Roads of Destiny:
A Few More Roadshow Engagements

Interestingly, while early film audiences embraced someone like Douglas Fairbanks for the natural and appealing qualities he brought to his characters, Theodosia Goodman rose to fame for the opposite reasons. Goodman, better known onscreen as Theda Bara, was one of Hollywood’s first and most notorious pre-packaged stars, sprung on audiences who were not always wise to the ways of the modern pressman. While the public eventually caught on to the ruse, her “vamp” screen character – whose smoldering sexuality and diabolical cunning enticed men to their ruin – turned the film industry on its ear and generated public furor over her onscreen behavior. Yet she nonetheless became one of Hollywood’s great early figures: much like Rudolph Valentino, she’s a star whose screen persona has proved more enduring than her motion pictures.

Born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio, in July 1885, Theda Bara had a relatively simple and uneventful childhood. In high school, she showed talent not only as an actress but as a writer and even attended the University of Cincinnati for two years. She dropped out, however, to pursue her acting dreams, first playing in local shows before heading for New York in hopes of catching on with a large Broadway show.

Theodosia Goodman achieved that goal by 1908, obtaining a small role at the Garden Theatre in a version of Franz Molnar’s play The Devil, with Edwin Stevens in the title role. (A competing version in New York – the U.S. rights to Molar’s play were in dispute at the time – found George Arliss playing “his Satanic Majesty.”) The role was small, and Theodosia de Coppet (which she selected as her stage name) apparently did not join one of the companies organized to tour with the show, or at least did not appear with the troupe that played Seattle in December 1908.^[1]

After The Devil, Theda Bara’s stage career again becomes fuzzy for a period before she is known to have played in a musical comedy called The Quaker Girl, the original version of which served as a vehicle for actor DeWolf Hopper. Minus Hopper’s talents, at least two formal touring companies were sent out onto the road, with The Quaker Girl coming to Seattle late in 1912. The play centered on Prudence, a girl from the English countryside who is shunned by her own people and (quite improbably) accompanies a princess to France, where she becomes the toast of Parisian society after being discovered as a dress model. Bara – identified as Theodosia “de Cappet” in the Metropolitan Theatre program – supported Natalie Alt and Victor Morley in the small part of Diane, a young French model.

Arriving at the tail end of December, the Metropolitan billed the weeklong engagement as “the quality musical play that radiates sunshine, beauty and laughter.”^[2] The show was large, boasting 20 original songs, including “Come to the Ball,” its most popular tune, and claimed to have a total entourage of over 100 people. (One reviewer, however, complained that for all its hype the show contained less than 40 actors.) Scenery was hauled from stop to stop in three rail cars. Additionally, the first two rows of seats at the Metropolitan Theatre had to be removed to accommodate an augmented orchestra.

Scheduled to open Sunday, December 29, the Quaker Girl company inadvertently found themselves delayed en route to Seattle. Severe rains caused a washout along the Northern Pacific Railroad line near Kalama, some 40 miles north of Portland, which kept the troupe from arriving in the city until the morning of the 30^th. The Metropolitan was not the only entertainment house in Seattle affected by the weather – vaudeville acts heading west from Spokane to Seattle’s Orpheum, Empress, and Pantages theatres were slowed by heavy snows in the Cascade Mountains and arrived only hours before those theatres were scheduled to open. Additionally, troupes farther ahead on the circuit, looking to make the jump from Tacoma to Portland, were slowed by the same washout that kept the Quaker Girl company from coming northward.^[3] J. Willis Sayre, reporting on conditions in his theatrical column for the Daily Times, speculated that many of the Portland matinees for December 29, at the very least, would have to be canceled as a result of the delays.

Ironically, the crew and scenery for The Quaker Girl must have been sent ahead of the actors themselves, for the Metropolitan was completely set up for the scheduled opening night performance. In the belief, apparently, that the troupe could arrive before the curtain rose, a full audience gathered before management finally had to cancel the show. The Metropolitan offered refunds and seat exchanges to disappointed patrons.

The following evening, however, the troupe – which must have been exhausted after their extended journey – managed to give a pleasing performance. “The Quaker Girl,” noted the Seattle Star, “which opened at the Metropolitan Monday night for a week’s engagement, is decidedly satisfying and delightful. It never attempts to break into the comic or light opera field at any stage. It is a musical comedy, pure and simple…Starting rather tamely, with an unattractive setting and little interest, it works up to a beautiful and pleasing climax in the last act.”^[4] Jack Bechdolt, writing for the Post-Intelligencer, was also satisfied with the show. “The Quaker Girl is pretty throughout both as to music and setting. The music is sweet and the strains haunt one. To judge from the enthusiasm with which several of the song hits were received last night they will continue to haunt some for some time to come…[The play] is all that it pretends to be – tuneful, pleasing music and good clean comedy, with plenty of pretty girls and dresses thrown in.”^[5]

J. Willis Sayre wasn’t exactly enthralled with the production, but still felt the show was a good one. He was particularly taken with the work of Victor Morley, cast as Tony, who falls hopelessly in love with the title character.

Not a bit Quakerish, not a bit Quakerish.
          If any folks are staying away from The Quaker Girl at The Metropolitan because its name suggests sackcloth and ashes, they are making a mistake. Maybe that name has cost the piece a lot of money, though its long runs in London and New York wouldn’t indicate it. It could just as aptly be called The Belle of Paris, for it is in that town that most of the action is laid. The piece is mostly clean and wholesome; there is no catering to the vulgar and the low brow [sic] elements of the populace; but aside from that it is bright and tuneful. What it decidedly lacks is sensation either in the comedy or music, or the “punch” that is found in successful American musical plays. In this respect it is typically English.^[6]

Sayre found but one major flaw in The Quaker Girl, which Jack Bechdolt also observed, when he pointed out that the play was longer than the average touring production visiting Seattle. “The show is too long,” Sayre wrote. “Some relentless stage director ought to take fifteen minutes out if it at the points of least resistance.”

The notations about the clean aspects of The Quaker Girl are interesting – each of Seattle’s dailies made comments to this effect, together with almost uniform praise for the catchy musical portions. The indication, perhaps, was that although roadshow presentations were beginning to dwindle in numbers by late 1912, those that played Seattle may have contained a certain amount of questionable material. J. Willis Sayre’s comments, in particular, are noteworthy – long an opponent of censorship efforts, he was also a vocal critic of vulgarity on both stage and screen. Throughout his tenure as a dramatic critic, these were concerns he never fully reconciled.

But while The Quaker Girl managed to garner positive, if only lukewarm praise during its Seattle engagement, Theodosia de Coppet went unnoticed in print reviews for the engagement. According to Eve Golden’s Vamp, one of few biographies on Theda Bara, the Morley troupe was the second-string touring company, and when the actress – who originally signed for $25 per week – was informed that her salary would be reduced to $18, she promptly left the show.^[7] The salary cut, however, may have been warranted. One of the few comments about Bara’s stage talent from this period comes from Hedda Hopper, future Hollywood gossip maven. Eventually to wed DeWolf Hopper, star of the original Broadway version of The Quaker Girl, Hopper met the future Theda Bara while performing in the show herself. “Theodosia played a Frenchwoman,” she noted in her book From Under My Hat, “with an accent that wouldn’t fool a five-year-old.”^[8] For the Seattle engagement of The Quaker Girl, Hedda Hopper, performing under her given name of Elda Furry, played the role of Mathilde, “an exiled Bonapartist princess.” She earned plaudits from both Jack Bechdolt at the Post-Intelligencer and J. Willis Sayre at the Daily Times for her performance.

While theatre work never garnered Theda Bara much success, she got her big break in 1915 when she was tapped by director Frank Powell to star as a temptress in the lurid thriller A Fool There Was (Fox, 1915), a screen version of Porter Emerson Brown’s stage play. The play was based in part on a poem that Rudyard Kipling had penned for the exhibition of his cousin’s graphic painting The Vampire (1897), which shocked art patrons upon its unveiling. The portrait depicted a rather seductive woman hovering over the prostrate body of her lover, yet the interpretation was deceiving – either the man was dead, drained of his blood, as the title suggested, or he was sexually drained, which the painting may also have implied. Brown’s play centered on a married man who is led to ruin through the sinister guile of a temptress – or vamp, as Bara later became known.

To help promote the film, studio head William Fox hired two press agents, Johnny Goldfrap and Al Selig, with instructions to invent an off-screen life for the movie’s star that mirrored the exotic character she portrayed in A Fool There Was. That they did, and all too well. Reaching back into family tree, Theodosia Goodman became Theda Bara – an anagram for “Arab death,” it was alleged – and her background as a simple Jewish girl from Cincinnati was all but obliterated. Instead, she became the daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor, born at an oasis in the Sahara Desert and educated in Paris; it was there, too, that Bara was said to have first performed as an actress.

