Born in
Charlestown, Boston in 1888 (though some sources mistakenly state 1892), Jack Donahue was the eldest of seven children born to
Irish immigrants Julia Buckley and Dennis Donahue. He decided to become a dancer, and left home at the age of ten to join a
medicine show. He then joined a small
repertory company, performing
eccentric dances between acts in
melodramas, before going into
vaudeville. Donahue performed
soft shoe,
tap and
sand dancing. Initially he danced with male partners, before meeting Alice Stewart, who later became his wife. As the pairing of Donahue and Stewart, they performed a mixture of dance and comedy, with Donahue as the
straight man and Stewart as a male dancer. Donahue appeared on his own in a comic role on
Broadway in
The Woman Haters in 1912, and again, after Stewart had retired from the stage, at the prestigious
Palace Theatre in New York City in 1915. After returning to New York, he died in October 1930, from heart failure, at the age of 41. A memoir,
Letters of a Hoofer to his Ma, was published posthumously. The 1949 film
Look for the Silver Lining, in which Donahue was played by
Ray Bolger, was loosely based on his life and that of Marilyn Miller. In 2010, the play
My Vaudeville Man was also based on Donahue's life. ==References==