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 ...
Article
Margena A. Christian
Davis, Ossie (18 Dec. 1917–4 Feb. 2005), actor, playwright, author, director, civil rights activist, and humanitarian, was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Georgia. He was the oldest of five siblings. His father, Kince Charles Davis, was a self-taught railway and construction engineer. His mother, Laura Cooper, was a homemaker. She called him “RC” for short, but others misconstrued her pronunciation as “Ossie.” His family was impoverished, and although both parents were illiterate, they stressed the importance of education through oral tradition with storytelling....
Article
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....
Article
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....
Article
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....
Article
Christopher Caines
Lee, Canada (03 May 1907–09 May 1952), actor, theater producer, bandleader, and boxer, was born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegata in New York City, the son of James Cornelius Canegata, a clerk, and Lydia Whaley. Lee’s father came from a wealthy and politically prominent family in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, whose ancestors had adopted a Danish surname. Lee’s grandfather owned a fleet of merchant ships; the family also raced horses. James Canegata shipped out as a cabin boy at eighteen, settled in Manhattan, married, and worked for National Fuel and Gas for thirty-one years. Lee grew up in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan’s West Sixties and attended P.S. 5 in Harlem. An indifferent student, he devoted more energy to fisticuffs than to schoolwork. Lee studied violin from age seven with composer J. Rosamund Johnson, and at age eleven he was favorably reviewed at a student concert in Aeolian Hall; his parents hoped he would become a concert violinist....
Article
Lunt, Alfred (12 August 1892–03 August 1977), and Lynn Fontanne (06 December 1887–30 July 1983), actors and producers., Lillie Louise Fontanne, known from childhood as Lynn, was born in Woodford, Essex, England, the daughter of Jules Pierre Antoine Fontanne, a printer, and Frances Ellen Thornley Barnett. Lynn demonstrated theatrical aptitude at an early age and was recommended by a family friend to Ellen Terry, England’s foremost actress, who occasionally gave lessons to talented aspirants. Partly as a result of Terry’s training, Fontanne was given secondary roles in plays in London and on tour throughout England from 1905 to 1916, at which time she emigrated to the United States, accepting an offer to perform in a company headed by ...
Article
Robert L. Gale
Meredith, Burgess (16 November 1907–09 September 1997), actor and director, was born Oliver Burgess Meredith in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of William George Meredith, a physician, and Ida Beth Burgess Meredith, a Methodist minister's daughter. He called his childhood “grim and incoherent” because his father was a quarrelsome alcoholic. Meredith was a boy soprano in the choir of New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine and a four-year scholarship student in its school. He played the lead in its production of J. M. Barrie's ...
Article
William Stephenson
Skinner, Otis (28 June 1858–04 January 1942), actor-manager, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Augustus Skinner, a Universalist minister, and Cornelia Bartholomew. His adolescent years were spent in Hartford, Connecticut, where he did poorly in school and left at age sixteen to become a warehouse clerk and editor of a free weekly paper. The defining event in his early life was a visit to a New York City theater to see ...
