Silent movie star Billie Burke once said of Hollywood, “To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor and the physical stamina of a cow pony.” She had an almost six-decade career in show business, was the highest-paid star in silent movies for a while, and had a turbulent marriage as the second wife of Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, but she is mostly remembered as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Billie was the daughter of a circus clown and show business was in her blood. She was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke on August 7, 1885 in Washington, D.C. Her father worked for the P.T. Barnum circus and the whole family went on tour with him, ending up in London where Burke made her stage debut in The School Girl at age 18. The New York Times of May 9, 1903 described her appearance this way: “The play made an instantaneous success and was received with great applause . . . Miss Burke made the hit of the evening.” The play transferred to New York and was also successful on Broadway. Burke returned to New York at 22 after doing a series of well-received musical comedies on the West End. Her career as the red-headed comedienne with a daffy personality was established on both sides of the Atlantic.

At a party one New Year’s Eve, she met Ziegfeld, producer of the lavish stage spectacles known as the Ziegfeld Follies. The two married in 1914 and two years later, their daughter, Patricia, was born. But Ziegfeld was an inveterate womanizer and the marriage was an unhappy one. Although Billie threatened to leave him several times, she stayed with him until his death. In keeping with the times when most women stood by their faithless men, she said of him, “Ziegfeld has been portrayed as a man who pursued women. I have even come across a word which, in regard to him, is not only vulgar but incredibly inaccurate. The word is ‘chaser.’ By all the pink-toed prophets, Flo Ziegfeld was never that! Flo never pursued any woman. He was cool and aloof and difficult. But there were times, more times than I prefer to recall when he made a woman eager for his approval by a mere look, or a small expression, or by a slight grasp of her elbow, a low mumbling request to dance. That was all the effort he ever had to make. The story of one noted dancing girl about how Flo Ziegfeld used to batter down her door is a confection of sheer poppycock. I tell you: I know better.”

Despite their troubles, the Ziegfeld’s lived very well. Burke was 24 when she bought an estate in Hastings-on-Hudson in New York in 1910 which she named Burkeley Crest, lavishly decorated with English and Italian antiques. According to the Hastings Historical Society’s website, the Ziegfeld’s installed a fully-equipped projection room where they could watch movies, and built a “playhouse” for their daughter that was modeled on George Washington’s Mt. Vernon. Flo loved flowers and had the gardens around the house planted with hyacinths and daffodils, 24 blue spruce trees, and an English box hedge at the gate. A staff of 17 servants catered to the needs of the Ziegfeld’s, their guests, and their menagerie of animals that included deer, parrots, geese, pheasants, bears, ponies, and buffalo.”

Burke was signed to a Hollywood contract with Jesse L. Lasky in 1915, and the following year, she appeared in her first film, Peggy, in which she played a New York socialite transplanted to Scotland, setting a path towards the characters she would be best known for playing – upper-class women in light romantic roles. She was paid $40,000 for her work, the most ever earned by an actress to that point. Later that year she appeared in Gloria’s Romance, a 20-part serial that again made her the highest-paid Hollywood actress, earning $150,000. Jerome Kern conducted the orchestra at the New York screening of Part 1. Burke’s wardrobe was advertised as costing $40,000, and she was given two maids and a secretary during the making of the films. All 20 chapters have been lost.

A fashion leader, Burke patronized the couturier Lucile who dressed aristocracy, royalty and celebrities, and she garnered a devoted female fan following. Marlis Schweitzer, in her book When Broadway was the Runway, describes the ‘Billie Burke dress’ that appeared in department stores that had a signature flat collar trimmed with lace. Burke also appeared in advertisements selling Pond’s Cold Cream. During this time, she appeared in films such as The Mysterious Miss Terry and Let’s Get a Divorce in 1918, Good Gracious Annabelle in 1919, and The Frisky Mrs. Johnson in 1920. Burke also returned to Broadway in between films where she played leads in productions such as Caesar’s Wife (1919), The Intimate Strangers (1921), The Marquise (1927) and The Happy Husband (1928).

In 1929, the stock market crashed. Ziegfeld lost all his money in the Great Depression that followed, and Burke returned to Hollywood to repair the family fortunes. Her first role, her first talkie, was in 1932 playing Katharine Hepburn’s mother in A Bill of Divorcement, directed by George Cukor. It was also Hepburn’s movie debut. Ziegfeld passed away during the shoot, but Burke returned to work right after his funeral. The movie was a big success, soon followed by another, Dinner at Eight again with Cukor, co-starring Lionel and John Barrymore, Marie Dressler and Jean Harlow in 1933.

In the 30s, Burke met director Dorothy Arzner and the two moved in together and were reported to be lovers. Burke was cast in Arzner’s Christopher Strong (Hepburn’s second movie) in 1933, and she also appeared in Arzner’s The Bride Wore Red in 1937 with Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone. Both Hepburn and Crawford were also rumored to have had love affairs with Arzner.

In 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, MGM’s ode to Flo Ziegfeld was made, with William Powell playing the lead, but Myrna Loy portrayed Burke, a casting decision Burke did not take kindly to. She was told she was too old to play herself. Her performance in 1939’s Merrily We Lived gained Burke her only Oscar nomination. That same year she was cast as Glinda in Victor Fleming’s 1938 The Wizard of Oz at the age of 54, working again with Judy Garland whose mother she had played in the previous year’s Everybody Sing. It was also in 1939 that she turned down Cukor’s offer to play Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind.

In the 1940s, Burke made 25 films, but she also reinvented herself by starting a radio and a TV career. “The Billie Burke Show” aired on CBS radio from 1943 to 1946, and her television talk show “At Home with Billie Burke” ran from 1951 to 1952 on the DuMont television network. She guest-starred on numerous TV shows and also wrote two books. With a Feather on My Nose was published in 1949, and was a memoir about the theater scene at the turn of the century featuring stories of her pals such as Mark Twain, J.M. Barrie, Enrico Caruso and Ethel Barrymore, and a sanitized version of her life with Ziegfeld. With Powder on My Nose, her second memoir, was published in 1959.

Her major films of the 1950s included Father of the Bride and its sequel Father’s Little Dividend. After a few attempts to come back to the stage failed, she retired after her last film, a John Ford-directed Western called Sergeant Rutledge in 1960 at age 76. She was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that same year.

Burke died on May 14, 1970, at her home in Brentwood in Los Angeles at 85. She and Ziegfeld are buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.