The Belasco Twins

 

“Very rarely does a picture of two such attractive young women grace newspaper sports pages, amid those of fighters and other luminaries of the athletic world, but the Belasco Twins, Phoenix artists heard frequently over the Arizona Republic–Electrical Equipment Company station KTAR, scored a hit at a baseball banquet last night. They sang and danced and were featured entertainers at a banquet in Hotel Westward Ho, honoring more than two score players of the Roosevelt Men’s Club and Arizona Republic of Phoenix Gazette teams, officials of the Commercial League and guests. The banquet officially concluded the 1934 season.”

—Arizona Republic, August 28, 1934

 

Who were the Belasco Twins? None other than Emma Donna and Josephine Fortune, the two youngest sisters of Lucy Fortune, grandma’s stepmother. The October 26, 1907, edition of the Socorro Chieftain had a brief mention of their arrival:

 

Born, to Mr. and Mrs. E. L. Fortune of Magdalena, Monday, October 21, girl twins. At last report the children were well, but Mrs. Fortune was in very bad health.

 

Their mother, Maria Guadalupe (Baca) Fortune, recovered from the twins’ birth, and lived until August 8, 1929, when she passed away at age 61. Her eight daughters inherited her sturdy constitution—all of them lived to old age, including three into their 80s and three into their 90s. I have long been interested in the Baca step-branch of the family tree, women who Grandma knew and who made their mark on New Mexico and Arizona history. I will write posts on them all.

 

The death of Maria Fortune in 1929 (her husband Edward Lawrence Fortune died in 1918) seems to have launched four of the Fortune sisters westward. The 1930 Census shows Jennie, Elizabeth, Emma, and Josephine all single and living together at 1214 S. Norton Ave. in Los Angeles—the home still stands—where Jennie worked as a manager in a Tea Room. The twins were 23 at the time, and though their occupations were not listed on the census, they had already started their singing careers. In California they appeared on NBC Radio programs in San Diego and Los Angeles, and recorded several albums for the Brunswick label. (I have not yet found any of their recordings, but I’ll keep trying.) I have also not figured out why their stage name was the Belasco Twins, though they specialized in traditional Mexican ballads and dances, so perhaps the Belasco Twins sounded more authentic than the Fortune Twins.

 

Sometime in the early 1930s the twins moved to Phoenix, where they were regulars on Howard Pyle’s and Jack Williams’s radio shows on KTAR, another NBC affiliate. Both hosts later became Republican governors of Arizona, Pyle from 1951 to 1955 and Williams from 1967 to 1975.

 

Emma Donna Fortune was the first twin to wed, marrying John Wesley Van Atta on September 7, 1935. The ceremony took place at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Basilica in Phoenix, performed by Rev. Emmett McLaughlin, O.F.M. Though they spent a short time in Tucson in the 1940s, they lived most of their married lives in Phoenix where John worked as a clerk and/or a salesman for various local companies. They had one daughter.

 

Josephine Fortune married Quinn Lyle Cathcart in Tucson, Arizona, on October 7, 1939. They had two children. Quinn Cathcart worked as a salesman and an office manager in Phoenix, and according to her obituary, Josephine was a statistical typist for the State of Arizona for more than twenty years.

 

Emma Donna (Fortune) Van Atta died in Phoenix on March 10, 1989, at the age of 81. She was buried at Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery beside John, who passed away in 1970. Josephine died in Phoenix on June 23, 2000; she was 92. She is also buried at Greenwood Memory Lawn, beside her husband Quinn, who died in 1969.

 

Coincidentally, though on the Baca step-branch of the family tree, the Fortune twins are interred in the same cemetery as our Standiford Branch great-grandparents—Grandpa’s parents—Edward & Winnie Belle (Woodard) Standiford.