colonial Virginia house, Mount Vernon, was built by Flo Ziegfeld and Billie Burke as a playhouse for their daughter Patricia. (Photo courtesy Westchester County Historical Society) The Burkeley Crest estate featured a 19-room mansion, several other houses — one for Burke's mother, others for the estate's superintendent and gardener, an extensive stable originally for horses and carriages, later for little Patty's ponies and still later her riding horses (one given to her by legendary humorist Will Rogers and another by New York Yankees owner Col. Jacob Ruppert), at least one large greenhouse and a garage that survives to this day, the only estate building still standing. It housed Billie Burke's extensive car collection, at one time including a fleet of six Rolls Royce automobiles. Ruppert lived three villages north in Tarrytown, not far from today's Tappan Zee Bridge. There were also extensive facilities for the family's private zoo. The animals at one point or another included two African lion cubs, two adult bears, a herd of deer kept in an outdoor pen, a young Asian elephant named Herman given to Patty on her sixth birthday (sold a short time later after it rampaged through the greenhouse) and parrots. Other animals also passed through, many of which were retired to Burkeley Crest after appearing in Ziegfeld stage productions. Herman the elephant, by the way, had his name changed to Ziggy (referencing Ziegfeld) after leaving Burkeley Crest and lived out his days as a minor celebrity at a zoo near Chicago. Burke's longtime private secretary, Katherine Dix, recalled that Flo Ziegfeld would be driven by chauffeur to his Manhattan headquarters at the New Amsterdam Theatre and beginning in 1927 at his own Siegfeld Theatre, after 1 p.m. each day in his buff-colored Rolls Royce. Billie Burke and Patty spent most days at Burkeley Crest enjoying its swimming pool, playing tennis on the estate's courts and entertaining friends. On rainy days mother and daughter might head to the movies at a theater in nearby Yonkers. The family was generous with the estate, allowing neighbors to traverse Burkeley Crest's extensive paths from Broadway to Farragut Avenue en route to schools and friends. Village children also rode sleds down estate hills on snow days and climbed its many large trees. Locals still talk about the day Billie Burke took Patty and Hastings neighbors ages 6 to 12 to the Bronx Zoo for an outing, traveling in the Ziegfelds' chauffeured fleet of a half dozen Rolls Royces.
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