The Brief on Blanche Satchel

“Blanche Satchel” (1906-2004) is one of the most unappealing stage names that I’ve ever heard; it evokes a leather saddle bag that has been boiled until it turns as white as a dead fish. I only raise the point because the opposite was true. I was literally LURED to an interest in the subject, by a Howard Chandler Christy painting that was hanging in the billiards room at the Lambs Club, which shows the model in a come-hither and nude pose that sets my heart racing every time I look at it. I saw that painting and said “Man, who is she?” I am relieved to find that I am not alone in my obsession. Christy described her as “the most beautiful Titian-blonde in the world”. Charles Lindbergh briefly set his cap for her. And several Broadway impresarios put her on the stage.

Satchel had begun performing professionally in musicals and pantomimes at age 10. Her mother was an Australian stage performer named Doris “Dorrie” Melrose; her father, an import/export merchant, auctioneer, and pawnbroker. Blanche was born and raised in Sydney, and trained in skills like dance and elocution. A century ago — 1925 — her mother brought her to London and secured work for her as a chorus girl. Her time there was short, for she was soon scouted by Flo Ziegfeld and put into one of his London productions, and then brought back to New York, where she worked on Broadway over the next half dozen years. She was in the chorus of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927, followed by the 1928 edition of Earl Carroll’s Vanities, then Carroll’s first book musical Fioretta (1929), Ziegfeld’s Show Girl (1929, starring Ruby Keeler as Dixie Dugan), Simple Simon (1930) with Ed Wynn, Smiles (1930) with Marilyn Miller and Fred and Adele Astaire, The New Yorkers (1930), and The Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, the last edition produced during Flo’s lifetime, making for a nice bookend to Satchel’s stage career.

In 1933 Satchell married a stockbroker, a union that ended in divorce five years later. There was a second marriage to another businessman that lasted into the 1940s. When she died at age 98, Satchel was one of the last surviving Ziegfeld Girls — and even then far from a pale old bag.

Learn much more about Blanche Satchel in this terrifically thorough article here.

For more about show biz historyplease read No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.