Mary Anderson
Born	July 28, 1859(1859-07-28) Sacramento, California
Died	May 29, 1940 (aged 80) Broadway, Worcestershire, U.K.
Other name(s)	Mary (Antoinette) Anderson Mary Anderson de Navarro
Spouse(s)	Antonio Fernando de Navarro (1890)

Mary Antoinette Anderson (aka Mary Anderson de Navarro; born July 28, 1859, Sacramento, California — died May 29, 1940, Broadway, Worcestershire U.K.) was an American stage actress.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Stage career 3 Performances 4 Later life 5 Death 6 Legacy 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links

[edit] Early life

Anderson was the daughter of Charles Henry Anderson, an Oxford-educated New Yorker, and his wife Antonia Leugers; the latter had been disowned by her Philadelphia Catholic family after the couple had eloped to California.

Shortly after Mary was born, the couple moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where her father enlisted in the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War. He was killed in action at Mobile when she was three.

Mary was educated at the Ursuline convent and the all-girl Presentation Academy in Louisville. She was an unenthusiastic pupil except for an interest in reading Shakespeare. Encouraged by her stepfather, Dr Hamilton Griffin, at 14 she was sent to New York for ten lessons with the actor George Vandenhoff, her only professional training.

[edit] Stage career

In 1875, she made her first stage appearance at a benefit performance at Macauley's Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky in the role of Shakespeare's Juliet. The manager, Barney Macauley, was sufficiently impressed to extend the booking to a week as Juliet and further roles including Julia in Sheridan Knowles The Hunchback, Bianca in Henry Hart Milman's Fazio and in R. L. Sheil's Evadne.

Further engagements at St Louis, New Orleans and John McCullough's theatre in San Francisco led to a contract with John T. Ford. Starting as Lady Macbeth in his Washington theatre in 1877, she began an extensive US tour, culminating with a six-week engagement in Edward Bulwer Lytton's The Lady of Lyons at the 5th Avenue Theatre, New York. Critical review was mixed, but she was immediately popular with the public as "Our Mary"

From this point she enjoyed a twelve-year career of unbroken success, with regular New York performances and US tours. In 1879 she went on a voyage to Europe, meeting Sarah Bernhardt and Adelaide Ristori.

In 1883, after starring in an American production of W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea, she went on the London stage at the Lyceum Theatre, remaining in England for six years to perform to much acclaim including at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon. While there, she became friends with writer William Black.

In 1887 in London she appeared in The Winter's Tale in the double role of Perdita and Hermione (the first actress to include this innovation). This production ran to 160 performances, and was taken back to the USA. In 1889, however, she collapsed on stage due to severe nervous exhaustion during a performance at Albaugh's Theatre in Washington. Disbanding her company, she announced her retirement at the age of 30. Some commentators, particularly in the British press, ascribed this turn of events to hostile press reviews on her return to the USA.^[1] The author Willa Cather went further and blamed a specifically hurtful review from a close friend.^[2]

[edit] Performances

As Parthenia in Friedrich Halm's Ingomar the Barbarian, 1883

As Perdita in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, 1887

As Hermione in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, 1887

As Galatea in W. S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea, 1883

[edit] Later life

Ordered to rest after her breakdown, Mary Anderson visited England. In 1890 she married Antonio Fernando de Navarro, an American sportsman and barrister of Basque extraction, who was a Papal Privy Chamberlain of the Sword and Cape. They settled at Court Farm, Broadway, Worcestershire, where she cultivated an interest in music and became a noted hostess with a distinguished circle of musical, literary and ecclesiastical guests. A devout Roman Catholic she had a chapel built in her attic, with stained-glass windows designed by Paul Woodroffe. She has been cited as a model for characters in the Lucia novels of E F Benson, either the operatic soprano Olga Bracely ^[3][4] or Lucia herself,^[5][6] as well as the prototype for the heroine of William Black's novel The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat.^[6]

She resisted encouragements to return to the theatre, but did a number of fund-raising performances during World War I in Worcester, Stratford and London. The latter included roles as Galatea, Juliet and Clarice in W. S. Gilbert's play Comedy and Tragedy.^[7] She published two books of her memories, the 1896 A Few Memories and the 1936 A Few More Memories, and collaborated with Robert Smythe Hichens on a 1911 New York stage adaptation of his novel The Garden of Allah.

[edit] Death

She died at her home in Broadway, Worcestershire, England, in 1940, aged 80.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography summarises her strengths as an actress as "great physical beauty" (she was frequently painted and photographed, and her image widely used in advertising) "and a clear, expressive voice". The Encyclopædia Britannica adds the factor of "highly successful publicity".^[5] Critical opinion was divided between those who considered her acting powerful and moving, and those who thought it too statuesque and limited in range due to her lack of formal training. Popular appeal was, however, uniformly positive.^[8]

[edit] Legacy

Land donated to the Franciscan monks by Anderson is now the Mt. St. Francis Monastery, and home to the Mary Anderson Center, an artist colony. A figure based on Anderson appears in the Louisville Clock.

[edit] References

Donald Roy, ‘Anderson, Mary (1859–1940)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 10 Dec 2007

[edit] Bibliography

• Winter Stage Life of Mary Anderson (1886)

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mary Anderson

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Anderson, Mary.

• Project Gutenberg etext: Mary Anderson by J. M. Farrar (1885)
• Mary Anderson photograph at the Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection at Gettysburg College
• Mary Anderson carte de visite at the Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection at Gettysburg College