Fanny Davenport

Fanny Davenport, around 1897

Fanny Lily Gipsy Davenport (born April 10, 1850 in London , United Kingdom , † September 26, 1898 in Duxbury , Massachusetts , United States ) was an Anglo-American stage actress .

Life

She was born as the daughter of the actor couple Edward Loomis Davenport and Fanny Elizabeth Vining Davenport in London, England. After her parents returned to the United States in 1854, she attended a public school in Boston as a child . At the age of seven she had her first appearance in the Boston Howard Athenæum theater in the role of the child Metamora .

However, she had her actual debut as an actress at the age of twelve in 1862 at the New York theater Niblo's Garden in the role of King of Spain in the play Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady . Around 1869 she became a member of Augustin Daly's theater group and had several successful appearances, including Fedora by Victorien Sardou (1883), Cleopatra (1890) and many other performances. She mostly played emotional Sardou roles, embodied in Europe by her original counterpart Sarah Bernhardt . Her last appearance was shortly before her death on March 25, 1898 in Chicago at the Grand Opera House . She died in Duxbury, Massachusetts in 1899.

family

Her first husband, Edwin B. Price, whom she married in 1879, was also an actor, but they divorced a year later. As a second husband, she married the future silent film actor Melbourne MacDowell in 1889 . Fanny Davenport was the sister of the well-known actor Harry Davenport and the aunt of his daughter, the actress Dorothy Davenport .

literature

• Benton, in Mckay and Wingate, Famous American Actors of To-Day (New York, 1896)
• Montrose J. Moses , Famous Actor-Families in America (New York, 1906)

Web links

Commons : Fanny Davenport  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Fanny Davenport in the New York Public Library Picture Gallery
• Fanny Davenport in the database of Find a Grave (English)