Adams, Maude (11 November 1872–17 July 1953), actress, was born Maude Ewing Kiskadden in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of James Henry Kiskadden, a banker, and Asenath Ann Adams, an actress. Adams’s mother was raised a Mormon but married outside the church. Adams, the only surviving child, was introduced to an audience at nine months and took her first speaking role at the age of five. She used her mother’s maiden name from the outset of her career. She appeared frequently in stock companies with her mother, first in Salt Lake City, then in 1874 in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1875 in San Francisco, and on tours throughout the West. Reports on Adams’s schooling vary, the longest estimate being that she studied from the age of six to sixteen. According to Phyllis Robbins’s biography (informed by Adams’s mother and various other family members and corrected in manuscript by Adams), she had only intermittent schooling before spending her tenth and eleventh years at the Salt Lake City Collegiate Institute under her maternal grandmother’s protection; formal tutoring ended when her father died and Adams was summoned to San Francisco to join her mother. They toured together until 1888, when Adams received her first engagement in a resident New York company. Several years of stock with E. H. Sothern followed before Adams made a success in 1892 in ...
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Elizabeth R. Nelson
Anglin, Margaret (03 April 1876–07 January 1958), actress, was born Mary Margaret Anglin in Ottawa, Canada, the daughter of Timothy Warren Anglin, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Ellen A. McTavish. Born a Roman Catholic, she was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Montreal until she left school at fifteen to pursue a career as a concert reader. Despite her father’s disapproval, her mother supported her choice and enabled Margaret to go to New York to study elocution when she was seventeen....
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Cynthia M. Gendrich
Cowl, Jane (14 December 1884–22 June 1950), actor, producer, and writer, was born Grace Bailey in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Charles A. Bailey, a provision dealer and clerk, and Grace Avery, a singer and voice teacher. Around 1887 the family moved to Brooklyn, where Jane published verses in ...
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Joseph Leach
Cushman, Charlotte Saunders (23 July 1816–18 February 1876), actress, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elkanah Cushman, a merchant shipper, and Mary Eliza Babbit. Due to her father’s ill health and financial collapse in 1829, Charlotte was obliged to quit school at age thirteen. Between chores in her mother’s boardinghouse, however, she often accompanied her uncle, Augustus Babbit, to the Tremont Theatre. Though her puritanical parents strongly opposed such pleasures, Charlotte later referred to those evenings watching top English and American actors perform as her real, true education....
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Dee, Ruby (27 Oct. 1922–11 June 2014), actor, author, and civil rights activist, was born Ruby Anne Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, to Edward Nathaniel Wallace, who held various positions with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Gladys Hightower. When the unstable Gladys left the family, her father married Emma Amelia Benson, a former teacher....
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Marilyn Elizabeth Perry
Douglas, Helen Gahagan (25 November 1900–28 June 1980), actress and politician, was born in Boonton, New Jersey, the daughter of Walter Hamer Gahagan, a civil and contracting engineer, and Lillian Rose Mussen. In 1905 the family moved to an exclusive neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Helen’s authoritarian father made all the family decisions; her mother stressed education and the religious values of the Episcopal church. She also had a penchant for the opera and took Helen to every performance of the Metropolitan Opera. As a child Helen often staged dramatic presentations atop her father’s billiard table for siblings and friends. Although bright, she was a poor student and dreamed of being an actress, a career choice neither parent found acceptable....
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Drew, Louisa Lane (10 January 1820–31 August 1897), actress and theater manager, was born in London, England, the daughter of Thomas Frederick Lane and Eliza Trenter (or Trentner), both actors. On stage from infancy, she played numerous children’s parts in regional repertory companies throughout England not only with her parents but also with traveling stars. Her father died when Louisa was five, and two years later she and her mother emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City on 7 June 1827 after four weeks at sea. She made her American debut at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre on 26 September 1827 as the Duke of York in ...
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James Fisher
Duse, Eleonora (03 October 1858–21 April 1924), actress, was born Eleonora Giulia Amalia Duse in Vigevano, Italy, the daughter of Vincenzo Duse and Angelica Cappelletto, members of an itinerant theatrical family. She first appeared on stage at the age of four years. Her abundant gifts were obvious from the start, and when she was fourteen she played Juliet in Shakespeare’s ...
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Cynthia M. Gendrich
Elliott, Maxine (05 February 1869–05 March 1940), actress and theater manager, was born Jessica Dermot in Rockland, Maine, the daughter of Thomas Dermot, a sea captain, and Adelaide Hall, a teacher. Early on, Jessie Dermot earned a reputation as a daring, mischievous girl and a voluptuous beauty. At age fifteen she accepted an invitation to visit New York with a school friend. There she met George McDermott, whom she married, probably in 1884. After a few violent years, she barred her bedroom door and eventually left him....
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Tracy C. Davis
Fiske, Minnie Maddern (19 December 1864?–15 February 1932), actress, playwright, and director, was born Marie Augusta Davey in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Thomas Davey, an actor-manager, and Minnie Maddern, a musician and actress. As an infant she performed during the entr’actes in her parents’ company. Her dramatic debut occurred at the age of three, as the duke of York in ...
