Hello, Dolly Sisters
March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.
The Dolly Sisters in 1922. Photo courtesy Bridgeman Images
One hundred years ago today … identical twins the Dolly Sisters, Roscika and Yansci, were playing two B.F. Keith Vaudeville houses: The Palace on Broadway and 47th, and the Riverside at Broadway and 96th Street.
Evening World, 2 March 1922, p. 6. Newspapers.com.
The pair were born in Hungary, immigrated to the US as children, and grew up in New York City. They had returned to New York in February from a two-and-a-half year tour of Europe.
Daily News, 5 Feb., 1922, p. 5. Newspapers.com
Both had gotten divorces in 1921:
The Dolly sisters, Roszika and Yansci, who have been two and a half years abroad, returned feeling gleeful that they were freed from matrimonial tles. Roszika got her divorce in October and Yansci in December. Yansci said she was not thinking of trying the marriage game again, but Roszika said enthusiastically, as she whirled on her toes, that she would soon marry the "most wonderful boy in London," whose name she declined to tell.
(“Radio Calls on Ambulance to Meet Aquitania” New York Herald, 4 Feb. 1922, p. 6)
The Dolly Sisters in 1922. Photo courtesy The Express.
They installed themselves in a magnificent duplex apartment at 33 West 67th Street that belonged to a film magnate of international popularity who had just departed on a European trip. They had brought a portable bar from London and, with no regard for prohibition, shook their cocktail shakers and offered their guests a range of delectable concoctions.
The building, know as “The Atelier,” was built in 1903 and still stands.
– Jonathan Goldman, March 2, 2022
TAGS: celebrity, entertainment, theater, women’s history, marriage, gender, siblings, immigrants