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Irène Bordoni (16 January 1885 – 19 March 1953) was an Italian French singer and a Broadway and film actress.
Born in Ajaccio, Corsica, a part of France, from an Italian family. Her father was Sanveur Bordoni, a tailor and her mother Marie Lemonnier. The 19th century painter Francis Millet was a great uncle who later perished in the Titanic disaster. Bordoni had been a child actor, performing in Paris on stage and in silent films for a few years, having signed with theatrical agent André Charlot. Bordoni made her first appearance on the stage at the age of thirteen, at the Variétés, Paris. She came to the United States on 28 December 1907, in steerage, on the S. S. La Provence. Bordoni's year of birth is given in standard theatrical biographies as 1895, her real birth year is 1885. She was 22 on papers when she arrived in the United States in 1907. She went first to Reno, Nevada, where her father Antonio had settled previously.
Bordoni made her Broadway debut in a Shubert brothers production of Broadway to Paris at the Winter Garden Theatre and was a successor to Anna Held as Broadway's idea of French piquancy and Continental flavor. She was in Miss Information (1915) and successive productions of Hitchy-Koo (1917 and 1918). 1919 audiences saw Bordoni in Sleeping Partners co-starring with H. B. Warner at the Bijou. In 1920 her "captivating voice and presence" graced As You Were at the Central Theater.
Bordoni introduced George Gershwin's hit song "Do It Again" with vivacity and verve in the 1922 Broadway show The French Doll at the Lyceum. The title of the show became her soubriquet. She also starred in Little Miss Bluebeard (1923) and Naughty Cinderella (1925) by Avery Hopwood, about which the theatre critic for the New York Times said, "Of Miss Bordoni one can report only what has been reported many times. Her voice, her accent and particularly her reeling eyes are, as ever, unmistakably attractive."
Noted for her seductive brown eyes and coquettish personality, Irène Bordoni is probably best remembered from musical theatre as the star of the 1928 Cole Porter musical Paris that featured the song "Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)" which became Porter's first big success. Bordoni would record and sing many times live and on radio another Cole Porter song, "Let's Misbehave" with Irving Aaronson and His Commanders dance band. The song has been included on the soundtrack of five motion pictures including Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), Pennies from Heaven (1981) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). Porter later included Bordoni's name in the lyrics of his song You're the Top ("you're the eyes of Irène Bordoni") from the musical Anything Goes (1934).
Throughout her Broadway career, Bordoni was renowned for wearing only the most stylish of clothes, including costumes by Erte. During this time, Bordoni appeared in Lucky Strike cigarette advertisements with the quip, I smoke a Lucky to keep petite, which was said to have contributed to the tremendous increase in women's smoking in the 1920s. Bordoni wore her hair with trademark bangs, which she helped to popularize; indeed her 'look' was successfully emulated not only by her admirers but also by late 1920s budding Broadway starlet Claudette Colbert. She was stockbroker W. D. Hutton's first customer when he opened his branch office on West 57th Street.
During the 1930s, Bordoni was a guest singer on many variety programs as well as being featured on The RKO Hour. Bordoni pleased audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, as with Irving Berlin's It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow in London's West End in 1939.
She died on 19 March 1953 at Jewish Memorial Hospital in New York City and was buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York.
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