Film audiences – not all of them very sophisticated at the time – gobbled up these fabulous tales, and after A Fool There Was proved a sensational hit for Fox, similar vamp roles were devised for Bara, together with even more elaborate publicity schemes. Yet after only a couple of releases, the actress became a prisoner of her own popularity. Though Bara lived quietly with her family in New York, the Fox Studios purchased an exotic penthouse with eclectic furnishings where she conducted press interviews, and she was somewhat restricted from appearing in public without the “appropriate” settings being prepared in advance. The private Theda Bara was a relatively simple and modest person, but to the public (thanks to Fox publicity) she was evil incarnate – reporters, it was said, were afraid to interview her alone, such was her power to lead virtuous men to ruin.

The effort to build her public image became more absurd with each successive film release. Bara liked to recall the Goldfrap and Selig idea of writing her so-called autobiography, which was then syndicated in newspapers across the country. These pieces, which found widespread readership, helped promulgate further distortions of Theda Bara’s life. “Not only didn’t Theda write the articles,” biographer Eve Golden noted, “she didn’t even proofread most of them before they went to press. Each morning, she and [her sister] Lori would sit over breakfast of coffee and sausages and ‘roar with laughter’ at each new chapter in her autobiography. ‘I read so many lies about myself that I hardly know what is the truth anymore,’” Bara is alleged to have remarked.^[9]

The Seattle Star, while not one of the papers running Bara’s so-called autobiography, did run a similar collection of articles in the spring of 1916 – special releases which aimed, the Star noted, at “correcting popular impressions of her vampiring work in the movies.”^[10] Though she had a certain appeal with motion picture audiences, Theda Bara had, at the same time, also become a target for civic and religious groups appalled by the scandalous morals of her screen characters.

The first article of the series, in fact (all of which were attributed to Bara’s pen), was deemed front-page news by the Star. She attempted in her own words to explain the destructive characters she portrayed in the movies. “Since my vogue upon the screen has been denounced in some sections, by those who are not broad-minded or far-sighted enough to realize I am benefiting humanity by appearing in pictures in which righteousness triumphs and vice is annihilated, people have been coining appellations to fit me.”^[11] Particularly disturbing to the actress was the public’s perception that her screen and private personas were one and the same. Her films generated piles of fan mail, but also piles of hate mail, written by a segment of the public outraged by her shameful “vampiring.” Reaction to her films was such that impacted Bara’s private life.

          [People who recognize me] do not mean to be rude and I think that if they knew they are making it difficult for me to take my recreation at all, they would do all in their power to remedy matters. That is why I am writing of it. To let them know just how I feel about it.
          Of course it is pleasant to be really known – and I do not resent it, but what distresses me is that after I am recognized I am not allowed to go on my way, undisturbed. I am followed, sometimes by crowds of little children, who pick me to pieces, audibly, and compare my screen-self and my real-self with alarming frankness.
          Then, again, little groups of whispering grown-ups dog my footsteps. And that is worse. Because I cannot hear what they are saying – and I imagine all sorts of discomforting things.^[12]

Despite these earnest pleas, however, the articles were clearly another facet of Fox’s promotion efforts. Printed daily (barring Sundays – the Star did not issue a Sunday edition), they ran for almost five weeks, missing in only a handful of editions. Yet what started out as, ostensibly, Theda Bara’s side of the story ended with telling readers such pointless facts as her belief in tarot card readings (April 12^th), how she would spend her ideal day away from work (April 14^th), about her favorite food, clothes, and sports (April 18^th), sharing favorable fan mail (April 28^th and May 17^th), discussing why convicts seem to have had a special fascination for her screen character (May 1^st), the colors she selected for her bedroom (May 12^th), and how she enjoyed window shopping (May 19^th). That the pieces were part of Selig and Goldfrap’s publicity schemes was also demonstrated by Bara’s references to her childhood in Paris, and her mention of several personal items of mystical importance, including a 2,000-year-old emerald ring given to her by a blind sheik who claimed to be over 110 years old.

Despite the fakery involved, Theda Bara proved a gold mine for William Fox, so much so that she was discouraged from attempting projects outside the profitable vamp formula. Occasionally she managed to play parts a bit more meaty – 1915’s Carmen, for instance, which dueled with the Geraldine Farrar version that Cecil B. DeMille made for Paramount, or the lavish production of Cleopatra (1917). Though few were made, Theda Bara’s non-vamp films failed to produce comparable box-office results, and her opportunities to escape Hollywood type-casting became increasingly difficult.

Audiences eventually tired of Bara’s vamp character and the many actresses at other studios who were enlisted to mimic her success. After World War I Theda Bara became a near parody of herself, with filmgoers no longer willing to accept the fantastic conjurings of Fox press agents, not to mention the repetitive nature of her releases. Although she continued to play her part offscreen, even Bara took to lampooning herself a bit. After telling one reporter for Photoplay that she communicated via crystal ball with the spirit of her dead dog, to which the reporter, after gazing into the orb himself, claimed that he couldn’t detect anything, she simply glared at the young man, visibly annoyed. The harder he concentrated, she said firmly, the more interesting his article was bound to be.^[13]

Theda Bara eventually married English director Charles Brabin in the early 1920s and settled into a familiar Hollywood social lifestyle, far away from the cameras that catapulted her to fame. Although she returned to the stage twice after her rise in motion pictures, once in 1919’s poorly received The Blue Flame, and again in an informal Beverly Hills play in the 1930s, she pretty much retreated from acting by the mid-1920s.

Theda Bara died of cancer in 1955. That same year saw the Broadway debut of The Vamp, a musical based loosely on her career, with Carol Channing in the title role. The show, unfortunately, proved a miserable failure.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2026

Notes:
[1] Program, Moore Theatre (5 December 1908), J. Willis Sayre Collection. “De Coppet” was the maiden name of Bara’s mother.
[2] Program, Metropolitan Theatre (23 December 1912), J. Willis Sayre Collection.
[3] J. Willis Sayre, “Quaker Girl Delayed,” Seattle Daily Times, 30 December 1912, Page 9.
[4] “At the Metropolitan,” Seattle Star, 31 December 1912, Page 8.
[5] Jack Bechdolt, “The Quaker Girl a Tuneful Show,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 31 December 1917, Page 7.
[6] J. Willis Sayre, “English Comedy Put on at Metropolitan,” Seattle Daily Times, 31 December 1912, Page 9.
[7] Eve Golden, Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara (Vestal, New York: Emprise Publishing, Inc., 1996), Page 23.
[8] Hedda Hopper, From Under My Hat (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952), Page 38.
[9] Golden, Page 85.
[10] Theda Bara, “What is it Like to be a Vampire?,” Seattle Star, 11 April 1916, Page 1.
[11] Theda Bara, “‘Love – Bah! What is Love Without Brains?’ Asks Theda,” Seattle Star, 17 April 1916, Page 8.
[12] Theda Bara, “Penalty of Fame,” Seattle Star, 24 April 1916, Page 8.
[13] Golden, Pages 196–198.

Although Theda Bara’s screen image offered one, albeit skewed look at womanhood, there were other female stars in the silent era who projected entirely different images. Mary Miles Minter, for example, was cut from the Mary Pickford cloth and gained notoriety by portraying more innocent, wholesome screen characters. Another such actress was Marguerite Clark, who initially rose to fame on the stage opposite one of the day’s premier singing comedians, DeWolf Hopper.

Marguerite Clark was born in February 1887 in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. Both her parents died when she was quite young, leaving her sister Cora – Marguerite’s elder by 14 years – with parental responsibilities. Recognizing that her sister possessed an excellent singing voice, Cora pushed Marguerite into a stage career as a way to support them both. Marguerite Clark’s debut performance was in Baltimore in 1899, but in time the sisters made their way to New York where young Marguerite began earning raves for her stage work.^[1] Clark’s voice eventually got her noticed by DeWolf Hopper, with whom she made both of her Seattle appearances. Although it was an early point in her stage career, unlike many struggling actors and actresses supporting famous stars, Marguerite Clark was already a featured member of the company by the time of her Seattle debut. DeWolf Hopper may have been the audience draw, but Clark was billed a close second for each production and figured prominently in print ads for each show.

