Peggy Fears; Ziegfeld Follies Showgirl

Peggy Fears, 91, one of the legendary Ziegfeld Follies showgirls. After a successful career as a chorus girl on Broadway, she moved west to try Hollywood. She made her screen debut in 1935 in “Lottery Lover,” a light romantic film in which a shy sailor wins a lottery to get a date with a “Follies girl.” The breakup of her marriage to New York theater impresario A.C. Blumenthal was stormy. Miss Fears said he sent her roses but never paid her $20,000 annual alimony, hired a detective to follow her and tapped her telephone, playing her recorded conversations for his friends. The frustrated starlet took a singing engagement in a Hollywood nightclub in 1938, saying she was “down to my last string of pearls.” After her career faded, she was one of the early residents of Fire Island in New York, where she opened the Pines Yacht Club. On Wednesday in Montrose, Calif.