Doris Eaton Travis

 Doris Eaton Travis (March 14, 1904 – May 11, 2010)

She began performing onstage as a young child, and made her Broadway debut at the age of 13. A year later, in 1918, she joined the famed Ziegfeld Follies as the youngest Ziegfeld girl ever cast in the show. She continued to perform in stage productions and silent films throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. When her career in stage and screen declined, Travis started a second career as an Arthur Murray dance instructor and local television personality in Detroit. Her association with Arthur Murray lasted for three decades, during which time she rose through the ranks to own and manage a chain of nearly twenty schools. After retiring from her career with Arthur Murray, she went on to manage a horse ranch with her husband and returned to school, eventually earning several degrees. As the last surviving Ziegfeld girl, Travis was featured in several books and documentaries about the Ziegfeld Follies years and her other stage endeavors. Travis had also returned to the stage as a featured performer in benefit performances.

In 1992, aged 88, Travis graduated cum laude from the University of Oklahoma. In 1997, she and four former Ziegfeld Girls reunited for the reopening of the New Amsterdam Theatre. She later recalled that she was the only one still able to dance. On May 11, 2010, Travis died of an aneurysm in Commerce, Michigan at the age of 106. She is interred at Guardian Angel Cemetery in Rochester, Michigan.