Past: Doris Blumenfeld Van Cleave

This week our blast-from-the-past is not quite a circus person in the traditional sense, but rather she was what one would call a Show Girl. Descended from the mighty dynasty of the Blumenfelds, one of Germany's most prominent Jewish circus families, Doris made her career on stages nationwide, including Broadway musicals and Ziegfeld shows, rather than in sawdusted circus rings. It is because of her impressive dynasty that I wanted to include her in this blog: her family's circus roots, their generational devotion to entertainment, all of that and more reflected in Doris and the life she led on stage in New York City of the 1920's and 1930's. Plus, consider this a teaser for a more in-depth post, yet to come, about the Blumenfeld Family at large.

Doris Blumenfeld was born on 13 December 1910 in London, England to Baptist and Gertrude Blumenfeld. Baptist was a German vaudeville performer, Gertrude was the daughter of a jeweller / diamond merchant who later performed with her husband in his family troupe. For her first four years, Doris and her family lived in London, England.

Doris came from a long line of circus performers — her father, Baptist Blumenfeld, was from one of the leading continental European circus families. Most of her father’s family were performers: one great-grandfather founded the Circus Blumenfeld, another the Circus Blennow. Her paternal grandparents were both circus trick riders. Her father performed as a trick rider and then trapeze artist with his brothers; when they married, their wives joined the show.
Although Doris’s father Baptist was German, he had moved to England and there met and married her mother, Alice Gertrude Daniels Blumenfeld.
Later Baptist and his brothers / co-performers Paul and William immigrated to the United States. One year later, when she was four years old, Doris, her mother, aunt Beatrice, and cousin Virginia joined them, leaving from Liverpool on the Orduna and arriving at Ellis Island, New York on 16 August 1915. Doris’s father and his brothers were living in Chicago at the time.

Doris joined her parents, uncles, and aunts as they travelled the country performing as trapeze artists in an act called “the [six, four, etc.] Salores.” The families were based in New York City, and they settled down there when Doris and her cousins Virginia and Alexander were school-age.

The Five Salores. Doris’s mother is top left, and her father is top-most of the men

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According to the 1920 census, Doris was living in Manhattan with her parents, who were running a boarding house, in order for Doris to attend school. Around 1925, when Doris was 15, she began competing in beauty contests. According to an article in the Brooklyn Sunday Star, she won the title of “Miss Flatbush” that year.

​These beauty contests brought her to the attention of Broadway producers, and she went on to perform as a dancer in the chorus of a number of Broadway shows beginning in 1927. 
Between 1927 and 1934 she has performed in the following New York productions: Padlocks of 1927 (Shubert theater, 1927), The Nightingale (Jolson’s 59th St., 1927), Artists and Models (Winter Garden, 1927-28), The Greenwich Village Follies (Winter Garden, 1928), Whoopee (New Amsterdam, 1928-29), Earl Carroll’s Sketch Book (Garrick, 1929?), and Great Day (Cosmopolitan, 1929).

Doris (far left) with other chorus members of “The Nightingale,” 1927.

​She also toured with the following productions: Rosalie (Erlanger theater, Philadelphia, 1928) and (Illinois, Chicago, 1929); Laugh Parade (Nixon, Pittsburgh, 1932); Vanities (RKO Keith’s Theater, Syracuse, NY, 1933), (Earle, Philadelphia, 1934), and Ziegfeld Follies (Grand Opera House, Chicago, 1934).
​According to Doris’s daughter, her mother Gertrude used to travel with her to out-of-town performances.
Doris used a number of stage names, including Doris May, Eileen May, Doris Dellaire, Doris Dellairs, Doris Delaris, Doris Delairs, Doris De Lairs, Doris deLairs, Dolores Delairs, and Dolores Deslaires.

In 1929 Doris married her first husband, Herbert Tetens. The couple had a son, Ronald. Doris continued to perform, so Ron lived with her parents. The marriage didn’t last long, and they divorced in 1934 while Doris was performing in Chicago.
Doris went on marrying (Nathan) Van Cleave, a radio (and later film and television) conductor and orchestrator, in 1933. She retired from the stage soon thereafter. She and Van had two children (Richard and Alyce), and Van adopted Ron.
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In 1945 the family moved to Los Angeles so that Van could pursue his musical career in films and television shows. There, Doris raised her family and pursued her interests in photography and vintage cars.
Van died in 1970, in Los Angeles. Doris died in 2000, in Newport Beach, Calif. She is survived by three children and six grandchildren.

Biography:
Circus Blennow and Blumenfeld Geneology
The Girls In The Chorus