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Elsie Janis
"Sweetheart of the Doughboys"
by Dr. Robert Price
 More than one regiment marched off to its night in the trenches with brighter eyes and squarer shoulders,
Alexander Woollcott wrote in June 1918, because that "lanky, lovely lady from Columbus, Ohio" had sung to them and cheered them on their way.
The generation of World War I would never forget how Elsie Janis had cut short her music hall successes in New York and
London to give her talents to the Western Front - the first woman entertainer permitted at advanced bases - going from post to post, sometimes
doing nine, 45-minute shows a day, often, as Wolcott said, "at the very threshold of danger." Later, her doughboy revue, Elsie and Her Gang, which
she wrote and produced for several seasons, further endeared her to the Twenties and sent her on to even greater fame at home and abroad.
Born in Columbus, March 16, 1889, Elsie could not remember when she had not been charming audiences.
Coached by her mother, Mrs. Janis E. Bierbower, she was doing church benefits at two, East Lynne at five, stock companies at seven.
At ten, she presented a special Christmas performance for President McKinley at the White House, and at fourteen appeared in New York vaudeville.
Not yet seventeen, she was Broadway's starring hit in The Vanderbilt Cup. Success followed success, including her own play, A Star for a Night,
written when she was scarcely 22. London was hers in 1914.
Elsie Janis was an all-around revue artist. She had a special gift for light, sprightly comedy, sang and danced engagingly, was a superb mimic. She made theatrical history with her famous comic impersonations of such popular contemporaries as Will Rogers, John Barrymore, Beatrice Lillie, and George M. Cohan. A facile writer, she did her own scripts and turned out several plays and books, including her memoirs, So Far, So Good, in 1932.
After the death of her mother, who was her coach and constant companion, Elsie retired in 1930, and married George Wilson in 1931. She spent her last years on the West Coast, making occasional appearances--notably in Frank Fay's Music Hall, in 1939. She last played in a World War II film, Women in War, in 1946.
Elsie Janis died on February 27, 1956, in Beverly Hills.
This article was first published in the 1974 Ohioana Year Book. At the time, Dr.
Robert Price was Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature at Otterbein College.
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