Mary Anderson (actress, 1859)

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Mary Anderson

Mary Antoinette Anderson , married Mary Antoinette Navarro (born July 28, 1859 in Sacramento , California , USA , † May 29, 1940 in Broadway , West Midlands , England ) was an American film and stage actress .

Life

Childhood and youth

Mary Anderson was the daughter of Charles Henry Anderson, a New Yorker educated at the University of Oxford , and his wife, Antonia Leugers, who were disinherited from their Philadelphia Catholic family after the couple fled to California .

Shortly after the birth of Mary, the couple moved to Louisville, Kentucky , where their father enrolled in the Confederate Army and took part in the American Civil War . He fell at Mobile, Alabama , when Mary Anderson was three years old.

Mary attended school at the Ursuline Convent and Catholic Girls' High School Presentation Academy in Louisville. Aside from her interest in reading Shakespeare , she was not an avid student. At the age of fourteen, encouraged by her stepfather, she was sent to New York to take ten lessons from actor George Vandenhoff , which was her only professional training.

Stage career

Mary Anderson first appeared on stage in 1875. It was a charity event at Macauley's Theater in Louisville. She played Juliet in a performance of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . The manager, Barney Macauley was so impressed that he was acting as Julia Anderson for another week, as well as Julia in The Hunchback of Sheridan Knowles , as Bianca in Henry Hart Milmans Fazio and RL Sheil Evadne .

Further engagements in St. Louis (Missouri) , New Orleans and at the John McCullough Theater in San Francisco led to a contract with John T. Ford . In 1877 she began an extensive tour of the United States as Lady Macbeth in his theater in Washington, DC, culminating in a six-week engagement in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons at the 5th Avenue Theater in New York. The reviews of her performances varied from, but she was immediately very popular with the audience and was called "our Mary".

This was followed by a twelve-year career of unbroken success with regular appearances in New York and US tours. In 1879 she went on a trip to Europe, where she met Sarah Bernhardt and Adelaide Ristori .

In 1883, after a leading role in an American production of the play Pygmalion and Galatea by WS Gilbert, she went to London to the stage of the Lyceum Theater and stayed in England for six years, where she performed with great success at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon . During her stay there, she made friends with the writer William Black .

In 1887 she appeared in London in A Winter's Tale in the double role of Perdita and Hermione (the first actress to introduce this innovation). This production saw 160 performances and was also performed in the United States. However, Anderson collapsed on stage in Washington in 1889 due to severe nervous stress. She dissolved her society and declared her retirement at the age of 30. Some commentators, particularly in the UK press, attributed this to hostile press coverage following Anderson's return to the US. Author Willa Cather went further, blaming a particularly hurtful criticism from a close friend.

Another résumé

Mary Anderson was given rest after her collapse and she traveled to England. In 1890 she married Antonio Fernando de Navarro, an American athlete and lawyer of Basque descent. They settled in Broadway, Worcestershire , where Anderson cultivated her musical interests and became a well-known hostess with a distinguished circle of musical, literary and church guests. She was cited as the model for characters in Edward Frederic Benson's Lucia novels , either for the soprano Olga Bracely or for Lucia herself, and as the inspiration for the heroine in William Black's novel The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat.

She refused encouragement to return to the theater, but appeared in a few fundraising performances in Worcester, Stratford and London during World War I. The latter included roles in Galatea , Julia and Clarice in WS Gilbert's play Comedy and Tragedy. She published two volumes of her memories, A Few Memories in 1896 and A Few More Memories in 1936 , and worked with Robert Smythe Hichens on a New York stage version of his novel The Garden of Allah in 1911 .

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography sums up her strengths as "an actress of great physical beauty" (she has been painted and photographed frequently, and her image was often featured in advertisements) and a "clear, expressive voice". The Encyclopædia Britannica adds the factor “ highly successful publicity ” (German: “very successful publicity”). The views of the critics were divided into those who saw their portrayal as powerful and moving, and those who found them too statuesque and too limited in their means of expression (due to insufficient training). However, it has always been popular with the audience.

Filmography (as Mary Navarro )

  • 1912: Babette
  • 1912: Bridge
  • 1912: The Days of Terror; or, In the Reign of Terror
  • 1912: The Night Before Christmas
  • 1913: Cinderella's slippers
  • 1914: Hearts of Oak
  • 1914: When Broadway Was a Trail
  • 1915: The Battle of Ballots
  • 1918: Mrs. Dane's Defense
  • 1918: Eve's Daughter

literature

Web links

Commons : Mary Anderson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Return of Mary Anderson. In: New York Times. October 7, 1911.
  2. ↑ Bernice Slote (Ed.): The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather's First Principles and Critical Statements. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1966. Google Books
  3. ^ Mr Benson remembered in Rye, and the world of Tilling. Cynthia & Tony Reavell, 1984.
  4. ^ The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. Contributor Adolf Carl von Noé, v.47 1953, University of Chicago Press.
  5. ^ A b Anderson, Mary, American actress. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . December 10, 2007.
  6. ^ Dictionary of American Biography. The American Council of Learned Societies, Scribner, 1959.
  7. ↑ Obituary, Mme. De Navarro. In: The Times. May 30, 1940.
  8. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
personal data
SURNAME Anderson, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Anderson, Mary Antoinette (full name); Navarro, Mary Antoinette
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film and stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento , California, USA
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1940
Place of death Broadway , West Midlands, England