The Faith Dane Centennial

Born 100 years ago today, actress, performer and politician Faith Dane (1923-2020)

Born in Brooklyn, Dane started out as a Broadway chorus girl in her early 20s. She was in Sadie Thompson, the musical version of Maugham’sRain starring June Havoc in 1944, and Nellie Bly in 1946. She toured with Wonderful Time in 1954. In 1959 came the role she is best known for, the bugling burlesque dancer “Mazeppa” in both the Broadway and movie versions Gypsy. Her gimmick was of course based on the stage character played by Adah Isaacs Menken, which was in turn based on a work by Lord Byron (which was based on a real life guy). Dane is sometimes described as an actual burlesque dancer; I’m going to go ahead and speculate that she worked the burlesque and nightclub circuits between legit shows.

By 1964 Dane was in the U.S. Virgin Islands running for office in the local legislature on a funding-for-the-arts platform (encouraged by her then husband, the former attorney general of the territory). It proved to be the first of many unsuccessful candidacies. She also ran for Mayor of Washington D.C. in 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2010 and 2014, and for DC’s shadow rep in Congress in 1992 and 1996. Her primary causes were the arts and the environment, and she was associated with the Green Party.

Somewhere in the middle of all that she had the wherewithal to sue the Broadway producers of a revival of Gypsy for not casting her as Mazeppa again or compensating her for the use of the character, which she claimed was her intellectual property. She lost but now it’s common to put a “Faith Dane clause” into contracts, just to clarify, for both sides, what the actor is entitled to.

She was clearly the kind of fringe political local character who makes the world go ’round. Here in NYC, our equivalent was Al Lewis!

For more on show business history,please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous; and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.