Evan-Burrows Fontaine (1898–1984) was an American interpretive dancer and actress.
| Evan Burrows Fontaine | |
|---|---|
Library of Congress |
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| Born | October 3, 1898 Huron, Hill County, Texas, U.S.A. |
| Died | December 0, 1984 (aged 86) Paris, Virginia(?), U.S.A. |
| Occupation | Dancer |
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Evan-Burrows (sometimes incorrectly spelled Evan Burroughs )[1] was born on October 3, 1898 at Huron, Texas, a present day ghost town with the Cedar Creek Baptist Church as its last surviving structure.;[2][3][4][5][6] She would later move to Dallas, where by the turn of the twentieth century her family was rooming at a boarding house owned by her mother’s parents.[7] Evan was the daughter of William Winston Spotswood , an accountant who would later become general manager of the Alamo Cottonseed Company[8] and Florence West Evans, the daughter of a Dallas life insurance agent.[9] Her paternal 3rd great-grandmother was Martha Henry, daughter of American Founding Father, Patrick Henry.[10] Her grandfather, William Winston Fontaine, served in the American Civil War as a colonel under Confederate generals, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. After the war he taught at Baylor Female College in Independence, Texas and later held the chair of Latin for a decade at the University of Texas.[11] Not much is know by this writer about Evan Fontaine’s early life except that her parents were divorced by the time of the taking of the 1910 census[12] and that at an early age she traveled to California where she became a protégée of dancer Ruth St. Denis.[13] Later she would claim to have been trained by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, but this has never been verified.[14]
While under the tutelage of St. Denis, Fontaine was taught the Dance Egyptienne by St. Denis’ husband, chorographer Ted Shawn.[15] One of several dances Shawn would teach her based on his interpretation of Javanese ceremonial dancing.[16] Fontaine’s stage debut may have occurred on December 16, 1914, when she performed Shawn’s Syvillia in a production staged by St. Denis’ company at the Ye Liberty Playhouse in Oakland, California.[17] The next year she was booked to perform the traditional Jockey Dance at an annual celebration that follows the running of the Saratoga Cup in upstate New York.[18] Fontaine went on to tour nationally with dancer and future film actor Kenneth Harlan[19][20] before joining the Ziegfeld Follies where she would later shine in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Follies (1919).[21] Around this time she also appeared in The Ed Wynn Carnival as the Queen of the Nile at New York’s Amsterdam Theater.[22] Fontaine was among a group of entertainers who in 1919 donated their talents to a benefit costume ball held on behalf of blind war veterans at Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton.[23] The next year at the Casino Theatre (Broadway) Fontaine helped put on a memorial charity show that honored the actor Frank Carter on the first anniversary of his death.[24] In 1920 Fontaine worked on three motion pictures,[25][26] Madonnas and Men, playing the dual roles of Nerissa and Ninon, Women Men Love, as Moira Lamson and as a dancer in A Romantic Adventuress. Within a few years though, Fontaine would be limited to performing her “Oriental style” dancing at cabarets and nightclubs as her sensational court battles with a member of one of America’s wealthiest families most likely derailed any chance she had of attaining future stardom in New York or Los Angeles.
Eyebrows were raised when in late 1919 the press published a photograph (righ) of Fontaine jogging along the Hudson River in her stockings feet, clad in a heavy hooded sweater and workout shorts; something that would have probably gone unnoticed just a few years later.
On April 18, 1918 Fontaine married Sterling Lawrence Adair,[27] a young sailor from Houston, Texas[28] whom she had met on a train ride the year before. Their marriage was annulled in February, 1920, around the time she became involved with millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. This relationship collapsed when Whitney became engaged to Marie Norton, sometime before Fontaine gave birth to a baby boy that December. On the 14th of January of the following year, Sterling Adair was found shot to death at his Oak Wood apartment in south Dallas. A police homicide investigation would prove inconclusive and a later a coroner’s jury would rule Adair probably died by his own hand.[29]
In the summer of 1922 Fontaine filed what would turn out to be the first of several law suits against Cornelius “Sonny” Vanderbilt Whitney,[30] claiming he had broken his pledge to marry her and that he was the father of her son. Whitney’s attorneys countered that Fontaine was still married to Adair at the time of the proposal and that the date of her marriage annulment was contrived by Fontaine and her mother. Over the next several months the case would become headline fodder for the national press; in the end though, Whitney’s attorneys prevailed and the case was dismissed.[31] After the trial’s end, Fontaine and her mother were arrested for perjury;[32] charges that were in due course vacated by a judge. Fontaine continued the battle with subsequent law suits against Whitney[33] that would fair no better than the first.
On January 21, 1928 Fontaine’s mother was killed near New Smyrna Beach, Florida,[34] when her automobile collided with a Florida East-Coast Railroad passenger train. Florence Fontaine had been on her way to Miami to care of her daughter who was ill at the time. Fontaine’s father died at the age of 67 on August 19, 1939, after traveling to Atlantic City to visit with her. At the time of his death Winston Fontaine was a member of the Dallas office of the Loyalty Group Insurance Company.[35]
Fontaine married former Olympic swimmer Harold “Stubby” Kruger in 1928 or 29. Bobby, her second son, would be born to this union before their divorce in 1935.[36] Kruger was a colleague of Johnny Weissmuller’s and performed at carnivals and fairs billed as the Incomparable Water Comedian. He also had a career in Hollywood as an actor and stunt double that began in the silent era and lasted well into the 1950s.[37] His last film credit was as Spencer Tracy’s double in The Old Man and the Sea. Harold Herman Kruger was born on September 23, 1898 at Honolulu, Hawaii[38][39] and passed away in Los Angeles, California on the 7th of October, 1965.[40] In 1986 Kruger was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[41]
Sometime in the late 1930s Evan Fontaine became an owner of the Walton Roof, a Philadelphia night spot atop the Walton Hotel, along with her husband (or soon to be husband), restaurateur Jack Lynch.[42] Her first son, Neil “Sonny” Winston Fontaine, debuted there as a band leader in 1939,[43] and later served at times as master of ceremonies before the club’s demise in 1946.[44][45][46] Jack Lynch was a long time owner of clubs and restaurants in the Philadelphia area. Indications are that he and Fontaine may not have been together by the time of his death in 1957 at the age of 61.[47] Evan Burrows Fontaine died in December, 1984 at the age of 86.[48] Her last known residence was in the small town of Paris in northern Virginia.[49]