In November 1903, when she was just 16, the pair arrived for Hopper’s first-ever local engagement and she was already being touted as “a most clever ingénue of national fame” in the show’s publicity.^[2] “Marguerite Clark, one of the quaintest, daintiest and prettiest soubrettes who has been seen on the American stage in many years, will play the character of Polly in DeWolf Hopper’s production of Mr. Pickwick when the big musical production – a stage version of the Dickens masterpiece – come [sic] to the Grand next Thursday afternoon. Miss Clark has made a sensation in the part and has endeared herself to her audiences.”^[3] The same notice, in fact, appearing in The Argus, centered exclusively on the actress, although the dramatic page for the issue was still graced with a large photo of DeWolf Hopper. Even so, Marguerite Clark scored a coup of sorts when her photograph, and not Hopper’s, graced the program for their engagement.^[4]

Starting on Thursday, November 26^th, 1903, and drawing Thanksgiving crowds, DeWolf Hopper and Marguerite Clark played the Grand Opera House for three days (and five performances) in Mr. Pickwick, a musical interpretation of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, which debuted 10 months earlier in New York. The show, which featured a cast of 75, came with very high praise after playing New York’s Herald Square Theatre for three full months. The Seattle engagement boasted much of the original cast as well as the scenery and costumes that helped make the show a Broadway sensation.

That DeWolf Hopper’s talents commanded respect was evidenced by comments from the Seattle Daily Times, whose reviewer expressed some relief that the opening performance drew the city’s more responsible theatregoers.

          It was a matter of gratification alike in the eminent comedian, DeWolf Hopper, who made his first appearance in Seattle last night and to those theatre-goers who take a pride in seeing their city give proper recognition in all theatrical engagements of great merit, to note the magnificent audience which assembled to witness the initial presentation of Mr. Pickwick at the Grand. It was a holiday throng, but not of the character which usually assembles in the playhouses on a festival day. The noisy, farce comedy element was happily not there; Dickens would not attract it. The house was filled with the best class of theatregoers, people who take the drama seriously, who are not demonstrative, but who know and intensely appreciate really clever stage art.
          It must be a pleasure to Mr. Hopper to know that three thousand miles away from the Lambs Club he can draw as discriminating an audience as on Broadway. Of course the audience last night closely followed the precedent set by Solomon some time ago in the matter of gorgeous array. There were more silks, satins and diamonds in the house than have been displayed before in a very long time.^[5]

Thankfully the city neglected to show its rougher edges at the Grand, and audiences were greeted with “the best [cast] that Seattle has ever seen in a musical play.” The Post-Intelligencer felt the show was first-rate. “While Dickens’ characters and his dry humor make the production particularly attractive and the cleverness of DeWolf Hopper is pronounced,” wrote their reviewer, “the musical comedy features of the production are worthy of mention. The music is tuneful, the choruses dainty and pleasing in the manner of voice and costume. They made a pretty picture in the rainbow dance, and their different specialties make a good impression.”^[6]

Hopper particularly delighted the opening night crowd by responding to a thunderous curtain call after the first act, appearing out front and never once dropping his stage character throughout his remarks. Among other things, he told the gathering how nice it was to be sleeping in a real bed. Touring in one-night stands made for complications, the star remarked. He had been sleeping on trains for so long that the only way he could get comfortable in a hotel room was to hire a couple of strong men to stand at his bedside, shake it violently throughout the night and throw cinders in his eyes.^[7]

The production of Mr. Pickwick found Marguerite Clark in the role of Polly, and although she shared billing honors for the engagement, the attention lavished on DeWolf Hopper during his first Seattle visit found her work somewhat relegated to the background. The Post-Intelligencer neglected to expand on her performance, though she proved quite pleasing to the reviewer for the Seattle Daily Times. “Marguerite Clark gives unmitigated delight as Polly. When Mr. Hopper discovered her talent, she was playing small parts with the Lederers, but his giving her so important a role as the ingénue in Mr. Pickwick is more than justified by the favor which she finds with her auditors. She is very pretty, very graceful, has a tuneful throat and gives a bright color to every stage picture in which she forms a part,” their critic noted, ending his remarks with the somewhat confusing observation that Clark was “a diamond in the smooth.”^[8] The Star was also complimentary of Marguerite Clark’s stage work, although they thought a bit comical the statures of the lead actors – Clark was four feet 10 inches tall, Hopper well over six feet.

           Sharing honors with Mr. Whopper, nee Hopper, in favor was Miss Marguerite Clark, the daintiest bit of femininity seen on the stage in Seattle for many moons. She was graceful in her dances, petite in appearance and her slang was characteristic. The cutest part of the whole piece was a foolish little song, “Three Little Piggies,” sung by Mr. Whopper and Miss Clark. Whopper and his seven feet and Miss Clark with her scant five made a great contrast. She walked over his chest as if he were a horse, and so he appeared when in her presence. His song was good, however, and the singers were recalled several times.^[9]

It would be five years before DeWolf Hopper and Marguerite Clark returned to Seattle, but they were still performing together in 1908, when they came to the Moore Theatre for a three-day engagement beginning January 30. The new production was Happyland, adapted expressly for Hopper, a comic opera with a fairy tale setting in which the king of a faraway land, who has tired of the perpetual happiness under his rule, orders his subjects to wed since he has observed that married people are uniformly unhappy. Hopper and Clark originally debuted the show in New York in October 1905, and had toured extensively with it since then, carrying with them, according to the Moore program, over 100 performers in the cast.

Marguerite Clark again enjoyed second billing in the troupe, and again managed to get a leg up on the star in the Sunday edition of the Seattle Daily Times, where the announcement for the Happyland engagement carried a photo of Clark more than twice the size of DeWolf Hopper’s.^{[10 ]}

Again, Seattle warmly received Hopper and his brand of comic opera, which played to a capacity house at the Moore, even if the Daily Times found elements of Happyland lacking. “[Reginald] De Koven wrote the music and Frederick Rankin the book. Neither is remarkable,” the paper observed, “but Mr. Hopper needs neither a clever book nor a brilliant score to make a success; his mouth and his legs are enough. Both are eloquently expressive.”^[11] Similar sentiments were voiced by the Star, which felt that while the production was entertaining with genuine, slapstick fun, the play “will neither prove popular nor live on among the standard works” of comic opera. “Happyland has the advantage of being given with a splendid company and with unusual settings and costumes. Without these it is questionable as to whether the opera itself would be a success.”^[12]

The writer for the Post-Intelligencer had obviously seen Hopper perform elsewhere, for not only did he feel differently, calling Happyland far and away better than Mr. Pickwick, but suggested that it was the best thing the actor had done since Wang, the play DeWolf Hopper was most famous for. (And a production which Seattle audiences, unfortunately, never had the opportunity to see him perform.) “Hopper is the biggest thing in comic opera and his Herculean energies are being applied to the chromatic and infectious fun making that the two long acts of the Dekoven [sic] and Rankin joint work affords. He has also furnished the limit in the matter of contrasts by an association with the daintiest and prettiest of comediennes, Marguerite Clark, who is the multum in parvo of artistic capability.”^[13]

Clark played the role of Sylvia, the daughter of the King, and shared supporting honors with William Wolfe, cast as Altimus, a rival King, whose comic interplay with Hopper very nearly stole the show. Clark’s charm and manner quickly won over the audience, which the Post-Intelligencer felt was a considerable help in downplaying some weak singing on her part. The Daily Times detected no such faults in Clark’s work, but again (with reference to her stature) gave her some peculiar praise. “There are no words small enough and pretty enough to describe dainty, petite, winsome Marguerite Clark,” they gushed. “She’s a perfect little person, and she ought to be mounted and worn for a brooch or a watch fob.”^[14] The Star‘s thoughts were more conventional. “Marguerite Clark is about as charming a bit of femininity as has ever tripped through comic opera in this city. She combines ingénue, soubrette and prima donna soprano in a most attractive way, her capacity for comedy and dainty acting being equaled by her ability to sing tastefully and pleasingly.”^[15]

Seattle’s rowdier element, however, which seems to have avoided the opening night of Mr. Pickwick five years earlier, was on hand for DeWolf Hopper’s return engagement. The young men from the Phi Delta Theta house at the University of Washington, all 70-plus of them, filled the gallery at the Moore, and at the close of the first act began shouting for Hopper to recite “Casey at the Bat,” renditions of which the actor had been giving onstage for nearly 20 years.^[16] Reappearing before the curtain, the star willingly obliged, although from the description in the Daily Times he probably had little choice. At the very least, however, the Phi Delta Theta men were grateful, as was the rest of the audience – the fraternity led a rousing round of applause after the poem and showered the stage with flowers in tribute.

Marguerite Clark made no known Seattle appearances after the Happyland engagement in 1908, mostly concentrating on the Eastern stages before being lured into motion pictures by Adolph Zukor. The difficulties of touring life, in particular, did not appeal to her, just as it didn’t appeal to many actors playing the circuits. In 1912, Clark shared her thoughts with the Chicago Record in an article called “Truth to the Stagestruck,” which attempted to dispel notions on the so-called glamorous life of a stage actor.