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Edna Nahshon
Kalich, Bertha (1872–18 April 1939), actress, was born Beylke Kalakh in Lemberg, Galicia, the daughter of small brush makers whose Americanized names may be Solomon Kalich and Babette Halber. Kalich started her theatrical career at the age of thirteen, when she sang in the chorus of ...
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James Ross Moore
Kemble, Fanny (27 November 1809–15 January 1893), author and actress, was born Frances Anne Kemble in London, England, the daughter of Charles Kemble, an actor and theatrical manager, and Marie-Therèse deCamp, a Swiss-French actress in Kemble’s troupe. The niece of noted actress Sarah Siddons, Kemble became a member of what theater historian Mary M. Turner called “the most distinguished actor-family England has ever produced.” As a child Kemble breakfasted with Walter Scott, sang duets with Thomas Moore, and posed for a portrait by Thomas Lawrence. Educated sporadically in English and Parisian schools, at which she acquired the reputation of a nonconformist, Kemble intended a writing career, but when financial ruin threatened her parents’ theater in Covent Garden in 1829 she studied acting for three weeks and then made a sensational debut as Juliet in ...
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Le Gallienne, Eva (11 January 1899–03 June 1991), actor, director, and translator, was born in London, England, the daughter of Julie Norregaard, a Danish journalist, and Richard Le Gallienne, an English poet. Her parents separated when she was four, and Eva was raised by her mother and schooled in Paris and London. Her feminist mother, who had been influenced by literary critic Georg Brandes and playwright Henrik Ibsen, gave her daughter an aesthetic education and taught her independence. By the time she was seven, Eva knew Paris, London, and Copenhagen and read and spoke French, English, and Danish. After seeing Sarah Bernhardt perform and then meeting her, Eva decided to dedicate her life to the theater....
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Claudia Durst Johnson
Logan, Olive (22 April 1839–27 April 1909), actress and writer, was born in Elmira, New York, the daughter of Cornelius Ambrosius Logan, an actor, and Eliza Akeley, an actress. Logan’s show business career began when, as a child, she appeared on stage with her parents. For most of her professional life in the theater she played leading and character roles on the New York stage and toured throughout the country, primarily in the company of ...
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James Ross Moore
Marbury, Elisabeth (19 June 1856–22 January 1933), agent and theatrical producer, was born in New York City, the daughter of Francis Ferdinand Marbury, a prominent admiralty attorney, and Elizabeth McCoun. She attended private schools, but her most important education came in her father’s office, where she read Blackstone’s ...
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Kathy D. Hadley
McCarthy, Mary (21 June 1912–25 October 1989), writer and critic, was born in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Roy McCarthy, a lawyer, and Therese Preston. McCarthy was the oldest of four children and the only girl. Her parents died of the flu during the epidemic of 1918. In ...
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Melissa Vickery-Bareford
McClendon, Rose (27 August 1884–12 July 1936), actress, was born Rosalie Virginia Scott in Greenville, South Carolina, the daughter of Sandy Scott and Tena Jenkins. Around 1890 the family moved to New York City, where her parents worked for a wealthy family as a coachman and a housekeeper, respectively. An avid reader, McClendon and her brother and sister were educated at Public School No. 40 in Manhattan. Although she admitted to having no inclinations for the stage at this time, as a child she participated in plays at Sunday school and later performed in and directed plays at St. Mark’s African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1904 she married Henry Pruden McClendon, a licensed chiropractor and Pullman porter for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The couple had no children and McClendon was content as a housewife for a number of years while also active in the community and at St. Mark’s....
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Joseph Boskin
Miller, Marilyn (01 September 1898–07 April 1936), dancer and actress, was born Mary Ellen Reynolds in Evansville, Indiana, the daughter of Edwin D. Reynolds, a lineman for the Cumberland Telephone Company, and Ada Thompson, who had theatrical aspirations. The Reynolds’ marriage broke up when Edwin was reassigned to another locale, and Marilyn’s mother rejected transferring the family. Marilyn was brought up by her mother and a stepfather, Oscar Caro Miller, who had sung, danced, and performed acrobatics in vaudeville and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas....
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Felicia Hardison Londré
Modjeska, Helena (12 October 1840–08 April 1909), actress, was born in Cracow, Poland, the daughter of Jozefa Misel, whose husband, Szymon Benda, a businessman, died ten years before Modjeska was born. Although Modjeska’s paternity is not certain, she was called Helena (originally Jadwiga) Opid, after the music teacher Michael Opid, who lived in the Benda home until his death (c. 1847). She was given private lessons in music from the age of four and attended a local convent school until she was fourteen. The Cracow fire of 1850 left the family destitute until they were befriended by Gustav Sinnmayer, a wealthy Austrian who came to live with them. Under his guidance, Helena spent her evenings avidly studying German and dramatic literature. In theatrical circles Sinnmayer used the name Modrzejewski; thus it was as Helena Modrzejewska that she made her theatrical debut in July 1861 at a charity event in the salt-mining town of Bochnia, where Sinnmayer and she had gone to live when it was learned that she was pregnant. They had a son, Rudolph, on 27 January 1861; it is not known whether they ever married. A daughter, Marylka, was born the following year but died at the age of three....
