Florence Walton: From Philly to the Fields of France

Originally posted 2013; updated 2022 with the generous input of author/actress/scholar Mari Lyn Henry, based on a 1977 interview she conducted with Walton as part of the research for her upcoming book about drama (i.e. one act plays) in vaudeville. 

Tribute today to dancer and actress Florence Walton (1883-1981).

Walton began her career acting in melodramas and musicals at the Chestnut Street Theatre in her native Philadelphia in 1901. In 1907 she was hired for the dance chorus for the Lew Fields show The Girl Behind the Counter and thus began the New York phase of her career. From here she went on to a couple of Ziegfeld shows, a year as a solo in vaudeville, back to Broadway for a few more shows.

Then, in 1912, she teamed up with French dancer Maurice Mouvet (known simply as “Maurice” in a ballroom dance act in big time vaudeville and a handful of Broadway revues. The two (who also married) were to become principal rivals to the Castles, and played the Palace several times. They are said to have introduced the Tango in America, and achieved popularity by performing the Hesitation Waltz. In 1916 (the height of World War One) they went to Paris to perform for the troops. Maurice would end up serving his country as an ambulance driver; the couple wound up being separated for long periods. In 1920 they divorced and broke up the act. Maurice returned to France, later dying of TB.

Walton was to remain a big time vaudeville item with a succession of other partners for several years. For a time starting in 1920 her partner was Allan Fagan, Ina Claire’s brother. By 1923, her new partner and husband was Leon Leitrim. The pair retired from vaudeville and moved to Paris in 1927. Walton ran a successful women’s clothing boutique for several years, divorced Leitrim (an alcoholic) in 1931, married and divorced French film director Pierre Columbier and returned to the U.S. in 1935.

In the late 30s she married stage and screen actor Howard Phillips (1899-92, 16 years her junior), and the two spent the remainder of their lives in comfortable retirement in New York. She was 94 when Mari Lyn Henry interviewed her in 1977, in which she revealed all manner of tasty tidbits: that she and Mouvet had appeared on bills with The Castles and Sarah Bernhardt; she taught Valentino to Tango; that she introduced Geraldine Farrar to Lou Tellegen; appeared on stage with Harry Davenport; was close with Pauline Frederick, friends with Sophie Tucker, and knew Nora Bayes,Edgar Allan Woolf, and Gracie Allen; and that her fans included Edward G. Robinson and Maurice Chevalier. Read the full interview here.

To find out more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.