Saharet (1878-1964) The Dancer from Richmond

The five second version
She was born Paulina Clarissa Molony in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia on 23 March 1878. Of part Chinese-Australian background, she possibly had some early training in Australia that has not yet been identified. She first appeared as an exotic and audacious dancer on stage in California in May 1891 and quickly gained great fame and notoriety. Thereafter she performed in New York and other US cities, before her first very successful European tour in 1897. Photographed and painted, she became popular in France, Germany, Russia and Britain. She made at least nine films in Germany before 1914. She married three times, then retired to Battle Creek, Michigan, USA to be near her daughter. She died there on 20 July 1964.

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The internationally celebrated dancer Saharet, (or Clarice or Clarissa as she sometimes preferred) made her way from the humblest of backgrounds in Melbourne to fame and fortune in Europe and the US in the early twentieth century. As Saharet, she was painted by leading European artists of the day and appeared on countless postcards; a clever and audacious dancer, and a vibrant young woman on stage. Yet much of her life remains an enduring mystery and the few contemporary accounts of her life tend only to amplify errors made by others, such as the oft- repeated but incorrect internet claim she died in Melbourne in 1942. But when she lived at her home in the Michigan town of Battle Creek in the early 1960s, she left behind the key to her story. She had told friends her parents’ names; Benjamin “Malony” (note the variation of surname Molony) and Eveline “nee De Vere” which was at least, partly true (her mother changed her identity numerous times). Her 1964 obituary in the Battle Creek Enquirer, the local newspaper, noted the day of her Australian birth, but sadly, nothing was said of her illustrious career as one the world’s leading dancers before the Great War, when she was the toast of Europe’s theatre society.^[1]Battle Creek Enquirer July 24, 1964 via Newspapers.com

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Contemporary writers were entranced by Saharet’s innovative and audacious dancing. A journalist who saw her in London wrote: “La Champagne, the dance which created a Saharet furore in America… is a performance as intoxicating as its name suggests. It is a phenomenal affair in which dazzling movement is enhanced by flashing jewels, long red skirts and the highest of high heels.”[2]The British Australasian, 5 August 1897, P1418. Via British Library Newspaper Archive The Austrian writer Hermynia Zur Mühlen saw Saharet perform whilst still a child. In her autobiography, she recalled “I have seen a great many dancers since that time, including the entire Russian ballet, but I have never again seen such completely natural grace and charm, the expression, simultaneously, of a little wild animal and a beautifully refined woman.”[3]Hermynia Zur Mühlen (1930) The End and the Beginning. The Book of My Life. Open Book Publishers, 2010. Edited and translated by Lionel Gossman,P95

1878 in Melbourne, Australia

She was born Paulina Clarissa Molony, on 23 March 1878, to Benjamin Robert Molony, an illiterate Irish-born tailor and Elizabeth (nee Foon), a 19-year-old of part Chinese ancestry, from the gold-rush town of Ballarat. She was delivered at home in Rowena Parade, in the heart of the working class Melbourne suburb of Richmond.^[4]Births Deaths and Marriages, Victoria. Certificate 11137/1878 A short-lived sister, Martha Lily Molony, was born in 1879^[5]Births Deaths and Marriages, Victoria. Certificate 25331/1879 and Certificate 2504/1881 and another, Julia Mallicino Moloney(sic), in 1881.^[6]Births Deaths and Marriages, Victoria. Certificate Certificate 2662/1882

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Unfortunately, a critical part of Clarice’s early story in Australia remains unknown. Where she lived, who taught her to dance and particularly, what were the circumstances surrounding the obvious change in fortune that occurred between her birth in Melbourne in 1878 and her appearance as a dancer in the California in 1891. Her parents had been so poor they could not afford a memorial for her sister Martha Lily when she died in early 1881, after suffering “convulsions”.^[7]probably typhoid fever, then so prevalent in Melbourne Her mother Elizabeth (later Eveline) had lived for a time in 1881 in the heart of Melbourne’s notorious “Little Lon” district, a melting pot of the poor, newly arrived immigrants and sex workers.

