Elsie Janis

Elsie Janis (March 16, 1889 – February 26, 1956)

Janis was a singer, songwriter, actress, and screenwriter. Entertaining the troops during World War I immortalized her as "the sweetheart of the AEF" (American Expeditionary Force). Acclaimed by American and British critics, Janis was a headliner on Broadway and London. On Broadway, she starred in a number of successful shows, including The Vanderbilt Cup (1906), The Hoyden (1907), The Slim Princess (1911), and The Century Girl (1916). Elsie performed at the grand opening of the Brown Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky on October 5, 1925. Janis also enjoyed a career as a Hollywood screenwriter, actor, and composer. She was credited with the original story for Close Harmony (1929) and as composer and production manager for Paramount on Parade (1930). She and director Edmund Goulding wrote the song "Love, Your Magic Spell Is Everywhere" for Gloria Swanson for her talkie debut film The Trespasser (1929). Janis's song "Oh, Give Me Time for Tenderness" was featured in the Bette Davis movie Dark Victory (1939), also directed by Goulding. In 1932, Janis married Gilbert Wilson, who was 16 years her junior. The couple lived in the Phillipse Manor section of Sleepy Hollow, New York, until Janis moved to the Los Angeles area of California where she lived until her death. Her final film was the 1940 Women in War. Elsie Janis died in 1956 at her home in Beverly Hills, California, she was 66. She is interred at Forest Lawn-Glendale