Elsie Janis

Elsie Janis (1889-1956), born Elsie Jane Bierbower to Jennie and John Bierbower in Columbus, Ohio, first entertained at the age of 2 ½ in various church activities at Dr. Washington Gladden’s First Congregational Church at the northwest corner of Broad and Third. Janis’s career in the performing arts was long and varied – from her childhood when she began doing imitations of celebrities in vaudeville, to her starring roles on the stages of New York, London, and Paris, to the battlefield where she entertained troops in France and England during World War I, to Hollywood where she acted, wrote for film, and supervised productions. From her teen years on, Janis wrote songs for herself and for others as well as a number of books, magazine articles, and poems. Janis’s mother Jennie was, until her death in 1930, Elsie’s constant companion and manager, and was known as one of show business’s most infamous stage mothers.While her career took her away from Columbus, Janis always had a fondness for Ohio and Columbus. The El-Jan Shack, the house that she herself owned was on the northeast corner of 18th Avenue and High Street across from The Ohio State University campus and, at that time in the early 1920s, the athletic field. She signed her first contract as an adult with the great producer Charles Dillingham on the porch of the El-Jan Shack. Janis came back many summers to rest from her hectic professional stage and travel schedules, and to visit with relatives. Janis was always proud to be an Ohioan. As she often shouted to the troops she entertained in France in 1918, “Do I come from Ohio? By Damn Yes!”