Anne Ziegler
Anne Ziegler (1910 - 2003) English singer and actress.
Contents
Biography
Born Irené Frances Eastwood on 22 June 1910, the youngest child of Ernest and Eliza Frances Eastwood (née Doyle) of 13 Marmion Road, Sefton Park, Liverpool.
Anne left school at the age of sixteen and continued playing the piano up to Grade VIII of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and began to study singing with the eminent teacher, John Tobin. She sang in John Tobin’s female choir of twenty-four voices and took the part of the May Queen in an amateur production of Merrie England.
Career
Anne went to London to audition and got the part of top voice in the octet of a musical play, By Appointment, starring the famous singer, Maggie Teyte. At this point she changed her name to the more glamorous Anne Ziegler, and was accepted on the books of the theatrical agent Robert Layton. The show was not a success and lasted only three weeks but she found another job singing for Mr Joe Lyon’s organisation amidst the clatter of the restaurants of the Regent Palace and Cumberland Hotels, and the Trocadero. She auditioned for the part of Marguerite in a colour film version of Gounod’s Faust Fantasy. She was chosen for the part, and it was in the making of this film, which commenced shooting in December 1934, that she met Webster Booth, playing opposite her as Faust. Anne and Webster were eventually married in 1938.
At the end of 1935, she was principal boy in Mother Goose, her first pantomime, at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool with George Formby and George Lacey. The following year she was principal boy in Cinderella in Scotland with the popular Scottish comedian, Will Fyffe. In July 1937, Anne was invited to go to the States to appear in the musical Virginia by Schwartz. She decided to take the name of Anne Booth for her appearance there and made up a fictional life story to go with her new name! She returned to the UK shortly afterwards.
From 1938 on, Anne and Webster's lives and careers were intertwined and in the 1940s they were to reach the top of the entertainment tree as duettists. They specialised in light classics and operetta. The pair were known as the "Sweethearts in Song" and were among the most famous and popular British musical acts of the 1940s.
They toured South Africa in 1948 and then returned to settle in 1956 and remained until 1978, teaching and made numerous appearances in the country.
They returned to the United Kingdom in 1978 where they broadcast on BBC radio, appeared on television in the Russell Harty Show and made personal appearances throughout the United Kingdom in An Evening with Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
Ziegler and Booth began their stay in South Africa with a ‘B’ tour to rural areas and smaller towns in 1956. They later established a school of singing and stagecraft in Johannesburg, made an LP recording of their popular duets translated into Afrikaans and trained many promising singers.
They moved to the coastal town of Knysna in 1967. Ziegler and Booth gave their farewell concert in Somerset West in 1975, believing that their singing days were at an end.
As actor
Anne and Webster began with Spring Quartet for Leonard Schach in Cape Town in September 1956. In 1956, they both also appeared in A Night in Venice at the Reps Theatre for the Johannesburg Operatic and Dramatic Society. She appeared in Angels in Love (1957), played 'Jack' in Jack and the Beanstalk for the East London Theatre Guild at the East London City Hall (1958), and also starred in The Glass Slipper (1959), which the National Theatre Organisation presented in conjunction with Children's Theatre and the Johannesburg Reps for Christmas 1959. It was a musical version of Cinderella which also starred Hilda Kriseman and Olive King.
In 1958, Webster and Anne appeared in Waltz Time for the Springs Operatic Society , in Merrie England at the East London City Hall for the Dramatic Society of East London and at the Reps Theatre in Johannesburg for JODS, and in a production of The Vagabond King in Durban. They both appeared again in Waltz Time in 1959, this time in the East London City Hall for the Dramatic Society of East London.
Anne appeared in Lock Up Your Daughters (1961) at the Playhouse in Johannesburg, directed by Leonard Schach.
They later played Mr and Mrs Fordyce in Good Night Mrs. Puffin in 1963, and played together in Family Album in Tonight at 8.30 for CAPAB in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth (1964).
She appeared in a production of The Love Potion at the Intimate Theatre in Johannesburg (1966).
They both appeared in a concert version of Merrie England for the Knysna and District Choral Society (1968).
Anne wrote and played the principal boy role in Cinderella in Knysna in 1968.
As director
In 1960, they produced A Country Girl for Springs Operatic Society. Anne directed The Desert Song (1961), The Merry Widow (1962) and The New Moon (1964) for the Springs Operatic Society. Together Booth and Ziegler produced The Vagabond King for the Springs Operatic Society in 1962. She directed The Merry Widow in Bloemfontein in 1965. She directed Lady Audley's Secret at the Port Elizabeth Opera House for the Port Elizabeth Musical and Dramatic Society in 1971. And in 1972, she played the lead in the pantomime, Dick Whittington at the Port Elizabeth Opera House.
See also Booth, Webster
Awards, etc
Sources
Wikipedia [1].
Tucker, 1997.
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