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A British account from 1898 claimed she studied under US actress Minnie Palmer, who was in Melbourne in 1886-1887.^[9]Illustrated Police News, 25 June 1898, P3, Via British Library Newspaper Archive Still another account claimed she performed in the corps de ballet at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal, under the direction of English choreographer Marie Reddall. ^[10]The Australasian (Melb), 12 Nov 1898, P24. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove There could be truth in all these claims. And yet… she remained “a mystery” to Australians, because no one recalled working with her or could reveal her real name.^[11]Sunday Times (Sydney) 7 Nov, 1897, P2 WHO SAHARET IS. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove

Ike Rose, her husband from 1896-1912, visited Australia in 1913 and after years of constructing stories about her, finally seems to have given the most accurate information. He knew of Saharet’s connection to Ballarat, and said she had appeared only once on the professional stage, in the chorus line for a J C Williamson’s panto, before leaving the country aged 13, in 1891.^[12]Critic (Adelaide) 5 Feb 1913, Page 17 ENCORE and Daily Herald (Adelaide) 3 Feb 1913 P2 TWO STRANGE VISITORS Via National Library of Australia’s Trove In his final and most comprehensive account of Saharet, Rose acknowledged the role her mother played in her career, but suggested they had “drifted to America, with no particular object in view.”^[13]The Theatre (Syd), 1 May 1914, P35. Via State Library of Victoria

1891 in San Francisco

Saharet’s mother, now calling herself Eveline Campbell, apparently recently married (she enjoyed multiple relationships during her lifetime) and yet newly widowed, took her daughters Paulina Clarissa (Saharet) and Julia Malicino to San Francisco, sometime in 1891. It is probably this same Eveline Campbell who appears listed in Langley’s San Francisco Directories in 1892 and 1894, and is almost certainly the same Eveline Campbell who was interviewed as “The Australian sportswoman” in a women’s rowing competition in March 1893, ^[14]San Francisco Call, 28 March 1893, via Newspapers.com and who remarkably, invented and patented a convertible children’s carriage.(For more on Saharet’s mother and her extended family, see Note 1 below)

Saharet first appeared in a company called the “Liliputians”, performing at San Francisco’s Baldwin Theatre in May 1891, as Clarice Campbell. Over time, newspaper reports of dubious reliability appeared, recounting her early efforts to establish herself. She was only 13 in 1891 and perhaps she really did appear as a dime museum fortune teller and then a mermaid, as the Detroit Free Press was to recount.^[15]Detroit Free Press, 26 Apr 1898,P4, via Newspapers.com However, it is well documented that by early 1894 she was using the stage name Saharet and in April that year she had joined M.B. Leavitt’s “Spider and Fly” vaudeville company – touring US cities. Through 1895 she was most closely associated with another popular touring vaudeville show – “The Night Owls”.^[16]Original research thanks to Martin Goebel

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1896 – Marriage in New York

In May 1896 18-year-old Saharet married New York theatre entrepreneur Isaac Rosenstamm, usually known as Ike Rose (1865-1935).^[17]The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York)5 May 1896, P1, via Newspapers.com She disappeared for much of 1896, the reason being her pregnancy to Rose. A daughter Caroline Madelon Rose, was born in New York in November 1896. Saharet was back on stage by February 1897, appearing as part of the line up at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall in Manhattan.

Her first overseas performance was in July 1897 in London – where she was well received at the Palace Theatre. Australian newspapers had first reported her US appearance in 1896 and her performances in London inspired further interest and questions about who she was – but no answers.

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Over time, it was Rose who managed her career and passed around the most fanciful stories about her identity – for example the one that she was the daughter of a well-known pastoralist (rancher). This constant narration about her all appears to be part of a concerted effort to advance her career and later, to create interest in Rose’s other professional activities, even after the couple separated. Rose appears to have written much of the commentary that was attributed to her and this, combined with the freewheeling use of different surnames by Saharet’s mother, only added to the confusion. Rose himself was creative with his own history, acknowledging his birth in Hanover, Germany in 1865 in his first US passport application, but in later documents not only anglicising his name, but also claiming to have been born in New York.