I loved [touring] at first, but that soon wears off. And then when the edge of novelty goes, the ceaseless travel becomes a nightmare – miserable hotels, bad food; cold cars; up and out of bed at dawn to catch trains (because the night stand falls to all beginners and they must go through its lengthy ordeal); no time for relaxation, little time to take care of one’s health; no new faces, but the same old persons to talk to day in and day out – in short a gypsy life without a dash of color, without the vaguest tinge of romance.
           Even in later years after the hard years of apprenticeship, there come months of this sort of thing. The period of stay in the larger cities is variable and fickle, and the road must be resorted to in the endless campaign for financial gain. Even after success comes, that dreaded nightmare of travel haunts the actress. She has no place she may call home. She no longer gets settled in a place than off she must go. And this holds for the most famous star as it does the lowliest chorus girl.^[17]

By 1914, the year the Clark sisters were floored by Zukor’s three-year contract offer at $1,000 per week, Marguerite Clark was widely regarded as one of the stage’s brightest young talents. Motion pictures made her an even bigger star. Marguerite Clark was Zukor’s effort to create another Mary Pickford (whom he also had under his wing at the time), playing similar screen roles and gradually proving herself one of the industry’s most talented competitors to America’s Sweetheart. For publicity purposes, even, a rivalry of sorts was concocted between the two female stars.

In the long run, however, Marguerite Clark’s heart wasn’t set on remaining an entertainer. During World War I, while selling bonds during a Liberty Loan tour, the actress met Lieutenant Harry Palmerson-Williams, a wealthy socialite from Louisiana, whom she married in 1918. Although she continued her acting career until 1921, Clark ultimately left the industry and retired to her husband’s estate, where she became active in social and charity functions. According to DeWitt Bodeen, Clark was appointed by then–Governor Huey Long to a seat on Louisiana’s motion picture censorship board, earned the prestigious title of Queen at a society ball during the 1925 Mardi Gras celebration and, together with her husband, selected upwards of 20 young men and women each year from the town of Patterson and funded their college educations.^[18]

Although it was rumored in the 1920s that she would return to Hollywood to play the title role in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Marguerite Clark never resumed her screen career. (The role of Peter ultimately fell to Betty Bronson for Paramount’s 1924 adaptation.) After her husband died in 1936, Clark and her sister Clara moved to New York, where the actress died in 1940 at the age of 53.

Marguerite Clark may be little remembered today and only a handful of her films survive, but she nonetheless made a lasting impression on the industry in at least one obscure way. One of her earliest silent films, based on her stage success in the same part, was the title role in Snow White (Famous Players, 1915), which is said to have been a favorite for a young Kansas City boy named Walt Disney.^[19] The experience helped fire Disney’s interest in the movies, and it was the image of Marguerite Clark, some have contended, that served as the model for Disney’s animated likeness in the 1937 feature.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2026

Notes:
[1] DeWitt Bodeen, “Marguerite Clark Was a Bit More Sophisticated than Pickford but Not so Hard-Working,” Films in Review (December 1964), Pages 611–612.
[2] The engagement was special not only because it was Seattle’s first opportunity to see DeWolf Hopper, but also because the actor apparently had local connections: the DeWolf family of Seattle claimed to be cousins of the singing comedian, the actor’s unusual first name being his mother’s maiden name. (See “The Thanksgiving Billboards,” Seattle Daily Times, 22 November 1903, Section V, Page 1.)
[3] “DeWolf Hopper,” The Argus, 21 November 1903, Page 6.
[4] Program, Grand Opera House (22 November 1903), J. Willis Sayre Collection.
[5] “Hopper Receives an Ovation,” Seattle Daily Times, 27 November 1903, Page 7. Rowdyism in the galleries, together with late-arriving or noisy patrons, were common nuisances for theatergoers. Early in 1903, just months before DeWolf Hopper arrived in Mr. Pickwick, gallery antics had reached such a level in Seattle that the daily newspapers were calling for some sort of action to curb the disturbances. “Possibly at the Grand, because the gallery is of far the greatest capacity, trouble seems to center,” observed The Argus’ roving columnist, the Stroller. “It is a deplorable fact that whenever any tender love passages between the hero and heroine are about to come off on that stage, the people downstairs hold their breath in dread of the outburst of noisy insult that is due from the gallery. And it always comes.”
          Though no action was taken by the city, that didn’t stop the Stroller from suggesting his own solution. A devotee of the theatre, the columnist argued that until the City Council acted, theatre managers and the police department should take matters into their own hands. “[T]here should be a special policeman in citizens’ clothes in the center of the gallery,” the Stroller advocated. “He should be provided with a club that is not stuffed. With this, as an example he should beat the first two or three offenders nearly to death. Then as they strike the sidewalk on the outside he should kick them personally…It wouldn’t be necessary to do this more than two or three nights before the disturbing element would learn that its price of admission did not entitle it to go through with the ruffianism with which it now disgraces itself.” (“The Stroller,” The Argus, 21 February 1903, Page 2.) The proposal remained just that, but to the Stroller, apparently, preserving the civilizing influence of the theatre was important enough that the ends justified the means.
[6] “Makes a Big Hit,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 27 November 1903, Page 5.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “Hopper Receives an Ovation,” Seattle Daily Times, 27 November 1903, Page 7. DeWolf Hopper actually noticed Marguerite Clark when the actress performed on Broadway opposite Eddie Foy in 1902’s The Wild Rose. She was under the management of George W. Lederer at an earlier period in her career.
[9] “DeWolf ‘Whopper,’” Seattle Star, 27 November 1903, Page 2.
[10] “Seattle is the Best ‘Show Town’ on the Coast – De- Wolf Hopper This Week in Happyland,” Seattle Daily Times, 26 January 1908, Page 44. The effort was likely part of an ongoing campaign by Marguerite Clark’s sister Cora (who had become her manager) to promote the actress’ talents to the theatre-going public. Just two years earlier, in 1906, she got another nice publicity write-up in The Argus, even though neither she nor Hopper were touring the Pacific Northwest at the time. “Miss Clark has been on the stage for about four years, but in that time her talent and her unusual personal charm have brought her into an enviable position in the ranks of light opera. She is one of the youngest musical stars on the stage, not yet out of her teens, and one of the hardest workers. She is constantly adding to [her] effectiveness. Her sister watches her at every performance, and it is due in part to her suggestions that the young singer’s acting is so successful.” (“Dramatic Notes,” The Argus, 9 June 1906, Page 6.) One has to think Cora Clark penned this notice herself.
[11] “DeWolf Hopper, Ecstatically Received, is Almost the Whole Show in Happyland,” Seattle Daily Times, 31 January 1908, Page 11.
[12] “Hopper, Clark, Happyland,” Seattle Star, 31 January 1908, Page 7.
[13] “DeWolf Hopper in Happyland,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 31 January 1908, Page 7.
[14] Ibid; see also “DeWolf Hopper, Ecstatically Received, is Almost the Whole Show in Happyland,” Seattle Daily Times, 31 January 1908, Page 11.
[15] “Hopper, Clark, Happyland,” Seattle Star, 31 January 1908, Page 7.
[16] DeWolf Hopper eventually made a five-reel film of “Casey at the Bat” for the Triangle Company in 1916, which played a three-day engagement at Seattle’s Liberty Theater beginning on July 6^th of that year. It was the culmination of almost three decades of reciting the poem onstage – people never seemed to tire of it, and Hopper accommodated almost every request. His only respite was at a small gathering one evening in Worcester, Massachusetts, when Hopper first had the opportunity to meet the author of the famous poem, Ernest L. Thayer. “That was one of the few events of the sort in nearly thirty years when I did not recite ‘Casey,’” Hopper was quoted as saying in Triangle publicity for the film. “[The party] did better. They made Mr. Thayer do it.” (“Hopper Gives Life History of Casey,” Seattle Daily Times, 18 June 1916, Section III, Page 2.) Unfortunately, the photoplay version was one of the ill-fated Triangle Company’s most publicized duds, perhaps because audiences knew from the opening credits how the story was going to turn out. Hopper, incidentally, was also called upon to recite “Casey” during his Pickwick engagement in 1903, which he made along with a selection for the women of the house, “They Met by Chance (The Cow and the Cowcatcher).”
[17] “Truth to the Stagestruck,” Chicago Record, 31 March 1912; cited in Curtis Nunn, Marguerite Clark: America’s Darling of Broadway and the Silent Screen (Fort Worth, Texas: The Texas Christian University Press, 1981), Page 11.
[18] Bodeen, Page 621.
[19] Richard Schickel, The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), Page 60. Schickel mistakenly identifies Marguerite Clark as “Marguerite White” in his discussion.

