"Violet Carlson, who amused vaudeville with a comic kid
act in the 1910's, then helped keep Broadway musical-comedy audiences
laughing through the Roaring Twenties and into the Depression and
created the role of Gretchen in the original production of ''The Student
Prince,'' died on Wednesday at a hospital near her home in Los Angeles.
She was 97.
If hers is
not an enduring household name, it is only because, unlike Helen Morgan
or other luminaries of the era, Miss Carlson was not a leading lady, or
even a demure ingenue. She was a soubrette, that deliciously wicked and
flirtatious featured player who never gets the leading man but who can
steal a scene with a song and snare an audience's heart with a saucy
shake of her curly head.
In
a Broadway career that included nine musicals from 1922 to 1934, Miss
Carlson, who also played the Palace four times and was twice named Miss
Broadway, stole her share of scenes and enough hearts to make her a
gossip-column staple, and only partly because she had appeared in
vaudeville with Walter Winchell."
Famed vaudeville headliner and Broadway actress Violet
Carlson, who headlined the Palace four times and later created the role
of Gretchen in the original Broadway and London productions of “The
Student Prince in Heidelberg,” died Dec. 3 of natural causes in Los
Angeles. She was 97.
A
native of Oak Park, Ill., and reared in Oklahoma, Carlson entered
vaudeville when he was 8 years old and eventually headlined the Orpheum,
Pantages and Keith circuits.
From
1922 to 1934, Carlson was a featured soubrette in nine Broadway
musicals: “Spice of 1922,” “Caroline” (1923), “The Student Prince in
Heidelberg” (1924), “The Nightingale,” “Ruddigore,” “The Love Call”
(1927), “The Red Robe” (1928), “Sweet Adeline” (1929) and “Caviar”
(1934).
Carlson also
toured in “My Maryland,” “Earl Carroll Vanities” (1935), “Naughty
Marietta” (1936) and in the early 1960s in “Harvey” with Joe E. Brown.
During World War II she joined the USO and entertained troops in North Africa and in the South Pacific.
During the 1960s she appeared on numerous TV shows, including “The Monkees,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Batman” and “Bewitched.”
In 1941 Carlson married businessman Henri Margo, who died in 1967.
She is survived by two nieces.
"Violet Carlson, vaudeville and musical comedy star who
created the role of barmaid Gretchen in the original Broadway production
of “The Student Prince in Heidelberg” in 1924, has died. She was 97.
Carlson
died Wednesday at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, Miles Kreuger,
president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical,
said Friday.
Earlier
this year, Carlson was in the audience at the opening of a revival of
the 1924 musical, whose title has been shortened over the years to “The
Student Prince,” at San Gabriel Civic Auditorium.
“She
was such a lively and delightful person right up to the end,” said
Kreuger, who befriended the star and hopes to preserve anecdotes she
told him about Broadway’s early years.
Regrettably, he said, no recordings of her singing exist.
Born
in Oak Park, Ill., Carlson grew up in Omaha and began performing in
vaudeville when she was 8. She eventually headlined the Orpheum,
Pantages and Keith circuits."