Foy, Eddie

Foy, Eddie [né Edwin Fitzgerald] (1856–1928), comic actor. Described by Stanley Green as a “Puckish comic with pointed nose and wide V‐shaped mouth, noted for his slurred way of speaking and his acrobatic dancing,” he began his career in vaudeville in 1869 and later toured Western mining towns with a minstrel troupe before settling in Chicago, where he clowned in such musicals as The Crystal Slipper (1888), Bluebeard, Jr. (1890), Sinbad the Sailor (1891), Ali Baba (1892), and Little Robinson Crusoe (1893). In 1894 Foy toured in Off the Earth, then played in Hotel Topsy Turvey (1898), An Arabian Girl and Forty Thieves (1899), The Strollers (1901), and The Wild Rose (1902). By 1903 he was a popular star when he appeared as Sister Anne in Mr. Bluebeard, one of the high points in the show being his routine with a stubborn bustle that determined to go its own way. But the humor turned to tragedy when he was performing the show at Chicago's Iroquois Theatre at the matinee at which the worst fire in American theatre history occurred. More starring roles followed in Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!! (1904), The Earl and the Girl (1905), The Orchid (1907), Mr. Hamlet of Broadway (1908), Up and Down Broadway (1910), and Over the River (1912). Between engagements he regularly played in vaudeville and in 1910 first brought his children into the act. Eddie Foy and the Seven Little Foys rapidly became one of the most popular two‐a‐day turns, so after 1912 Foy abandoned musical comedy. After World War I, as the children grew older, the act was disbanded, and Foy toured alone. Autobiography: Clowning through Life, with Alvin F. Harlow, 1928.