Documented (IBDB cast credit)
Public Broadway cast databases name Elfi Duka in the Dance Ensemble of Yours Is My Heart at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre on Broadway. Dates: 5 September 1946 to 5 October 1946. The Internet Broadway Database lists her as Performer, Dance Ensemble, Original. That is a cast credit in an official Broadway production record. It is not a 1946 newspaper page opened here. It is still the strongest public naming we hold for this Tauber show stitch.
Corroborated (BroadwayWorld; Spectra.theater)
BroadwayWorld’s person page for Elfi Duka repeats the same credit: Dance Ensemble, Yours Is My Heart, Broadway, 1946, at the Shubert Theatre, 225 West 44th Street, New York, start date 5 September 1946. Spectra.theater lists Elfi Duka among named Dance Ensemble members at the same house. Playbill’s production vault confirms the Sam S. Shubert Theatre run, those dates, Richard Tauber, thirty-six performances. The truncated People list on that fetch did not show dancers. A Playbill person URL for Elfi Duka returned 404. Venue and dates stand Documented. Her dancer name is Documented on IBDB and Corroborated on the aggregators, not yet on a Playbill person page in house files.
Burton plate and body (Documented in-house; EAD basis)
Jerry Burton’s printed biography places the fall 1946 Tauber engagement at Chicago’s Shubert Theater and gives the stage name Elfi Dukar. A side plate in that chapter already says “For the Sam S. Shubert Theatre,” while caption text also says she starred in the Chicago production at the Shubert as Elfi Dukar. That is internal tension Documented inside Burton himself. Sam S. Shubert is the New York house name. The body says Chicago. This page prefers the public cast credit: New York Broadway ensemble. It does not invent a Chicago tryout. Chicago geography stays OPEN until an original Playbill image, Equity list, or Elfi quote locks it.
Name map: Duka and Dukar (Plausible, not locked)
Burton and the Elfi interview notes spell Dukar. Public cast lists spell Duka. One letter. Treat the match as Plausible given the unique given name, the exact show, the year, and a Shubert family theatre. Do not lock a legal-name merge until a Playbill image, Equity card, or Elfi quote confirms the stage spelling. Do not write her as a star of the production from the Dance Ensemble credit alone. Ensemble is ensemble.
What this page does not claim
Contemporaneous TIME and New Yorker coverage of the show names Tauber and the Shubert. It does not name the ensemble. Internet Archive full-text search for Elfi Duka and Elfi Dukar returned zero hits on the research pass. No public hit found for a Chicago Shubert engagement of this production. This page does not invent Copacabana Miami or Detroit Latin Quarter into these paragraphs. Those venues sit in other Burton stitches and stay OPEN as primary. They are not this note’s job.
OPEN
OPEN: Chicago versus New York Shubert. Write New York Broadway Dance Ensemble until primary paper says otherwise. OPEN: Duka versus Dukar stage spelling, and whether the IBDB person is our Elfi. High plausibility. Not locked. OPEN: an opening-night Playbill scan or Equity list that prints her name in the dancer block. OPEN: any Off-Broadway roles Burton places after the Tauber show. Those roles stay unnamed here. The page is thick enough for a fall 1946 Broadway ensemble credit under Elfi Duka. It is not thick enough for a Chicago tryout invented to smooth Burton’s body text.
The photograph on this page is a period photograph of Elfi Arkus-Duntov. It is labelled period. It is not a Shubert 1946 still. It is not a cartoon. The Folies Bergère danseuse note holds the earlier Paris dance stitch. The Billancourt wedding note holds the 1939 marriage acte. The First Lady title note holds the museum and biographer tradition. The Malcolm Konner note and the Sea Witch then Sea Elf note hold later years. The Zora note holds the engineering lane.
Margot Dorée is writing the forthcoming novel in that lane. North Star Publishing Group will publish it. Working title First Lady of Corvette. Expected September 2026. It is independent. It is not General Motors. It is not in the museum shop. It will not invent a Chicago tryout, a Copacabana Miami scene, or dialogue from a cast database.
While that book is still on the way, the live book in the same house is The Woman on the Bonnet: another woman, another machine, another record that will not be decorated.
Sources: IBDB production yours-is-my-heart-1453 + person elfi-duka-99724 (Documented cast credit: Elfi Duka, Dance Ensemble Original, Yours Is My Heart, Shubert Theatre Broadway, 5 Sep to 5 Oct 1946). BroadwayWorld people/Elfi-Duka; Spectra.theater cast (Corroborated). Playbill production vault: Sam S. Shubert NYC, those dates, Tauber, 36 performances; dancer name not on truncated People list; person page 404. TIME 16 Sep 1946 and New Yorker Gibbs review: show context only, no ensemble names. IA “Elfi Duka”/“Elfi Dukar”: 0 hits. No Chicago Shubert hit for this production. Burton 2002 ~p.82 body (Chicago Shubert; Elfi Dukar); ~p.83 side plate (“For the Sam S. Shubert Theatre” + Chicago caption). Dukar≈Duka Plausible, not locked. No invented Chicago tryout, Copacabana Miami, or Detroit Latin Quarter.