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Olga Nethersole - English Actress (1870-1951)
Popular stage actress known for her sensuous performing style. In 1900 she and fellow theater company members were arrested by New York City police after a performance of Sapho, a play containing a sexually suggestive scene that outraged some audiences. She was charged as a "corrupter of public morals" and later acquitted in a jury trial.
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Ethel Barrymore - American Actress (1879-1959)
She came from a family of famous actors including her father, mother, and two brothers John and Lionel, as well as two uncles, one of which was another noted actor, John Drew. She initially achieved notoriety in theater, and later for numerous film roles. Present-day actress Drew Barrymore is her grand-niece.
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Lawrence Barrett - American Actor (1838-1891)
Shakespearean actor known for his technique. He was born in the same year as another noted Shakespearean actor of the era, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Booth's elder brother Edwin was also an accomplished actor and partnered with Barrett in 1886.
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John Drew - American Actor (1853-1927)
Noted stage actor who worked on tour with the great actor Maurice Barrymore in the 1870s, led his own theatre company, and achieved star status in the 1890s. His sister married Maurice Barrymore, and was the mother of actors John, Lionel, and Ethel Barrymore.
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Blanche Bates - American Actress (1873-1941)
Born in Portland, Oregon where her father managed a theater, she grew up in San Francisco learning the basics of theater as a stock actor. Within a year of her first public performance in 1894 she was starring in comedic and emotional roles. She starred in a popular 1900 production of 'Madame Butterfly', a drama which was later restyled in 1904 by Giacomo Puccini as an opera.
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Henry Irving - English Actor (1838-1905)
Most famous for his Shakespearean roles, he was also a theatrical manager and producer. First appeared in London at the Lyceum Theater, working there over the next twenty-eight years during which he also made eight tours of America. He also produced and performed in melodramatic plays, and was known for visually opulent and ornate productions. He was the first actor to be knighted.
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Robert Mantell - Scottish Actor (1854-1928)
Born in Scotland, he achieved acclaim on the American stage, first in melodramatic roles and later in Shakespearean theater. By 1905 he had his own theater company, and in 1923 portrayed Cardinal Richelieu in a silent film role.
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Julia Marlowe - American Actress (1866-1950)
She and her husband, E.H. Sothern were leading Shakespearean actors of the day in the early 1900s. Along with silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, she was one of the early leaders of the Actors Guild.
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Anna Held - American Entertainer (1865-1918)
She was born in Poland and was a minor star of the French stage before being noticed by famed showman Florenz Ziegfeld. He persuaded her to come to the United States, wherethey were married in 1897. She soon became a favorite of the New York stage, known for her charm and beauty, starring in comedy and vaudeville under Ziegfeld's management.
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Lillie Langtry - English Actress (1853-1929)
Known as The Jersey Lily, she was a popular and internationally known actress acclaimed for her great beauty. Among her many prominent admirers was the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. In 1888 she made a transcontinental tour of the U.S. including the southwestern states. A town in Texas bears her name. She continued to perform and tour internationally well into her sixties.
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Cissy Fitzgerald - English Actress (1884-1941)
Best known as a silent film actress, she also performed in theater and vaudeville, and later in early sound pictures. Her first film "Cissy Fitzgerald" in 1896 showcased her dancing and the eye wink that earned her nickname "The Girl With the Wink". In 1910 her manager sued her for breach of contract when she wanted to stay in the U.S. The lawsuit described her as having "a charm peculiar to herself . . . By her grace, beauty and artistic methods she has become a special attraction . . ." She appeared in nearly fifty films, primarily comedies, but also westerns and dramas.
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Victor Moore - American Actor (1876-1962)
He began in acting in 1893 as a stage extra and by 1910 had become a leading comic actor, performing on stage in roles in musicals and vaudeville. He made his debut in silent films in 1915, directed in his first film by Cecil B. DeMille who was then beginning his career as a famous film director. By the 1920s Moore had become best known for his portrayal of bald, bumbling, mild-mannered, whiny and nerdy characters. He did a voice-over for his own characiture in a 1945 Daffy Duck animated cartoon. His last film role was in 1955 - a bit part in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch.
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