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Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke, by Grant Hayter-Menzies, McFarland, 235 pages, $65

It's true, as B.C. writer Grant Hayter-Menzies says, that the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear Billie Burke's name is Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz .

Theatrical aficionados will remember that she was Florenz Ziegfeld's long-suffering wife, and movie buffs will likely recall her in Dinner at Eight , Father of the Bride and Merrily We Live , though her best-known film role – except for Glinda – is probably the flutter-brained Clara Topper in the 1930s Topper comedies, starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as dapper, amusing ghosts haunting the stuffy, much-put-upon Cosmo Topper.

But though she may have fallen into relative obscurity today, Billie Burke (1884-1970) was a stage superstar in belle époque London and New York, headlining a series of tremendous box-office successes, and a great beauty who captured the hearts of Enrico Caruso and Mark Twain, among many other men – including, of course, the notorious womanizer Flo Ziegfeld, to whom she was married from 1914 until his death in 1932.

Hayter-Menzies, previously the biographer of U.S. actor, dancer and vaudeville star Charlotte Greenwood, has done extensive research for this book, mining newspaper and magazine articles, biographies, memoirs, critical works, archives and recordings, and conducting numerous interviews with Burke's colleagues and family members.

He blends all this material nicely, writing with both authority and a light touch, giving an up-close-and-personal portrait not just of Burke, but also her family and associates, her times and the exciting theatre milieus of London and New York before the First World War, and Hollywood from the 1930s until her death in 1970.

Blanche Beatty Burke, Billie's mother, had four children with Englishman George Hodkinson before 1883, when she visited friends in Pittsburgh, Pa., and went to a party for J.A. Bailey, partner of P.T. Barnum. In less than two weeks, she eloped with and married singing circus clown Billy Burke. (No one is sure when, or even if, George Hodkinson had died, but he was not on the scene.) Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke – Billie – was born in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 7, 1884.

The Burkes toured North America and Europe, and finally settled in London, where, in 1903, young Billie began acting on the stage, very much encouraged by Blanche, a classic stage mother. Eventually, they moved to New York where, under the sponsorship of producer Charles Frohman, Billie had the leads in a number of Broadway plays and drew the attention of Flo Ziegfeld. They married in 1914 and had a daughter (Patricia) in 1916. After her marriage, Billie semi-retired, taking the occasional stage role and appearing the early wave of silent films in the United States, beginning with the title role in Peggy , in 1916.

The marriage was successful, but troubled. Flo Ziegfeld never stopped seeing other women, at one point installing a mistress in the apartment above his and Billie's. His finances were often in disarray, and Billie's considerable fortune was gradually drained away financing Flo's Broadway productions. The crash of 1929 wiped them out, and Billie began accepting more film work in order to pay off her husband's debts. By the end of her film career, her filmography included nearly 80 movies, many of them critical and box office successes, ranging from 1916 to 1960.

She starred as well in several radio comedies, including The Billie Burke Show on Saturday mornings for CBS from 1943-1946, and did some television work in the early 1950s, and produced two memoirs, co-written with Cameron Van Shippe.

By the late 1950s, sadly, her memory was failing, and she officially retired from show business. Her death in 1970, at the age of 85, was attributed to “dementia,” which today would no doubt have been diagnosed as Alzheimer's.

Billie Burke's image will remain before the public as long as people keep watching films, but Grant Hayter-Menzies has performed a valuable service, and done an excellent job, in bringing her back to life in print.

H.J. Kirchhoff is the deputy books editor for The Globe and Mail.