Interestingly, one of Marguerite Clark’s leading men during her screen career, a player in the 1916 Paramount film Mice and Men, was a young actor named Marshall Neilan, who would eventually establish himself not as a performer, as he originally began, but as a silent film director. Neilan, a self-destructive talent whose screen reputation was hindered by an excessive lifestyle, was one of several directors to have made their way across the stages of Seattle. In addition to himself, the likes of D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Cecil B. DeMille, as well as other figures such as Reginald Barker, Fred Niblo, Charles Reisner, Walter Edwards, Lloyd Ingraham, King Baggott, James Kirkwood, Edwin Carewe and James Cruze all played Seattle at one time or another.

It’s been observed that many silent film directors never actually set out to become one, but rather fell into the position by chance or accident. The oft-told story, for instance, is that when an open directorial position at the Biograph Company was offered to D.W. Griffith, he accepted only on the condition that he could continue work as an actor if it didn’t work out. Others took more bizarre routes to the director’s chair. Allan Dwan, whose directorial career spanned well over half a century, was an engineer by trade who was lured into the movie business by Essanay president George S. Spoor, who hired him to light the company’s Chicago studio. Later, when Dwan was working for the American Film Company (known as “the Flying A”), he was dispatched from Arizona to southern California to locate a production crew which had not been heard from for some time. He found the troupe near San Juan Capistrano, where their director, a binge drinker, had abandoned them for the wetter climate of Los Angeles. Dwan quickly wired the home office and suggested they disband the company, since they had no director; Flying A wired back, instructing him to direct. Caught off guard, Dwan assembled the troupe and announced the gist of American Film’s decision: accept a novice at the helm or face unemployment. To this the actors enthusiastically declared Dwan “the best damn director we ever saw.”^[1]

Most silent film directors, however, were more in the Griffith mold – that is, actors who found their métier behind the camera rather than in front of it. Such was the case for Marshall Neilan. According to historian Jack Spears, Neilan was a true restless spirit – a man who probably could have been successful as an actor or a director, or perhaps even as a bricklayer, assuming the job held his interest long enough. Born in 1891 in San Bernadino, Neilan’s mother (his father passed early) ran boarding houses in southern California, and although he doesn’t seem to have been bitten by the stage bug right away, it’s said that young Marshall once earned a small sum as a child extra at the Alcazar Theater in San Francisco.

Though he held a succession of jobs as a younger boy, Neilan eventually landed in the footlights with the Belasco Stock Company in Los Angeles, playing small roles but never really achieving much success. He eventually left the troupe in an abortive attempt to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and when that failed to materialize, he traveled around the United States for two years before arriving back in California. In 1905, Marshall Neilan returned to the stage, signing on with the Barney Bernard stock company.

It was with the Bernard company that Neilan made his only known Seattle appearance, in June 1905, when he put in two performances as Dan in H.D. Cottrell’s The Financier. The comedy had been written especially for the talents of Bernard, a Jewish comedian who had achieved considerable success in San Francisco, and would later be known for his work in the stage play Potash and Perlmutter. Barney Bernard was held in quite high regard for his talents – or at least he was in his own press releases, which described him as being “different from the customary stage Hebrew comedian. He is funny, original and artistic. He seems real. He can only be associated with the character he portrays. When Mr. Bernard comes on the stage his appearance creates a laugh; his walk, his beard, his peculiar attire, the fit of his clothes. He has been on stage but a few minutes when you forget that his is portraying the part of a Hebrew. He is a real character; you feel that he cannot help doing it; that he has to talk and walk that way. This is why Barney Bernard is artistic: he is acting, but he does not appear to be.”^[2] This was fair praise, but on some level, Barnard tended to play stage characters that traded on commonly held stereotypes.

The plot of The Financier had more than a few similarities to incidents in The Auctioneer, which David Warfield brought to Seattle some three years previous. Bernard played a Jewish real estate man who invests $25,000 in a South African diamond mine, yet on the day of his 20^th wedding anniversary he learns that the mine is a bust and his investment ruined. The blow to his finances costs him nearly everything, and within a matter of months he is reduced to operating a clothes cleaner, earning a meager existence. Yet suddenly, in the last act, after a good deal of pathos is extracted from the Bernard character coming to grips with his loss, a diamond expert arrives from Africa with the news that the mine is not worthless at all but valued in the millions of dollars. “The Financier is a departure from the stock methods of the playwright, in that it portrays a Jewish character that is not intended as a butt of ridicule or contempt. The play is brisk in dialogue and full of bright speeches and funny situations, with here and there a bit of real pathos in admirable contrast.”^[3]

Unfortunately, Barney Bernard and his company were unable to make the first two of their three scheduled performances at the Grand Opera House, the evening show on June 16 and the matinee performance the following day, as an unidentified train delay would not allow the troupe up the coast. “There will be no performance of The Financier at the Grand tonight,” the Daily Times announced on June 16^th, 1905. “It was found late this afternoon that it would be impossible to get Mr. Bernard and his company here in time for the performance, owing to a serious delay of the train bringing the company to this city. Tonight’s tickets will either be exchanged for their purchase price or made good for tomorrow night, the only performance now scheduled.”^[4]

By Saturday evening, however, Bernard and his troupe had arrived and were able to give the only performance of The Financier during their scheduled engagement. “Barney Bernard’s first appearance in Seattle at the Grand last night in H.D. Cottrell’s comedy The Financier was evidence that Manager [John] Cort will do well to bring this comedian here again,” commented the Seattle Daily Times. “The performance delighted an audience that was large and appreciative…At the end of the second act the star was encored so often that he was forced to respond briefly in a short but well-timed speech.”^[5] Although the Daily Times admitted the comedy was essentially a one-man show and that the background players, among them Marshall Neilan, contributed little to the merriment, “[at least] what there is of it is done well.” The Star concurred. “Barney Bernard gave a fine production of his new piece, The Financier, at the Grand, Saturday night,” they noted in a very brief review. “The hit was so pronounced that a return engagement for next Monday night was booked before Barney Bernard left town. Bernard, as an interpreter of Hebrew character, is in the Dave Warfield class, and that is saying a good deal.”^[6]

The Post-Intelligencer felt differently about the production, approving only of the leading man’s performance. Bernard, in his first starring role, made ample use of his background in vaudeville and burlesque to enliven the piece, but ultimately The Financier was a weak play and Bernard’s support was less than adequate. “With the single exception of Miss [Ada] Levick, as the financier’s wife,” they noted, “the company was only moderately good and in spots it was disappointingly bad.”^[7]

Yet there was enough positive reaction to The Financier, as the Star noted, that John Cort re-engaged the company for a single night, June 26, 1905, some nine days after their initial performance at the Grand. The arrangements were made to honor patrons who missed one of the two canceled shows, although Cort had to wait until after a special engagement of German comedians Kolb and Dill in the musical comedy I.O.U. Thus, on the evening of June 26, Barney Bernard returned to the Grand for a single performance of The Financier; none of Seattle’s daily papers, however, felt it necessary to review the show a second time.

Nonetheless, Marshall Neilan – despite possibly being one of the “disappointingly bad” elements of The Financier, as observed by the Post-Intelligencer – continued to ply his trade as a stage actor. Yet with his changing interests, he would once again abandon the stage for (of all things) work as a stagecoach driver in Nevada, and later a car salesman in Los Angeles. It was as a salesman that Neilan was offered the opportunity to chauffeur a bit, first for West Coast stage producer Oliver Morosco, then for the director of one of the many Eastern film companies that were invading Los Angeles during the winter months – an old friend from his stage days, D.W. Griffith.

During the winter of 1909-1910, it seems, Neilan served as Griffith’s driver while the Biograph crew was in California, and it was he who encouraged Neilan to try his luck in motion pictures. Neilan did, accepting work with the Kalem Studios in Santa Monica, where he eventually developed into a credible screen actor. Though he initially bounced around to various film companies and perhaps could have made a name for himself in front of the camera, he instead turned his talents toward directing, where he seemed to show natural talent. Neilan was, in fact, hand-selected by Mary Pickford for her 1917 Artcraft release Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (while an actor, the two had played opposite each other in 1915’s Madame Butterfly, made for Famous Players), the start of a collaboration that represented some of the best work from both artists during the late 1910s.

Yet although Neilan’s directorial talents had earned him considerable clout within the film industry by the early 1920s, his flamboyance and excessive lifestyle eventually became more notable than his screen work. Over time his absences from sets became frequent, rude behavior and public drunkenness a constant hazard. Jack Spears notes that with one such film, the Anita Stewart project In Old Kentucky (First National, 1919), directorial credit actually went to “Marshall Neilan and Staff,” since his frequent absences during production forced Neilan’s assistants to shoot much of footage themselves.^[8] He also openly detested many of Hollywood’s most powerful studio executives; “an empty cab drove up,” went one of his more famous put-downs, “and Louis B. Mayer got out.” Such comments were hazardous enough while his career was on track, but later, when projects began to dry up, they made it difficult for him to get jobs. Although he continued directing into the 1930s, good opportunities were few and far between. “Unlike Griffith or [Erich] von Stroheim (or, to cite a later example, Orson Welles),” Richard Koszarski has noted, “Marshall Neilan’s tragedy had little to do with the cost, style, or box-office success of his pictures. His story cannot be read as a failure of the system but only as the inability of one talented, undisciplined, and self-destructive individual to adjust to the success he had wrested from the system itself.”^[9] Neilan died in 1958; one of his last bits of film work was as an actor, playing Senator Fuller in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (Warner Bros., 1956).