In late 1898 Saharet returned for another season to London, and then travelled on through Europe, to what was widely reported as a rapturous reception, managed all the way by Ike Rose’s smooth publicity.^[18]Referee (Sydney) 7 Sep 1898, P10 “General Gossip.”Via National Library of Australia’s Trove^[19]Evening News (Sydney) 24 Feb 1900, P4, “STAGELAND” Via National Library of Australia’s Trove Ike Rose’s surviving US 1898 passport application indicates they intended to be in Europe for up to two years,^[20]Isaac Rosenstamm, US passport application, April 4, 1898. Via Ancestry.com and there are other passport applications surviving which reveal their extensive European travel over the first decade of the twentieth century.

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Success in Europe 1898+

Like Isadora Duncan, Saharet’s innovative style can be seen as a fore-runner in the development of the modern dance movement. This was characterised by the rejection of traditional forms of classical ballet – and the embracing of new concepts in dance to express human emotions and realism. Saharet’s stage turn, usually part of a varied program, appears to have often lasted for less than 15 minutes, and yet she seemed to speak to audiences of a new era of freedom and joyfulness.

One very early European film of Saharet has miraculously survived – a hand tinted rarity made in France by pioneering director Alice Guy-Blaché in 1905. In it, Saharet dances the Bolero for just a few minutes. She swings, gyrates and kicks her legs with supreme confidence. The film would have been shown as part of a mixed vaudeville review show, one that consisted of live acts interspersed with short films.

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Over the next ten years, through numerous return visits to many of Europe’s capitals – including cities in Russia, Rose fed the story that she was given a fortune in diamonds by European admirers, and was earning another fortune by performing. It was probably true. He also encouraged her to be photographed, and sit for numerous accomplished and emerging French and German artists, including Franz von Lenbach, Otto Propheter, Maurice Biais, Franz Von Stuck, and Leo Rauth. Saharet’s relationship with Rose had drifted by 1907 although Rose remained her manager for another five years and his influence on her career continued to be significant, until their 1912 divorce.

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German writer Eugen Wolf saw her perform in Berlin in early 1899. For Die Zukunft (The Future) he described meeting a friend who was secretly travelling to see Saharet, not wanting his wife to know where he was going. Wolf wrote “… I saw her dancing four times, on all four evenings I was in Berlin…A curious creature, the only one of its kind, this gazelle, this Kangaroo, this Australian Saharet with the big round eyes …” Wolf also interviewed the 21 year old at some length, and characteristically, she gave the same sprinkling of fact mixed with a great deal of fiction in her answers. Her mother was a “Canadian born” fortune teller and circus rider, her father a “Scottish born” chief ship’s steward. Her mother had remarried several times and Saharet had several siblings who had died. Turning from the personal, she described her makeup and dressing, her costumes, her dancing. She said that in ten years time, she hoped to return to Australia to live in a little cottage in the country.^[21]Die Zukunft (The Future).18 Feb 1899. via Biblioteka Elbląska Digital libraries federation, Poland This charming but implausible story was not picked up by the English language press.

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Not surprisingly, not everyone believed that the beautiful young dancer who could throw her leg over her head, do the splits, and wink cheekily to her audiences was an Australian, just because she said she was. At least some Australian journalists were suspicious, particularly as there appeared to be no family or friends back home to claim her. When renowned German singer Otto Reutter happily posed with one arm around her and the other around a bottle of Champagne in 1908, the sense of “foreignness” about her was only reinforced.

Surviving samples of her cursive script suggest the hand of a well-educated, native English-speaker, although as yet her schooling cannot be identified.

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Saharet’s film career

Saharet’s adventures in German silent film, a career direction cut short by the war, were somewhat typical of the forays well-known stage performers made into film in the first few decades of the twentieth century. At the time no one could guess the power narrative film would come to have a few decades later. Saharet made at least nine films in Germany between 1907 and 1913. On their release in Australia, she was generally acknowledged as an Australian.

