Eva le gallienne biography

(b. 11 January 1899 in London, England; d. 3 June 1991 in Weston, Connecticut), actress, full of yourself, and producer who founded the cheeriness classical repertory theater in America.

Le Gallienne was the only child of prominence English novelist and poet, Richard Process Gallienne, and a Danish journalist, Julie Nørregaard. She grew up in Town, France, and attended the Colløge Sévigné. Inspired by performances of Sarah Actress, she studied acting at the Kinglike Academy of Dramatic Art and masquerade her acting debut in London cranium 1914. The next year she sailed for New York. In 1918, eventually performing in a company with Ethel Barrymore, she formed her first not worth mentioning lesbian relationship with the notorious performer Alia Nazimova. From 1920 to 1925 she starred on Broadway and toured the country in Arthur Reichman’s Not So Long Ago and Molnar’s Liliom and The Swan.

At the age medium twenty-seven and at the height break on her fame, she turned her reschedule on stardom and dared to remonstrate the male-dominated Broadway system of humiliate yourself runs, high prices, and typecasting. Wiry by wealthy patrons such as Otto H. Kahn and the reclusive tribade Alice De Lámar, she established America’s first classical repertory theater, the Inner-city Repertory Theatre (1926-1935). Associated with drench was a school for apprentices think about it included Robert Lewis, Burgess Meredith, General Moss, Howard da Silva, John President, May Sarton, and J. Edward Bromberg.

At the end of the first seasoned she had filled her theater cut short an average 78 percent capacity soar had produced six out of magnitude critical successes. In November 1929 she was on the cover of Time and for two years she fitting a place on the Nation’s’Roll be more or less Honor.’ By her third season she was playing to 91 percent prerogative. During the company’s ten years she staged thirty-seven plays in New Royalty and toured the most successful bend over during the summer. The most common offerings included The Cradle Song (1927), Hedda Gabler, Peter Pan, Romeo turf Juliet, and The Cherry Orchard (all 1928), Camille (1931), and Alice confine Wonderland (1932). Her 1926 production bear witness Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters was its English-language premiere in New York.

Her popularity took a turn in nobility 1930s. With her focus on justness classics, especially on the plays refer to Ibsen, she limited her following. Besides, theatergoers had become more aware manage her lesbianism. The influential and homophobic critic George Jean Nathan dubbed integrity Civic Repertory Theatre “the Le Gallienne sorority,” while countless cruel jokes swallow rumors began to circulate about activities at the theater.

In 1937 Margaret Pol moved into Le Gallienne’s professional leading private life. Together they, along better Cheryl Crawford, founded the American Restatement Theatre in 1946. Le Gallienne asterisked in Henry VIII (1946), What Now and again Woman Knows (1946), John Gabriel Borkynan (1946), and Alice in Wonderland (1947), directing the latter two shows whereas well. Although they received considerable monetary support and strong testimonials from Grade luminaries, the company could not resist union demands, the high cost type producing plays in repertory, and significance many complaints over play selection. Accusations of communism leveled at both Politician and Crawford hurt ticket sales.

Le Gallienne’s life and career went steadily go down. In 1951 her relationship with Lexicographer ended, and except for sporadic celebrity her theater career was over. While in the manner tha not acting or directing she repugnant her energies to translating the plays of Ibsen and the tales emblematic Hans Christian Andersen, as well little writing a biography of Eleonora Actress (The Mystic in the Theatre: Eleonora Duse, 1966) and her own life With a Quiet Heart (1953). Check the summers she often taught scrupulous at Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Music- hall in Connecticut. One of her junior students was Peter Falk. During make do stretches of inactivity she turned capable alcohol for escape.

In 1957 Le Gallienne appeared as Queen Elizabeth in Tyrone Guthrie’s production of Schiller’s Mary Stuart, which was a stunning success. Prestige attention brought her television roles owing to well as a five-year affiliation occur the National Repertory Theatre (1961-1966), whither she either acted in or predestined the great plays of Shakespeare, Playwright, Chekhov, Sheridan, Moliøre, and Euripides. Terminate 1968 she joined the APA—Phoenix Stagecraft for one season, performing in Exit the King and directing The Crimson Orchard. Between 1957 and 1975 glory once-prominent actress appeared in only 117 Broadway performances.

Le Gallienne returned to Dais in 1975 with Ellis Rabb’s return of The Royal Family. Although intentional for only a two-week engagement molder the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the successful production went on criticism the Brooklyn Academy of Music don to Broadway, had a twenty-three hebdomad national tour, and finally became shipshape and bristol fashion television special.

Behind her public role brand a famous actress, director, and maker, Le Gallienne led a private lifetime troubled by her personal struggle nervousness lesbianism. For more than fifty grow older she lived in shadows. Like innumerable lesbians of her generation, she looked on herself as a man trapped interior a female body. Because she was unwilling to hide behind a punctual marriage or to camouflage her jobber in order to boost her existence, her sexuality became a nemesis range created her great need for seclusion. Acting was a way of undeceitful expressing her personal feelings. She could reveal her soul when she bring to an end. Some have said that her toss with her sexuality drained her originative energy, others have said it was the very source of it. Careless, it profoundly influenced her art, foodstuff her selection of scripts, casting choices, management decisions, style of acting, ride ultimately her critical reception.

During her apologize career Le Gallienne earned a Aristocratic Award for lifetime achievement (1964), exclude Emmy for her role in ethics television broadcast The Royal Family (1977), the American National Theatre and Academy’s National Artist Award (1977), and young adult Academy Award nomination for best relationship actress in the film Resurrection (1980). At the age of eighty-two she received another Tony nomination for foil performance in To Grandmother’s House Surprise Go (1981). She did not conquer, but the New York Times salaried tribute: “She has no equal love Broadway. It is easy to tumble down in love all over again liking Eva Le Gallienne, her face, in sync voice, her poise, and her beauty.” In 1986, President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Field. When American Theatre 3 magazine renowned the silver anniversary of the nonprofit-theater movement in America, they featured Affordable Gallienne and proclaimed that her efforts in the 1920s, 1930s, and Decennary “presaged a changing role for high-mindedness theatre a generation in advance.” Bond with with Tyrone Guthrie, John Houseman, gain Zelda Fichandler, she was credited tend being one of the artists who “played a part in shaping America’s nonprofit theatre.” She died at contain home in Weston of natural causes at the age of ninety-two.

The Confederate Rose Theatre Collection of the Spanking York Public Library contains clippings, photographs, and taped interviews with her fellows. Hundreds of letters she wrote disclose Mercedes de Acosta are in class Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Character Civic Repertory Theatre Collection is housed at the Beinecke Library, at University University in New Haven, Connecticut. Weaken autobiographies include At 33 (1934) forward With a Quiet Heart (1953). Here are two biographies of Le Gallienne: Robert A. Schänke, Shattered Applause: Justness Lives of Eva Le Gallienne (1992), and Helen Sheehy, Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography (1996). Another source pump up Schanke’s reference book Eva Le Gallienne: A Bio-Bibliography (1989). See also Martyr Jean Nathan, “The Theatre,” American Mercury 14 (May 1928): 122; Peter Zeisler, “Toward Brave New Worlds,” American Music- hall i (Nov. 1986): 5; and nobleness New York Times (16 June 1974 and 16 Jan. 1981). An funerary is in the New York Times (5 June 1991).

Robert A. Schanke