From Australia’s Jewish past

Stephanie Deste – actor, dancer, radio broadcaster and beautician – Part 1

Stephanie was born Fanny Rosine Deitz on 22 January 1901 in Liege, Belgium.

Her father was a linen merchant from a Sephardic family, and her mother was a musician from a Dutch family of goldsmiths and musicians.   Fanny’s father died when she was young, and by 1911, she, her mother, and her younger sister were living in England in the county of Sussex with her maternal aunt, Flora.  In 1914, aged thirteen, Fanny began studying acting and dance at the Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and it was not long before she was “playing child parts in Shakespearean presentations”.  By 1917, Stephanie, aged sixteen, was a member of a company of actors in London performing two plays a week, presenting melodramas such as The Lights of London and The Dangers of New York. As a fluent French speaker, she was also a member of a French company.

She went on to play leading roles in the comedy play Masks and Faces and, in 1920, she had a role in the bazaar scene of Chu Chin Chow in London, with a snake curled up on her shoulder. Stephanie went on to appear in theatrical productions in London theatres.  In September 1921, she left London and travelled to Canada to perform in John Galsworthy’s play The Skin Game.  Unfortunately, the play was not a success, and although she was to return to England, she appeared to ‘run away’, eventually making her way to Chicago, working between there and New York, often in roles portraying a sensuous exotic dancer.  She decided to remain in America because the London theatre world was still recovering from the effects of World War I.   From November to February 1923, Stephanie performed the role of “a gentlewoman” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  In an interview in 1924, she ‘’described America as the land of activity and England as a nice land in which to be lazy”.  In Chicago, she was initially unable to find a job because of her English accent, a period she later described as involving “some starvation and several misadventures”.   She eventually moved to New York “where the English accent was an asset” and found work with the New York Theatre Guild, appearing in many of their productions, including Peer Gynt.   She also found work with the Marion Wilcox Company on Long Island, in New York’s theatre district (with a cast that included John Barrymore in the title role and Tyrone Power Sr as Claudius, King of Denmark).   Stephanie was cast as Salome in Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name by the Co-Operative Play Company in Chicago.   While she was engaged with the company, she was forced to discontinue her role as Salome at The Triangle Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York, after she sprained her ankle, followed by a bout of influenza.  Following her recovery, she found work as a model before returning to New York, where she was engaged to again play Salome at The Triangle Theatre. Stephanie ended up playing the title role in Oscar Wilde’s Salome a total of 850 times.

Her next role in March 1925 was in a one-act version of The Woman of Samaria again at The Triangle Theatre, as well as performing dances at the Yiddish Art Theatre.  During this period, she found roles in motion pictures, including as a dancer in the silent film, Soul Fire.  Stephanie also had several small roles in films featuring Douglas Fairbanks.  From April to June 1925, Stephanie had a prominent role in Aloma of the South Seas, a play by LeRoy Clemens and John B Hymer, which was performed at the Lyric Theatre on 42^nd Street, New York.  In the same year, she was engaged to play the Indigenous Canadian temptress Wanda in JC Williamson’s Australian operetta production, Rose-Marie, written by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II, which was playing at the Imperial Theatre in New York and had proved to be highly successful.   One day, during a performance, Stephanie was attending a matinee, sitting in the front near the stage, when an usher tapped her on the shoulder and told her Mr Hammerstein wished to speak to her backstage. He told her that the leading lady had broken her jaw, and the actress playing the mixed-blood Indigenous Canadian girl Wanda was to move into the leading role of Rose-Marie. He offered the role of Wanda to Stephanie to start the following afternoon. Stephanie accepted; as she later described, she “learnt the lines all night in a cafeteria”, adding “I faked the dancing”.  The musical proved to be a success, running in New York until January 1926.  Towards the end of the New York season, Nevin Tait of JC Williamson’s engaged Stephanie for a three-month season of Rose-Marie in Australia.  It ran for two years, which included a record-breaking season in Sydney.  Her performance as Wanda, leading the spectacular Totem dancers, was considered a highlight of the show.  This amazing production with Stephanie also played in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.  She then went on to tour Australia and New Zealand.

Stephanie arrived back in Australia in February 1926 aboard the Sierra from San Francisco.  From her earliest weeks back in Melbourne, newspapers most often wrote of Stephanie D’Este’s name as ‘Stephanie Deste’, the name by which she became known in Australia.

Rose-Marie opened in Sydney at His Majesty’s Theatre on 29 May 1926 and was an ‘’extraordinary success’’.  A critic writing for The Sun newspaper described the musical as having “been staged on a scale of such affecting magnificence that serious criticism is disarmed”, adding that “the lavishness of the production left the audience blinking through a mist of gratitude”.  Stephanie Deste’s performance “as the half-breed Wanda” was described as “one of the successes of the night”.   She captured the attention of the audience “with her exotic looks and sensuous dancing”.   “Deste’s character performed the ‘Totem Tom-Tom’ song, which introduced the spectacular ‘Totem Pole’ ballet”. A critic for The Sunday Times described the dancers in the following terms: “So bewilderingly beautiful is it, so dazzling in its kaleidoscopic changes, so startling and breath-catching in the novelty of its evolutions, that one is left gasping”.  In mid-January 1927, it was reported that Rose-Marie had run for 270 nights, with the fifteen hundred seats being booked out each night.  An article in 1938 recounted the “excitement” caused by Rose-Marie in Sydney during “those comparatively carefree years”, when “the totem-pole ballet and Stephanie Deste’s fan-dance swept the town”. Running from late May 1926 until late February 1927 in Sydney, the musical comedy held the record for the longest run of any play in Australia.

Rose-Marie was to open in Melbourne on 26 February 1927, and, in between times, Stephanie and fellow actor Arthur Greenaway performed the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet as part of the ‘Daffodil Matinee’, a charity event for ‘Karitane’, an Australian mothercraft society, at the St. James Theatre in Elizabeth Street in Sydney.

When Rose-Marie opened in Melbourne at His Majesty’s Theatre in Exhibition Street, the result was no different to what had been achieved in Sydney.  Again, Stephanie received unbelievable press with a full theatre every night.  A critic who attended the opening night explained that apart from the two leads, the most prominent character in the musical was the “dark-skinned ‘vamp’ Wanda, “strikingly portrayed by Miss Stephanie Deste, who dances with rare abandon”. With her principal song ‘Totem Tom-Tom’, Stephanie introduced the Totem Pole Ballet, made up of fifty young women, who did “their work perfectly” and were comparable with “Ziegfeld’s far-famed Follies’’.  After a season of 26 weeks, the final performance of Rose-Marie in Melbourne was held on 20 August 1927.

To be continued next week

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Australian Dictionary of Biography; Wikipedia; National Film and Sound Archives, National Library of Australia; various newspaper articles.