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Professor Julie Allen of Brigham Young University has researched Saharet’s early films.^[22]Email correspondence Julie Allen, Brigham Young University, 2020 Intriguingly, most of these films were released in Australia soon after they opened in Germany, and often before they opened in the US or Britain. The films included:

• Im goldenen Käfig / (In) A Golden Cage, a three-reel Oskar Messter drama that opened at West’s Palace in Melbourne on November 23, 1912 (this might be the same film as Die Tänzerin)
• Unter der Maske / Behind the Mask (aka The Black Mask) at West’s in Melbourne on December 26, 1912, just seven weeks after its German premiere and a month before it opened in London as a Gaumont exclusive
• Hexenfeuer / Gipsy Hate, which opened at the Tivoli Picture Theatre in Bendigo, Victoria on January 27, 1913
• Fürs Vaterland / For Their Country (aka On the Altar of Patriotism), premiered at Spencer’s Theatre Royal in Perth, WA on February 26, 1913, more than a year before the same film would open in the US
• Mimosa-san / Madame Butterfly was first screened briefly at Armadale Theatre in Melbourne on February 27, 1913 before appearing in suburban and provincial theatres in Tamworth, NSW and St. Kilda, Victoria on March 1.

The German Film Portal additionally lists the following films – Auf Dem Maskenball (1910), La Malaguena (1910), La Serenada (1910), Terpsichore. Die Macht des Tanzes (1921).

Unfortunately, the author is inclined to believe all of these films are now lost. Alice Guy’s short film of Saharet appears to be the only one surviving.

1913 – Further Marriages

Citing desertion and his infidelity, Saharet began divorce proceedings against Ike Rose in Britain, in October 1912, and the divorce was finalised in 1913. Soon after, she married German-born US millionaire Fritz von Frantzius (1865-1917). Von Frantzius had long been an ardent admirer of hers, but their marriage was a disaster, as she abandoned him after only a few days for a new partner on stage and off – Jose Florido. She performed with Florido in the US and Britain for several years and clearly intended to marry him, but never did. Variety magazine’s 1914 review of their new act was positive and outlined exactly what her program looked like;

“Saharet has lost none of her charm, nor indeed her stage looks…Her dancing partner, Senor J. Florido, is a lithe, slender, virile Spanish youth… Saharet alone does her first number, programed as a minuette. It consists of pirouettes and posing of the old- style ballet school. It is a trifle disappointing… Florido follows with a solo dance, The Sabaje, which is strident and of toreador inception. It consists of some twists and a series of rapid stamping and taps, all on the heels. Third is a Spanish castanet dance by both, with Carmen and Toreador entrance, well done but on old style lines. Nothing sensational until the fourth and final number, Tango Argentine. Saharet and Florido’s is the genuine South American, sensuous thing… It is a violent, living, palpitant affair that earns for them the applause it richly deserves.”^[23]Variety Feb 1, 1914, Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library

But by November 1916, reviews of her New York performances in “The Open Sesame of Love” were less enthusiastic. Perhaps, in the midst of war, the public appetite for performance was already changing. Her final performances outside the US were at London’s Empire Theatre in March 1916.

In 1917 Saharet married again, to a third German-born New Yorker and her latest theatrical agent – Maxim P (Phideus) Lowe. Soon after, she retired from the stage for good.

Her Daughter – Carrie M Rose

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Ike and Saharet’s only child, Caroline Madelon Rose  was born in New York in November 1896. Known to all as Carrie, she accompanied her parents throughout their first European tours. In time, young Carrie experienced a life as tumultuous as her mother’s. She attended school in Berlin, before being moved to the Ursuline convent school at Tildonk in Belgium. In 1913 she was moved to the Ursuline convent school at Brentwood in Essex, England. Fluent in German, French and English, Carrie then had a go at following her mother onto the stage and performed in England.^[24]Apparently sometimes using the unbelievably mundane stage name of  Dorothy Siddons She closely resembled her mother in appearance and her choice of dancing and acting as a career seems understandable, although she only met with mixed success.^[25]As Carrie Rose she appeared in a revue at the Ambassador’s theatre in April 1917. Sporting Times, 28 April 1917, P3 via British Library Newspaper Archive

