Wed to the Silver Screen — The Enduring Career of Dancer, Ivy Day

Hollywood has its many ghost stories–an ethereal Marilyn Monroe sashaying through the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel; John Belusi’s shadow figure seen lurking about Chateau Marmont–but Ivy Day’s story may be the most unusual paranormal occurrence in moviedom lore.? And, perhaps, the most verifiable.?

Serious film buffs, keen on every nuance, focus on “bloopers” that escaped the proverbial “cutting-room floor”--an actress’s Styrofoam coffee cup visible in a scene taking place in a medieval castle, for example–continuity screw-ups,? botched dialogue. It was a sharp-eyed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences film archivist who first noticed that the name, Ivy Day, curiously, was listed in the end credits–particularly in musicals–over and over again, and was piqued by her long career. He reconstructed her resume, highlighted here:?

Duck Soup (Paramount, 1933):? Her film debut, a rollicking welcome to “Hollywoodland” plucked from an open cattle-call to perform with the Marx Brothers. Ivy was cast in the outlandish, Busby Berkeley-inspired big production number spoof about a country called Freedonia celebrating its upcoming armed conflict with neighboring enemy Sylvania:? ”To war! To war! To war we got to go. With a hidee-hidee-hidee-hidee-hidee-heidee-ho!”? Ivy is the blonde in the background, as the zany quartet waxes melodically:

???????????????????“They got guns.

????????????????? We got guns,

????????????????????All God’s chillun? got guns!

????????????????????I’m gonna walk all over the battlefield,

????????????????????Cause all God’s chillun got guns!”

Roman Scandals (Samuel Goldwyn, 1933): Ivy’s chance to work with the real Busby Berkeley, the legendary film musical choreographer, and also with the wildly popular entertainer, Eddie Cantor. She was credited as one of the “Goldwyn Girls,” alongside future stars Paulette Goddard and Lucille Ball, and was featured in several scenes with them.?

Yankee Doodle Dandy (Warner Brothers, 1942):? The biographical musical film? about George M. Cohan, dubbed, “The Man Who Owned Broadway”.? It starred Joan Leslie opposite James Cagney. Ivy was featured in the climatic title song-and-dance number–she’s the performer in the Statue of Liberty costume.

Guys and Dolls (Samuel Goldwyn, 1955):? Ivy teams up with her old production company–22 years later! A lyrical ode to gambling, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, and Frank Sinatra, the film places Ivy in two dance numbers, and she is featured in a press release photo of Brando, looking dapper in a light-blue suit and matching fedora surrounded by six beautiful “dolls”--she’s the blonde bombshell with her hand placed on his right shoulder.?

Funny Face (Paramount, 1957):? Ivy’s return to the studio where she caught her first break, 24 years before. In this film, starring Audrey Hepburn, she participated in the ensemble performance of “Bonjour, Paris!” and appeared as an extra in the Quality magazine office scenes (blonde-haired girl at the third desk with the typewriter).

Grease (Paramount, 1978): The box-office blockbuster starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.? Ivy is cast as one of the “Pink Ladies,” a group of girls who date the “T-birds.”

Chicago (Miramax, 2002):? The winner of six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, starred Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Queen Latifah.? In her 1920s “Jazz Age” costumes, Ivy’s physical appearance is remarkably similar to what she looked like in her debut Marx Brothers film, 69 years before!

Hairspray (New Line Cinema, 2007):? A John Waters romp, Ivy again rubbed dance shoes with John Travolta (woefully miscast) and is featured in the song-and-dance number, “The New Girl in Town.” Ivy is distinguishable only by her facial features–Waters, satirizing her trademark light-blonde bob, put her in an oversized, yellow bouffant wig.

La La Land (Lionsgate, 2016):? Ivy’s most recent screen credit and an appropriate title considering her career longevity, the movie won seven Golden Globe awards, including Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.? Lead Emma Stone won the Academy Award for Best Actress.? In the climax, Ivy is featured in the restaurant scene where former lovers Mia (Stone) and Sebastin (Ryan Gosling) get a relational “do-over” in a suspended reality.??

Suspended reality—talk about art imitating life. Becoming more curious by her longevity timeline, the Academy’s film archivist began researching the subject, but could find only two fleeting references regarding an Ivy Day —an unsent telegram addressed to Schenectady, New York, mayor J. Ward White simply saying, “I made it!”, dated February 19, 1933, and a partial transcript of Hedda Hopper’s radio show in 1935, when the famous gossip-monger gushed that: “one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, Tyrone Power, was seen at the Brown Derby last Sunday evening, dining with a pretty, young, leggy, short-haired blonde, who could possibly be an up-and-coming song-and-dance starlet who has only been in Tinseltown a couple years by the name of Ivy Day!”

With nothing more to go on and growing more and more vexed, the film historian contacted the Times-Union newspaper, an Albany daily serving a four-county area in western New York, as a last resort. Did they, by chance, happen to have written any human-interest pieces about a young woman from Schenectady who dreamed of dancing in the movies one day, circa, the early ‘30s?

He was shocked to learn the answer was yes — there were three articles about her, actually. The first, dated Valentine’s Day, 1933, was about the love spread by the good townsfolk of Schenectady — even though money was tight after the stock market crash, they held raffles and bake sales to help a talented local girl with a one-way bus ticket to Los ángeles and a little spending money to help tie her over until she found work dancing. The picture accompanying the article showed the plain-looking young thing, pimpled and dimpled with long, brown hair, waving from the platform, suitcase in hand, smiling wide.???

The second story, printed five days later, reported that the Greyhound she was riding in crashed and burned on an icy Route 66 just outside Flagstaff, Arizona in the pre-dawn hours of February 18. The Hollywood hopeful, toasted alive, was named Irene Davis, and, as quoted in the first article,? “was headed to California to ‘make it big in pictures.’”

The third (February 20, 1933 issue) was Irene’s obituary.?

Most compelling—most strange—the girl in the newspaper photos and the one forever fluid on celluloid for nearly ninety years look one and the same, stripped of all the glamor. It seems Irene Davis made it big in pictures, after all.??

Don’t believe the story? Watch the films listed, paying close attention to the production numbers that include a leggy, platinum blonde, young and pretty (especially considering she was 83 when cast in LA LA Land!); then verify her name when the end credits roll.? Now google: Ivy Day dancer.

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