Joan Sawyer (dancer)

Joan Sawyer (October 11, 1887 – November 1966), born Bessie Josephine Morrison, was an American society dancer, composer, suffragist, and businesswoman, who performed on the vaudeville circuit in the 1910s. Among her dance partners was a young Rudolph Valentino.

Joan Sawyer
Joan Sawyer and Jack Jarrott, demonstrating the maxixe, in a 1914 publication.
Born
Bessie Josephine Morrison

1887
El Paso, Texas
DiedNovember 1966
Dade County, Florida
NationalityAmerican
Occupationdancer

Early life

Bessie Josephine Morrison[1] was born in El Paso, Texas.[2] She lived in Ohio as a young woman,[3] trained as a stenographer before finding a career in dance.[4]

Career

Joan Sawyer was a professional social dancer, demonstrating the newest ballroom steps[5] at private parties and in nightclubs as an example for other dancers.[6] Sawyer was a feminist social dancer, who believed her work advanced the cause of women's suffrage. "It seems evident that the spread of the dancing habit has done much for women," she told an interviewer, "for dancing is the best form of exercise, for both the body and the mind."[7] Also for the suffrage cause, she drove an automobile decorated with suffrage banners across the United States in 1915, stopping along the way to give impromptu dance shows to raise funds for the suffrage movement.[8][9]

A reviewer in 1915 called Sawyer "as graceful as a summer cloud adrift in a sea of blue."[10] Among her dance partners were Rudolph Valentino,[11] George Raft, Nigel Barrie, Wallace McCutcheon Jr., and Arthur Ashley.[12] She danced with Valentino for president Woodrow Wilson.[13] She was among the dancers who claimed to invent the foxtrot.[3][14]

She managed a nightclub, the Persian Garden,[15] in New York City in 1914.[16] The club was unusual in its time, for having a woman manager and a black Jamaican-born band leader, Dan Kildare.[3] She was also the namesake of the "Joan Waltz",[17] she composed a tango ("The Persian Gardens Tango") and a maxixe ("The Joan Sawyer Maxixe"), she originated the "Aeroplane Waltz", and she published instructions for other dance steps.[18][19] She performed on vaudeville,[20] and appeared in one silent film, Love's Law (1917).[21][22]

Joan Sawyer and a dog, from a 1921 publication.

Personal life

Bessie Morrison married briefly in her teens, to Alvah Sawyer. She kept his surname as part of her professional name.[23] In 1917 Sawyer was named as a co-respondent in the highly-publicized divorce of heiress Blanca Errázuriz and businessman Jack de Saulles;[24] later that year, Errázuriz killed de Saulles in a custody dispute.[13] She married again to businessman George A. Rentschler, in the 1922.[25] In 1929, Joan Sawyer Rentschler was sued by an Ohio man, who claimed she persuaded his wife to divorce him.[26] She divorced Rentschler in 1936; she married and divorced[27] her third husband, writer Jed Kiley, in 1944.[1][28] She died in 1966, aged 79 years, in Florida.

References
  1. Pollack, Deborah C. (2019-01-28). Vintage Miami Beach Glamour: Celebrities & Socialites in the Heyday of Chic. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9781439666043.
  2. Tinker, Edward L. (January 26, 1914). "Why the Tango and How did it Get Here?". El Paso Herald. p. 5. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. Brooks, Tim (2010-10-01). Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919. University of Illinois Press. pp. 299–307. ISBN 9780252090639.
  4. "Joan Sawyer, Dancer, Once a Stenographer". Buffalo Courier. January 29, 1915. p. 5. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. Knowles, Mark (2009-06-08). The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. McFarland. p. 71. ISBN 9780786453603.
  6. Hopkins, J. S. (1914). The Tango and Other Up-to-date Dances: A Practical Guide to All the Latest Dances, Tango, One Step, Innovation, Hesitation, Etc. Saalfield Publishing Company.
  7. Malnig, Julie (2013-06-01). "Two-Stepping to Glory: Social Dance and the Rhetoric of Social Mobility" in Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, eds., Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Wesleyan University Press. p. 273. ISBN 9780819574251.
  8. "Joan Sawyer Dances to Aid 'The Cause'". The Leavenworth Echo. September 10, 1915. p. 9. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. "Society Dancer to Dance Across United States". The Sunday Telegram. June 27, 1915. p. 10. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "Keith's--Joan Sawyer". The Washington Post. February 23, 1915. p. 5. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. Tully, Jim (October 1926). "Rudolph Valentino". Vanity Fair. 26: 87.
  12. travsd (2013-10-11). "Joan Sawyer: Society Dancer in Vaudeville". (Travalanche). Retrieved 2019-04-12.
  13. Tanaka, Robarge (December 24, 2011). "The Scandalously Fabulous Joan Sawyer". The Killing of John L. de Saulles.
  14. "Joan Sawyer Tells of Creating Foxtrot". The Evening Sun. February 16, 1915. p. 5. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. "Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden". The New York Times. December 13, 1914. p. X9 – via ProQuest.
  16. Russ Shor, "Joan Sawyer: Jazz Vampire" Vintage Jazz Mart 161, pp. 7-8.
  17. Urlin, Ethel Lucy (1914). Dancing, Ancient and Modern. D. Appleton & Company. pp. 183–185.
  18. Richard Powers, "Joan Sawyer Tango" (Social Dance at Stanford, 2015).
  19. Rudo, Kimber (2016-07-16). "Joan Sawyer describes the "Sawyer Maxixe" to the Omaha Sunday Bee, 1914". Fascinating Rhythms. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
  20. Malnig, Julie (1995). Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance. NYU Press. pp. 21–22, 56–57. ISBN 9780814755280.
  21. "Joan Sawyer - Dancer History Archives by StreetSwing.com - Main Page". www.streetswing.com. Retrieved 2019-04-12.
  22. "Love's Law". The Pittsburgh Press. March 18, 1917. p. 52. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. Evans, Colin (2014-07-01). Valentino Affair: The Jazz Age Murder Scandal That Shocked New York Society and Gripped the World. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 64. ISBN 9781493011681.
  24. Evans, Colin (2014-07-01). Valentino Affair: The Jazz Age Murder Scandal That Shocked New York Society and Gripped the World. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 66–67. ISBN 9781493011681.
  25. "Jail Looms for Joan Sawyer's Accuser". Daily News. February 16, 1930. p. 136. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. "Valentino's Partner Sued for Alienation". The New York Times. November 27, 1929. p. 32 – via ProQuest.
  27. "Wife Accuses Story Writer". Miami News. June 17, 1944. p. 9. Retrieved April 13, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  28. "Untitled society item". Daily News. June 18, 1944. p. 250. Retrieved April 12, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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