In the early 1920s, Carrie rebooted her acting career, this time as Madeline (also Madelon) La Varre. With this exotic name she appeared with greater success, in fleshy roles on Broadway and in two films. In 1927, Carrie changed course again, leaving the stage and entering a Carmelite Convent in the USA.^[26]The Times (Louisiana) 19 June 1927, P48. via Newspapers.com She finally found her calling in 1945, when she joined the US Naval Reserve, becoming one of the first women to achieve the rank of Lieutenant Commander. An amazing transformation.

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In 1947, Carrie was appointed to a senior position managing the occupational therapy clinic at Fort Custer Veteran’s Hospital at Battle Creek, Michigan, a position she held until 1950. Saharet moved to Battle Creek to be near her daughter, and for a time lived with her at Brown’s Trailer (caravan) Park.^[28]Barbara L Hill (1973) The Quiet Campaign. A History of the Veteran’s Hospital, Battle Creek. Second Edition. Courtesy Jean Ritsema and the Fort Custer Historical Society

Death in 1964

Saharet, now calling herself Clarice Saharet Lowe, was 85 years old and living alone by 1964 (she had divorced Lowe in 1930). When alert neighbours near 41 Ivanhoe Street, Battle Creek, realised they hadn’t seen her for some time, the local Police were called to break into her house. They found her body in the bath. It was 20th of July and she died alone and probably by her own hand, because sadly, daughter Carrie had also taken her own life after a catastrophic car accident, 14 years before.^[29]Battle Creek Enquirer (Michigan), 12 March, 1947, P26 and Battle Creek Enquirer (Michigan), 6 Jan 1950, P10, via Newspapers.com Her half-brother Archibald McKenzie was by then her closest living relative.

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She left a modest estate to her step-brother Archibald. Her property, some jewellery and cash, but very little evidence of her spectacular career. Her modest two story timber home has long since been demolished but similar houses still stand in Ivanhoe Street, so very far from her birthplace and her extended family.

What sense can we make of this Australian girl who really could dance so spectacularly she developed an international reputation in just a few years? Somewhere, hopefully, someone still has the photos and scrap books that she must have kept, detailing her extraordinary life, one that must have been rich in experiences.

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Note 1 – Saharet, her mother and her extended family

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This writer believes much of the mystery surrounding Saharet relates to her Ballarat Chinese ancestry, something she and her mother wanted to disassociate themselves from as quickly as they could. In the late nineteenth century, the British colonies in Australia created laws that were driven by deeply held views about concepts of race. Most would find such archaic views offensive and irrelevant today, but discriminatory laws were amongst the first passed by Australia’s national parliament after federation in 1901.

Saharet’s mother was born Elizabeth Ah Foon in Ballarat in December 1857. She lived a tumultuous life and is probably worth an entire biography of her own. At the same time, the evidence suggests that she was a resourceful and clever woman, who remained a forceful presence in Saharet’s life.

Elizabeth, later to call herself Eveline, was the oldest of a large family born in Ballarat to 19 year-old Tasmanian born Caroline Ramsay and her first husband, 24 year-old gold miner William Moy Ah Foon from Canton, China.^[30]Births Deaths and Marriages, Victoria. Certificate 1990/1858 She appears in the Ballarat Benevolent Asylum’s register as “pregnant and destitute” in September 1873^[31]Ballarat Historical Society. Ballarat Benevolent Society – Register of Inmates Aaa – Alk and reappears in the historical record in an authorised (but underage) marriage in 1874 to 30 year old James Ah Fook.^[32]Births Deaths and Marriages, Victoria. Certificate 3424/1874 Thus, she had already given birth to two children before she had Paulina Clarissa – their fates are unknown.

