Evan Burrows Fontaine
Encyclopedia
Early life
Evan-Burrows Fontaine (sometimes incorrectly spelled Evan Burroughs Fontaine) 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.; 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. Evan was the daughter of William Winston Spotswood Fontaine, an accountant who would later become general manager of the Alamo Cottonseed Company and Florence West Evans, the daughter of a Dallas life insurance agent.Her paternal 3rd great-grandmother was Martha Henry, daughter of American Founding Father, Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786...
. Her grandfather, William Winston Fontaine, served in the American Civil War as a colonel under Confederate generals, Stonewall Jackson
Stonewall Jackson
ຄຽשת״ׇׂׂׂׂ֣|birth_place= Clarksburg, Virginia |death_place=Guinea Station, Virginia|placeofburial=Stonewall Jackson Memorial CemeteryLexington, Virginia|placeofburial_label= Place of burial|image=...
and J.E.B. Stuart
J.E.B. Stuart
James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart was a U.S. Army officer from Virginia and a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names. Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use...
. 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. 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 and that at an early age she traveled to California where she became a protégée of dancer Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis was an early modern dance pioneer.-Biography:Ruth St. Denis founded Adelphi University's dance program in 1938 which was one of the first dance departments in an American university...
. Later she would claim to have been trained by Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze , was a Swiss composer, musician and music educator who developed eurhythmics, a method of learning and experiencing music through movement...
, but this has never been verified.
Career
While under the tutelage of St. Denis, Fontaine was taught the Dance Egyptienne by St. Denis’ husband, chorographer Ted ShawnTed Shawn
Ted Shawn , originally Edwin Myers Shawn, was one of the first notable male pioneers of American modern dance. Along with creating Denishawn with former wife Ruth St. Denis he is also responsible for the creation of the well known all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers...
. One of several dances Shawn would teach her based on his interpretation of Javanese ceremonial dancing. 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. 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. Fontaine went on to tour nationally with dancer and future film actor Kenneth Harlan
Kenneth Harlan
Kenneth Harlan was an American leading man of the silent film era, playing mostly romantic leads or adventurer types.-Career:...
before joining the Ziegfeld Follies
Ziegfeld Follies
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
where she would later shine in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Follies (1919). Around this time she also appeared in The Ed Wynn Carnival as the Queen of the Nile at New York’s Amsterdam Theater. 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
Ritz-Carlton
The Ritz-Carlton is a brand of luxury hotels and resorts with 75 properties located in major cities and resorts in 24 countries worldwide...
. 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. In 1920 Fontaine worked on three motion pictures, 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.
Early Target of Paparazzi
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.Marriage
On April 18, 1918 Fontaine married Sterling Lawrence Adair, a young sailor from Houston, Texas 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 WhitneyCornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was an American businessman, film producer, writer, and government official, as well as the owner of a leading stable of thoroughbred racehorses....
. This relationship collapsed when Whitney became engaged to Marie Norton
Marie Norton
-Biography:She was born in 1903, her grandfather was Benjamin F. Einstein who was the attorney to the New York Times and a shareholder in several advertising companies whose main client was the Times. She was the first wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney from 1923 to 1929, with whom she had two...
, 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.
Court Battles
In the summer of 1922 Fontaine filed what would turn out to be the first of several law suits against Cornelius “Sonny” Vanderbilt Whitney, 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. After the trial’s end, Fontaine and her mother were arrested for perjuryPerjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
; charges that were in due course vacated by a judge. Fontaine continued the battle with subsequent law suits against Whitney that would fair no better than the first.
Parent’s Death
On January 21, 1928 Fontaine’s mother was killed near New Smyrna Beach, FloridaNew Smyrna Beach, Florida
New Smyrna Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. The population was 20,048 according to the 2000 census. As of 2007, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 23,161.-History:...
, 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.
Second Marriage
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. Kruger was a colleague of Johnny WeissmullerJohnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...
’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. His last film credit was as Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
’s double in The Old Man and the Sea. Harold Herman Kruger was born on September 23, 1898 at Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. Honolulu is the southernmost major U.S. city. Although the name "Honolulu" refers to the urban area on the southeastern shore of the island of Oahu, the city and county government are consolidated as the City and...
and passed away in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California on the 7th of October, 1965. In 1986 Kruger was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame
International Swimming Hall of Fame
The International Swimming Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame, located at One Hall of Fame Drive, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States, operated by private interests serving as the central point for the study of the history of swimming in the United States and around...
at Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale is a city in the U.S. state of Florida, on the Atlantic coast. It is the county seat of Broward County. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010...
.