By Eric L. Flom – January 2026

Notes:
[1] Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Dwan: The Last Pioneer (New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1971), Page 17. Bogdanovich later used the incident in the 1976 film Nickelodeon.
[2] “No Performance Tonight,” Seattle Daily Times, 16 June 1905, Page 7.
[3] “Show Season Drawing Toward the Close,” Seattle Daily Times, 25 June 1905, Social Section, Page 10.
[4] “No Performance Tonight,” Seattle Daily Times, 16 June 1905, Page 7.
[5] “Bernard Pleases Big Audience at Grand,” Seattle Daily Times, 18 June 1905, Page 18.
[6] “At the Theaters,” Seattle Star, 19 June 1905, Page 8.
[7] “The Financier,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 June 1905, Page 4.
[8] As a stage performer, Anita Stewart appeared in Seattle only once, a vaudeville appearance at the Seattle Theatre in February 1929. Stewart headlined the live bill in Oh, Teacher, a singing and dancing act that also featured Ray Bolger in a minor role. The stage acts supported feature film The Canary Murder Case (Paramount, 1929) starring William Powell and Louise Brooks. (See program, Seattle Theatre [9 February 1929], J. Willis Sayre Collection.)
[9] Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928 (Berkley, CA: University of California Press – 1990), Page 232.

An interesting footnote to Marshall Neilan’s appearance in The Financier is that the show may have paired him, briefly, with the silent era’s most noted director, though that wasn’t the case for the Seattle engagement. David Wark Griffith was also known to have been a member of the Bernard troupe for a period and played with Neilan during an early engagement of The Financier – an acquaintance that later served as Neilan’s connection for breaking into the picture business. Russell Merritt, in compiling a chronology of D.W. Griffith’s stage appearances, noted that Griffith (who routinely used stage names throughout his career) played a detective named Warburton in The Financier, an engagement that began in San Francisco in May 1905.^[1] The Grand’s program for the Bernard engagement, however, gives no indication of such a character in the play, nor do press reviews mention a detective figuring into the plot.^[2] Interestingly, however, there was a character named Mathews, a sewing machine collector, played by someone named “Harry” Griffith, who also served behind the scenes as the troupe’s carpenter.^[3]

It’s unlikely that “Harry” Griffith was D.W. Griffith, but we can’t know for sure. Biographer Richard Schickel noted that the Griffith didn’t tour with Neilan and the rest of the Bernard company, and even Merritt’s detailed chronology couldn’t determine whether the director played other West Coast dates. Nonetheless, Seattle would have at least three confirmed stage appearances by the silent era’s most acclaimed director.

David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky in January 1875 but moved to Louisville as a young boy after his father passed away. It was there, while working in a bookstore that served as an unofficial meeting place for local literary folk, that Griffith (who never really had a formal education) began taking an interest in the stage. Yet for him, acting was merely a conduit for his ideal profession, that of becoming a playwright.^[4] Taking a place in the footlights, he was told, was the ideal training ground for a dramatic writer, so D.W. Griffith began learning stagecraft as an actor, despite the fact that it wasn’t the most reputable of occupations. He apparently didn’t do much to enhance the profession during his years onstage – though accounts of his acting skills vary, few who knew him during this period classified his work as anything more than adequate. For his own part the director liked to disparage his skills, helping perpetuate the notion of his having been one of the poorest actors to ever grace the American stage. While Griffith was being modest, some who worked with him at the time wouldn’t argue.

D.W. Griffith spent several years playing small parts with an excellent stock troupe, the Meffort Company out of Louisville. He later got on with several touring companies originating in the Midwest, tried his hand at New York theatrics and, later, headed west to San Francisco for the same. Once in California, Griffith likely had a number of opportunities to head up the coast to Seattle with organizations originating out of the Bay Area, such as the troupe that brought Barney Bernard in The Financier. It may be impossible to know precisely how many times he played on the city’s stages, however, given his frequent use of stage names, something he did to protect his family’s reputation.

The first of his known engagements occurred in January 1900, when D.W. Griffith arrived at the Seattle Theatre for a two-day appearance in London Life, a five act English melodrama that had reportedly played to enthusiastic audiences in London, Paris and New York. The play centered upon an aged aristocrat who’s new (and very young) Spanish bride is found by Gladys, the aristocrat’s daughter, to be in league with Granger, his scheming secretary. Due to the old man’s failing health, Gladys does not disclose this knowledge. Eventually, however, her father demands that she marry Granger, but Gladys refuses, her heart pledged to another. Angered by this betrayal, the old man banishes her from his house, and in despair she throws herself into a river. But she is saved by Jack Ferrers – “Happy Jack,” as he is called – who is also a sworn enemy of Granger’s, having once been framed by him for forgery. The two band together to seek retribution, the result of which, as one publicity notice phrased it, “assured a future full of prosperity and happiness” for both.

“London Life, the new drama [to be] presented at the Seattle theater Saturday and Sunday, January 20 and 21, is going to be a big affair,” boasted an advance notice in the venue’s program. “Not only has it a first class cast, but it has certain striking scenes, fraught with sensationalism and realism. These effects include Fleet street at publishing time, a life-like representation of Ludgate Circus, a beautiful river set, and a pawnshop in full swing.” Redundantly, the Seattle Theatre ended this notice by encouraging patrons to “(l)ook to find also a murder scene of a most murderous character.”^[5]

Some accounts claim that D.W. Griffith left the production of London Life shortly after closing a swing through the Midwest, heading back to New York while the remainder of the company headed to California for the beginning of a coastal tour. His appearance at the Seattle Theatre with London Life contradicts this information. The actor – performing as “Lawrence” Griffith – played the lead, Jack Ferrers, in a company that also featured Harry Salter. (Salter, together with actor Max Davidson, is generally credited with recommending motion picture work to Griffith eight years later when all three were in New York.) Griffith was paired with Meta Brittain as Gladys. “Few plays have been more pretentiously produced. In order to faithfully realize the various scenes of the play, an entire carload of special scenery is necessitated for the production. The company engaged to interpret the play is one of uniform excellence and has no superior among traveling organizations.”^[6]

Unfortunately, actual reviews for London Life are in short supply. Opening on a Saturday evening, two of Seattle’s three major dailies (the Star and Times) were not publishing Sunday editions at the time, and neither devoted commentary to the presentation in their Monday editions. Thus, the only critique of the play comes from the Post-Intelligencer, and it’s a grim one indeed. While some writers have noted that both Griffith and the play met with success earlier in the tour, the company’s lone notice from Seattle was horrific.

          If “London Life” is as presented at the Seattle theater last night it would be advisable for Americans not to go abroad until matters can be readjusted. In fact, if “London Life” be as ridiculous as the company which presented the supposed picture of it, one cannot help wishing that the Boers will succeed in dismembering the British empire. The play at best is a very cheap melodrama, and the manner in which it was presented was as one who was present expressed it, “simply awful.” The play is without a solitary redeeming feature. The plot is time worn, the acting is miserable and to witness it is self-inflicted torture.
          Had Manager [J.P.] Howe at the end of the first act last night run down the curtain and refunded the box receipts he would have done a thing that would have met with the unanimous approval of the fair-sized audience that came expecting to see a good performance, and was so grievously disappointed.
          The stage settings of the play are well arranged, but the incongruity between them and acting was so striking as to cause laughter in the audience at inopportune moments, when tears were supposed to be in order. Lawrence Griffith, by courtesy called the leading man of the company, goes through his part like an automaton, and during the most affecting part of his lines, the audience simply tittered at him. Miss Meta Brittain, the leading lady, also by courtesy, is probably the most incompetent actress that ever essayed to play an important part on a local stage, and the support was fully in keeping with the standard set by those essaying the two leading roles.^[7]

Most certainly licking their wounds, the London Life company slipped out of town on January 22, three days before their leading man, “Lawrence” Griffith, was to celebrate his 25^th birthday. Taking their place at the Seattle Theatre that evening, interestingly, was noted tragedian Frederick Warde, in the engagement that brought young Douglas Fairbanks to Seattle for the first time. Some 15 years later, at D.W. Griffith’s Fine Arts Studio, Fairbanks would make his motion picture debut in The Lamb, made for the Triangle Corporation. The two would later become founding members of United Artists.

