British Invasion Walk: Strong Women

Walk from W. 72nd @ Riverside Drive to W. 73rd @ Broadway and visit two important sites:

1. Eleanor Roosevelt Monument. South entrance of Riverside Park at W. 72nd St. and Riverside Drive.
From 1899 to 1902 Eleanor Roosevelt attended the elite Allenswood Academy outside London. She wanted to stay a fourth year but her pushy family made her come home for her débutante ball. She never attended college, a fact she said she often regretted, and so she returned to New York from England, spending the days in idle and meaningless pastimes and not amounting to much.

Just kidding.* The American woman who I wish would have stayed away from England, for their sake, is Wallis Simpson.

See a picture of the 8-foot tall Eleanor Roosevelt statue at the Riverside Park Fund website.

2. The Ansonia, apartment complex at Broadway @ 73rd St. Home to many famous actors and sports figures in the early decades of the 20th century, among them actress Billie Burke. Born in the US, Burke moved to London where her family settled, and she decided to become an actress while seeing plays in the West End. She lived in the Ansonia with husband Florence Ziegfeld. Her time in England, I believe, helps explain why Glinda, the Good Witch, the role Burke plays in The Wizard of Oz, speaks with such elegant refinement, while the Wicked Witch snarls with a nasally midwestern accent. Margaret Hamilton was born in Cleveland. I love Burke in Dinner at Eight, a super New York movie.

The Continental Baths, a landmark in gay history, was located in the basement of the Ansonia in the early 1970s.

American author Theodore Dreiser wrote An American Tragedy while in residence at the Ansonia. The 1951 motion picture A Place in the Sun was based on the novel and starred Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor (b. 27 February 1932, Hampstead, London), and Shelley Winters. Taylor is one of the most famous British-American movie stars of all time as well as a passionate humanitarian in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt. We love her. The Ansonia, truly an Oz for the Friends of Dorothy.

Image: Eleanor Roosevelt between King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. London, England. 23 October. 1942.

Image: Billie Burke as Millicent Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933)

Image: Elizabeth Taylor in Giant (1956), another WOTBA fave, filmed in Marfa, Texas.

* WOTBA sometimes worries that schoolchildren will find this site and quote passages (unattributed of course) in their homework.

The British Invasion Walk, 72nd St. from the Hudson River to the East River. More to come.