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Throughout her life, Elizabeth / Eveline went to great efforts to remain anonymous, consistently obscuring her identity by repeated changes of surname – Molony, Martella, Campbell, McKenzie, De Vere and claims on official documents that she was “born at sea”, or of Scottish or French-Canadian ancestry. It was remarkably easy to do this because until the First World War, people could travel internationally without formal documents.

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Saharet’s mother is almost certainly the same Eveline or Evelyn Campbell, “the Australian Sporting Lady,” who appeared in a rowing competition with a US woman in San Francisco in April 1893. In a lengthy interview with The San Francisco Call on March 28, 1893, this Eveline revealed her daughter was on the stage, and by her comments clearly had experience of living in Melbourne and had saved children from drowning in its major river, the Yarra. She had just designed a baby carriage she announced.^[33]The San Francisco Call March 28, 1893 Via Newspapers.com

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Lacking rowing experience, she lost the competition and missed the $250 prize. Intriguingly however, it seems she received $14,000 for a patented “child’s carriage” at about the same time – a significant windfall which explains her later claims to be of “independent means”.^[34]Autumn Stanley (1995) Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology. P. 331, Rutgers University Press.

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Eveline married again in the early 1900s to a Fred McKenzie and very late in life had another child, Archibald. She moved to London soon after, where she raised Archibald and Julia’s daughter Clarice, following Julia’s death from TB in 1906.

Finally, in 1919, Eveline McKenzie returned to New York. The war had brought more rigorous requirements for international travel, particularly to the USA, and this time she was unable to disguise her birth in Ballarat, Australia.

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In 1931, a 74 year old woman called Eveline McKenzie was arrested in New York for telling fortunes for money (which was then illegal). She told the judge she was not a fortune teller but a “telepathist” and had “previously proved her science to the Duke of York at Buckingham Palace” (a familiar style of bluster this writer thinks). Unimpressed, the judge sentenced her to 5 days in jail.^[35]Daily News (New York) 24 March, 1931, P629. Via Newspapers.com

Eveline McKenzie died in Brooklyn, New York on 11 March 1936.

Eveline did not maintain any connection with her extended family in Ballarat and neither did Saharet. According to Mark Lepp, a descendant of Caroline Ramsay, the family knew Elizabeth/Eveline had gone to America, but nothing more. Caroline waited patiently in Ballarat for news of her oldest daughter and grand-daughter, which never came. But it’s interesting that in far away New York, Saharet chose her grand-mother’s name – Caroline – for her only child.

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Nick Murphy,

Updated February 2022

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Special thanks to

• Professor Julie Allen – Brigham Young University, Utah USA
• Mark Lepp – Australia
• Mary Vanderfeen – Australia
• Martin Goebel – USA
• Barry Humphries – UK
• Jim Eldridge – Battle Creek, Michigan USA
• Michael McCullough – Willard Library, Battle Creek, Michigan USA
• Fort Custer Historical Society
• Lori Miller – of http://www.redbirdresearch.com
• And especially to Jean Ritsema, my collaborator in Jackson, Michigan, USA

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References

Texts

• Julie K Allen (2017) Divas down Under: the circulation of Asta Nielsen’s and Francesca Bertini’s films in Australian cinemas in the 1910s, Studies in Australasian Cinema, 11:2, 59-76.
• Alana Piper (2015) The Professionalisation and Policing of Fortune -Telling in Australia. Labour History No 108 (May 2015) 37-52 
• Wilhelm Benignus (1913) Woman’s Soul. Sonnets, Odes and Songs, p.70. Max Schmetterling, New York.(In a footnote in this book Saharet’s father is claimed to be a John Campbell.)
• Edward Ross Dickinson (2017) Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War. Cambridge University Press.
• Averil King (2013) Emil Nolde: Artist of the Elements. I.B.Taurus
• Quincy Sharpe Mills (1930) Editorials, Sketches and Stories. GP Putman’s Sons

Websites

• Wikipedia Commons – Images of Saharet, including paintings
• Leann Richards : HAT-History of Australian Theatre