Hazel Dawn - Stage Career

Stage Career

Dawn was a member of the original Ziegfeld Follies in 1907. She went to Wales with her family at the age of eight when her father served as a Mormon missionary there. Dawn studied violin and voice in London, England, Paris, France, and Munich, Germany. She was especially impressed by the attentiveness of teachers she studied under in Paris. Her sister was an opera singer and went on to sing with the Opera Comique in Paris.

She met producer Ivan Caryll at a party in London. Caryll suggested the name Hazel Dawn, considering Tout to be impossible. Dawn met composer Paul Rubens who offered her a part in Dear Little Denmark at the Prince of Wales Theatre (1909), where she made her theatrical debut. She then starred in The Balkan Princess in 1910 as Olga. She achieved a great success in Europe and the United States with her performance in Ivan Caryll's The Pink Lady (1911). The show ran for three years and made Dawn famous, even though she was not the star. In the production she introduced My Beautiful Lady, which she sang and played on her violin.

The Little Cafe (1913) was produced by the New Amsterdam Theatre and adapted from a book by C.M.S. McLellan. One reviewer found the play lacking when compared to The Pink Lady, but he enjoyed the song, Just Because It's You. Dawn performed it in the third act. He wrote: Dawn was radiantly beautiful and sang far better than did other members of the cast. The Little Cafe was a place in Paris where large crowds assembled to admire the renowned beauty of the owner's daughter.

She starred in the operetta operetta, The Debutante (1914), at the National Theater in Washington, D.C., Under the management of John C. Fisher. Harry B. Smith penned the book and play adaptation. The setting of the operetta is in London and Paris, with Dawn depicting a young American girl who is pursued by a nobleman, who desires her fortune. She plays the violin during a scene where she runs away to Paris and makes her musical debut before an appreciative audience. In December she appeared in The Debutante at the Knickerbocker Theatre.