Eva Le Gallienne

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Eva Le Gallienne (approx. 1923–1928)

Eva Le Gallienne (born January 11, 1899 in London , England , † June 3, 1991 in Weston , Connecticut ) was an American actress , director , theater director and producer .

Life

Eva Le Gallienne at a young age, photography by Arnold Genthe

Eva Le Gallienne was the daughter of the British poet Richard Le Gallienne and his Danish wife, the journalist Julie Norregaard. Her parents divorced in 1903 because her father was a well-known womanizer and drinker . After the divorce, she moved to Paris with her mother . After studying acting, she went to America and celebrated her first major hit on Broadway in 1920 . She had set out to establish a theater culture in the United States as she knew it from Europe . In 1926 Eva Le Gallienne founded her own theater Civic Repertory Theater in New York, in 1932 she had to close the theater due to the Great Depression. In 1946, she founded the famous American Repertory Theater (ART) touring with her then life partner Margaret Webster and Cheryl Crawford . Throughout her life she was artistically demanding and turned down more lucrative commissions than she could afford. She only took on her first film role at the age of 80. In 1986 Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Arts, the highest artistic distinction in the United States. Eva Le Gallienne retired from the stage in the 1980s due to health problems and died at her home in Weston at the age of 92.

Eva Le Gallienne made no secret of her homosexuality . Her partners included Alla Nasimowa , Mercedes de Acosta , Tallulah Bankhead , Josephine Hutchinson , Maude Adams and Katharine Cornell . The actor Basil Rathbone was her only lover. Her last life partner was the actress Marion Evensen, called Gun .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

literature

  • Helen Sheehy: Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography , 1996
  • Robert A. Schanke: Shattered Applause: The Lives of Eva Le Gallienne , 1992
  • Nancy Kuhl: Intimate Circles. American Women in the Arts. Catalog book with essays. Yale University Press , New Haven 2007 ISBN 0300134029 (including a chapter on Le Gallienne; in English)

Web links

Commons : Eva Le Gallienne  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Le Gallienne, Eva
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress, director, theater director and producer
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH June 3, 1991
Place of death Weston , Connecticut , United States