It doesn’t appear that D.W. Griffith stayed with the London Life company for long after this January engagement, for his second appearance in Seattle was only two months later, in March 1900. Considering the amount of time which would have been necessary for Griffith to have closed the show, travel to San Francisco (where his next company seems to have originated), obtain a position, rehearse and get back out on the road, it seems clear that his tenure with the company (assuming it did not disband altogether) was close to an end by the time London Life played Seattle.

But when D.W. Griffith returned a mere two months later, it was in an entirely new production, playing Athos in a revival of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The play was a starring vehicle for Harry Glazier in the role of D’Artagnan. Significantly, Griffith was performing under a new stage name for the Musketeers tour; coming so soon off the catastrophe of London Life and likely appearing in many of the same West Coast cities, he was now going by “Lawrence Underwood” rather than “Lawrence” Griffith. This was most certainly an alteration made to avoid recognition for his earlier work as Jack Ferrers.

With a three-day engagement beginning on Thursday, March 29, 1900, the Glazier troupe – ironically enough, considering Griffith’s later fame – took over the Seattle Theatre not from another stage company, but from an early motion picture exhibition. And, as fate would have it, the film was produced by Griffith’s future employer, the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

Manager J.P. Howe kicked off the week at the Seattle with an exclusive presentation of the official film of the James J. Jeffries/Thomas Sharkey heavyweight title bout that had taken place at Coney Island on November 3, 1899.^[8] A 25-round fight in which Jeffries was declared the victor, the road show of the film was one of at least six touring versions organized by the Biograph Company. It was a hit at the Seattle, despite a film break during its premiere screening that didn’t allow the last portion of the film to be shown. Nonetheless, the Post-Intelligencer lauded the presentation for its “remarkable” clarity and felt the pictures justified the judges’ slightly controversial decision awarding the title to Jeffries. (Their tune changed a bit on the Sunday following the Biograph presentation, when the paper complained of multiple projection difficulties throughout the engagement. Their writer, not at all enamored with motion picture technology, complained that the flickering images “makes [the film] exceedingly trying on the eyes.”^[9])

The Harry Glazier company arrived in Seattle with a number of favorable notices, all generously supplied to the city’s newspapers by the actor’s business staff. “Attention is called to the extremely flattering reports of our correspondence to Harry Glazier’s Three Musketeers Company, which is called one of the best organizations on the road,” went one such announcement in The Argus.^[10] Similar notations from the Seattle Daily Times also held the play up as a banner production. “(T)he Three Musketeers is now enjoying a revival that has developed into a positive craze on both sides of the Atlantic. Harry Glazier, the young romantic actor who appears in a new version of The Three Musketeers at the Seattle Theatre tonight, has worked his way to a leading position in his profession by a thorough training in the companies of such artists as Lawrence Barrett, Thomas W. Keene, Stuart Robson and Katherine Kidder. Mr. Glazier has youth, an expressive face, a powerful, well-modulated voice, and the impetuous temperament that Dumas’ D’Artganan [sic] demands.”^[11]

The adaptation of the famous story, undertaken by Edmund Day, reportedly followed Dumas’ novel “as closely as stage requirements will permit.” In addition, a good deal of effort was spent on settings and costumes that were not just breathtaking but historically accurate. “The costumes worn by the ladies in The Three Musketeers company, it is said, cause a flutter in the hearts of the feminine potion of the audience.”^[12]

Although he went unmentioned in the reviews of Seattle’s dailies, D.W. Griffith was probably relieved to be working with a troupe garnering better notices than his previous effort in London Life. While the Oregonian in Portland, where the Glazier company played a two-night stand earlier in the week, reported that the Athos of “Lawrence Underwood” was quite good, much of the praise from Seattle critics was heaped upon Glazier and other supporting players. Said the Post-Intelligencer:

          Harry Glazier and an excellent company presented a splendid dramatization of Dumas,’ the elder, Three Musketeers at the Seattle theater last night. The company headed by Mr. Glazier is a strong one, and did full justice to one of the strongest melodramas based on fiction of the medieval period…
          Mr. Glazier, as Phillip D’Artagnan, a musketeer and loyal friend of the queen, displayed much talent, and won round after round of applause by his clever acting. John P. Barrett, who played the part of Cardinal Richelieu, the prime minister and stealthy enemy of the queen, is also a capable actor. The other male members of the company are all good.
          Miss Vail de Vernon, who assumed the part of Lady de Winter, an adventuress and spy for Richelieu, is a strong emotional actress. Blanche Stoddard, who appears as Anne of Austria, is an exceptionally clever artist, and her interpretation of her part was nearly faultless. Miss Maud Durand, as Constance, the faithful servant of the queen, displayed much talent.^[13]

The Daily Times was in full agreement; although their own notice as quite small, they felt that the entire cast – particularly Glazier – played their parts to perfection, and that the show as a whole was “well staged and mounted.”^[14]

Yet even with such favorable notices, the play doesn’t appear to have gone very far; Richard Schickel, in his biography of D.W. Griffith, claims The Three Musketeers closed in Vancouver, British Columbia.^[15] Where D.W. Griffith went to following the Musketeers tour is a mystery; it wouldn’t be until October 1900, almost six months later, that his theatrical whereabouts can again be pinpointed, when he began a short Eastern tour in the vaudeville playlet Richelieu’s Stratagem, supporting J.E. Dodson.^[16]

Although D.W. Griffith spent considerable time working out of San Francisco prior to entering the film industry, it would be another six years before his next confirmed visit to Pacific Northwest.^[17] This occurred during the most notable theatrical engagement of his stage career, supporting Nance O’Neil, the American actress dubbed (at least in her own publicity) as the stage’s “most acclaimed tragedienne.” In February 1906, at the Grand Opera House, D.W. Griffith (returning to the use of his most common stage pseudonym, “Lawrence” Griffith) made his last known Seattle appearance.

O’Neil, whose real name was Gertrude Lamson, was a fixture of the San Francisco theatrical scene, and had made her first Seattle visit some 12 years previous, in 1894, appearing in a three-day run of The Canuck at the Seattle Theatre. Since then she had attained stardom under the watchful eye of stage veteran McKee Rankin and developed a repertoire of plays that she would tour with for several years. Many were popular dramas and well-known classics; one was Judith of Bethulia, and there is little doubt that Griffith, who consistently drew on stage material for his early Biograph films, utilized his familiarity with the O’Neil production when he selected the story as his first venture into feature-length filmmaking in 1913. Nance O’Neil’s second Seattle engagement, in March 1899, featured several of the offerings she would be noted for: six different plays over six nights, including Magda, The Jewess, Camille, Ingomar the Barbarian, The New East Lynne and Oliver Twist.

Seven years later, this time with Griffith in her company, little had changed: four shows in three days, including the actress’s signature piece, Magda, presented as the Saturday matinee performance.^[18] O’Neil’s reputation, however, had grown significantly since her first Seattle visit, as her publicity suggested. “Nance O’Neil stands today absolutely without a rival on the English-speaking stage and she has won her enviable position by an enormous amount of energy and the hardest kind of work. All over the world the name of Nance O’Neil is known far and wide as the exponent of the best in classical drama, as a woman possessed of remarkable tragic force and magnetic power, but, above all, as an actress who injects into the roles she presents a keen mentality and intellectual thought that result in renditions artistic and memorable…Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the distinguished American poet, consented to write Judith of Bethulia for Nance O’Neil, so impressed was he by her acting, this being the only instance in the history of the American drama where a recognized poet of this country has written a blank verse play for an American actress.”^[19]

Not only were Nance O’Neil’s own advance notices impressive, but her reputation was such that reporters from both the Daily Times and the Post-Intelligencer sought personal interviews with the star. These were conducted shortly after her arrival at the Hotel Washington, where she was staying during her engagement, and where she basked in an aura of theatrical royalty. “In common with all who have traveled over the world and viewed all of the famous beauty spots of the old world and new,” wrote the interviewer for the Daily Times, “Miss O’Neil is an enthusiast upon the magnificent scenery of this Coast, and Western Washington in particular. ‘I feel that the grandeur of the Western country has impressed itself upon me,’ she said this morning, ‘as it has upon thousands. It gives me inspiration.’”^[20]

Nance O’Neil, who in addition to D.W. Griffith was supported by her mentor, McKee Rankin, began a three-day engagement at John Cort’s Grand Opera House on February 15^th, 1906, with Fires of St. John, a new play to her repertoire. The controversial work focused on George, a young man of means who is in love with Marie, the daughter of a gypsy woman. George, thinking his love unreturnable, eventually gives up his infatuation and becomes engaged to Gertrude, the gypsy woman’s youngest daughter. Yet as the wedding plans progress, he discovers that Marie actually does love him, rekindling his interest and calling his relationship with Gertrude into question.

