Portrait of Billie Burke

Birthday profile

Billie Burke

Billie Burke, American actress and singer (died 1970)

Born
August 7, 1884
Died
May 14, 1970
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1884

About Billie Burke

Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress, who was famous on Broadway and radio, and in silent and sound films. She is best known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film musical The Wizard of Oz (1939). Her girlish charm rivaled her acting ability, and as she dressed to the hilt in fashionable gowns, furs and jewelry, her clothes sense also won her the devotion of female audiences. In 1936, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer filmed a biopic of Florenz Ziegfeld (The Great Ziegfeld), a film that won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actress (Luise Rainer as Ziegfeld's common-law wife, Anna Held).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Billie Burke was born

Billie Burke was born in 1884. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineGrover Cleveland elected president
  • Technology milestoneFirst roller coaster opens at Coney Island
  • Notable inventionRoller coaster
  • World population~1.44B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderChester A. Arthur
  • U.S. population53.7M

1884 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Billie Burke's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18842026
Population53.7M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, MusicBrainz, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.