The Seattle Star was quite impressed with the play, calling the dialogue “brilliant, its situations strong and the story throughout of intense interest.” Not only was the play a triumph for Nance O’Neil, but her support was “thoroughly in keeping with the splendid work of the star.”^[21]

For their own part, the Post-Intelligencer had very little to say about the production beyond noting that the performances of O’Neil and her company were “almost flawless.” Instead, its unnamed reviewer chose to expound in general on Nance O’Neil’s dramatic gifts, particularly in presenting the works of Maeterlink, Ibsen, and Sudermann (who wrote both Magda and Fires of St. John) to mass audiences – intellectually out of reach, in his opinion, to the average theatregoer. “Temperamentally Miss O’Neil is the best qualified actress before American audiences today to interpret the heroines of these three writers on subjects generally gloomy and unwholesome, and her splendid talent should go far toward establishing their dramatic worth. If the heredity of sin, unhappiness, misfortune and kindred qualities are to be made attractive, then it remains for Miss O’Neil to paint them so.”^[22]

The reviewer for the Daily Times focused more on technique than substance, although he readily noted that in Fires of St. John “Sudermann almost outshudders Ibsen.”

It was to be expected that any play which could get the staid Bostonians wild with delight must be different from the common or garden variety of modern dramas, but [Fires of St. John] is even more than that…
          Miss O’Neil has grown more placid with her advancing stage experience. Always splendid in scenes of declamation and turbulence, she has learned repression, and an actress need go no further than the example of [Minnie Maddern] Fiske or Mrs. [Patrick] Campbell to learn that repression often counts the most in effectiveness. Miss O’Neil’s gestures are more varied and convincing, her left hand, which in Elizabeth, on her last visit here, was acting more than half the time, has now learned repose, and grace and general stage ease have taken the place of her former restlessness. Miss O’Neil is destined to be numbered with the great ones.^[23]

D.W. Griffith had no credited role in Fires of St. John, but did appear the following night, playing Borso in the presentation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna, set in 15^th century Italy and carrying more than a few similarities to Griffith’s later screen adaptation of Judith of Bethulia. Nance O’Neil played the title role, the wife of Guido, political and military figurehead of Pisa. The Florentine army, led by Prinzivalle, has surrounded the walls of Pisa and is threatening to launch a full-scale assault.

However, Prinzivalle sends word that he will spare the citizens if Guido sends his beautiful wife, Monna Vanna, to his tent that evening. He agrees, but only out of desperation. When Monna Vanna arrives, she recognizes Prinzivalle as a childhood sweetheart, and he expresses his strong and genuine affection for her. When dawn arrives, Prinzivalle accompanies his love back to the city, although Guido, full of rage and jealousy, has the Florentine commander seized and thrown in jail. Failing to understand that Monna Vanna has saved Pisa from certain destruction, he unleashes a tirade upon his wife, which only serves to alienate her. Monna Vanna then frees Prinzivalle and escapes from Pisa, spurning her husband in the process.

Unfortunately, Monna Vanna wasn’t as well received as Fires the day before. Although noting that Nance O’Neil and her supporting cast fared well in the piece, the Post-Intelligencer had reservations about the play itself. “Both the book and play have been harshly criticized, not for any lack of dramatic interest, although its construction has been attacked but because of its moral atmosphere approached too closely the line of degenerate pessimism…Reviewed in its entirety, last night’s bill was not as marked for dramatic possibilities as that of the opening night, and the personal triumph for Miss O’Neil was not as great.”^[24]

The Daily Times agreed with that assessment. “The character of [Guido] is so drawn that there is no sympathy for him at any point,” they wrote, “and his long-drawn out harangue against his wife in the closing act, with the audience already in full possession of all the facts concerning what transpired in the tent scene, is an element of dramatic weakness, rather than strength, in the play.”^[25] The Star wasn’t particularly impressed either. “Monna Vanna, the most talked of problem play of the season, was Nance O’Neil’s vehicle at the Grand opera house last night. Many were there to see and pass upon the Maeterlinck drama, and all were favorably impressed with the acting of Miss O’Neil, and of her leading man, Andrew Robson. But Monna Vanna failed to score a sensation, although perfectly acceptable as a means of displaying the artist’s talents.”^[26]

In addition to O’Neil, who apparently gave the performance despite being very hoarse, several members of the cast, most notably Robson, were singled out for their excellent work. D.W. Griffith, however, wasn’t one of them. Collectively, the cast ranged from “excellent” in the Star to lesser commendations elsewhere. “The balance of the cast was even” is all that can be noted of Griffith’s Borso from the Post-Intelligencer, while the Daily Times felt that “Miss O’Neil’s company…certainly did not appear so favorably last evening as in The Fires of St. John [sic].” Part of the problem, the Times observed, was that stage veteran McKee Rankin took no role in Monna Vanna.

The following day, Saturday, Nance O’Neil’s troupe gave the last performances of their engagement at the Grand. The matinee was her famous rendition of Magda; all women in attendance were promised an autographed photo of the star.^[27] The plot concerned a young German woman who is shunned by her family, but despite hardships, eventually becomes a celebrated opera singer. She later reunites with her father, a German soldier, who is ashamed to learn that Magda has borne a child out of wedlock. The father orders her to marry and save both their reputations, but he also demands that she give up the child for the sake of appearances. Torn, the singer ultimately refuses and her father, unable to bear the scandal thrust upon him, chooses to take his own life.

The Post-Intelligencer, whose reviewer for the engagement was fixated more on the types of plays Nance O’Neil was presenting than the performances themselves, found the whole of her Seattle engagement somewhat morose. Despite the giveaway photos and expensive costuming in Magda, which attracted a large female contingent to the matinee show at the Grand, it is difficult to determine whether the writer was intrigued or repulsed by the characters O’Neil played.

          The Magda of Miss O’Neil is a consistent interpretation of a character hard to understand. It is in the quality of misunderstanding that Sudermann deals extensively and it is after patient diagnosis of one of his plays – a vivisection of his characters – that something like light breaks over it all. Not a glare of understanding but a dim comprehension that might filter between the pickets of the high fence that separates Sudermann from the rest of the world. In Magda only suggestions of a smile are allowed to express appreciation in the earlier scenes. The only brightness of the entire O’Neil engagement is then, and then but briefly. All the rest is covered with a gray pall of gloom that is lifted to show the wrecked lives of women. Women who are uncommon and strange, according to accepted types; abnormal women who think things and walk in unbeaten paths of understanding; moral degenerates who cling bat-like to the under side of life.^[28]

Magda was dismissed out of hand by the Daily Times as “being in the repertoire of every actress of prominence in the New and Old Worlds,” but felt that seeing Nance O’Neil essay the role at least assured audiences that they were seeing one of the better renditions.

Again, “Lawrence” Griffith had no part in Magda, at least according to the Grand program, though he assumed the role of Banquo in the “mammoth” evening performance of Macbeth.

Fortunately, Shakespeare’s play fared a little better with the Daily Times, or at least more space was devoted to O’Neil’s version of it, even though they still felt the production was lacking in spots. While the backdrops seemed unusually good (patrons had been warned that the curtain would rise promptly at 8:05 P.M., owing to the heavy scenic effects), the supporting players as a whole – including Griffith – were “not all that [they] should have been…Of the long list of other supporting characters, none stood out with undue prominence. They ranged all the way from good down to the man who played Lennox [Milton Stallard, also Nance O’Neil’s stage manager], whose voice carried possibly six feet, but no more.”^[29] The voice trouble that seems to have plagued O’Neil since the second day of her engagement was even more pronounced in her turn as Lady Macbeth.

The Post-Intelligencer found the selection of Macbeth jarring and a bit disappointing, considering the other works Nance O’Neil had presented as part of her repertoire. However, the paper also noted that Macbeth garnered the largest house of her engagement, “due possibly to a larger understanding of Shakespeare and blood-letting than to the murder of moral comprehension.”

O’Neil apparently gave an unusual rendition of Lady Macbeth (the Star referred to her interpretation as “much discussed and disagreed upon”), departing from stage tradition on several occasions, much of which (undescribed in print reviews) met with general approval. Other players, however, were greeted indifferently; John Glendinning’s Macbeth seemed too tame and uninteresting, although Andrew Robson’s Macduff managed several fine moments. Poor Milton Stallard, however, who was also singled out in the Daily Times for his take on Lennox, received even more of a lashing from the Post-Intelligencer, which held no affinity for O’Neil’s supporting cast. “Several of the company, playing minor characters, failed to grasp the full importance of their opportunities, notably Mr. Stallard as Lenox [sic], who could hardly be heard beyond the orchestra rail. Mr. Stallard demonstrated the unimportance of several speeches which heretofore have served to connect incidents in the play, and Macbeth continued up the closing scene without it being discovered that Mr. Stallard was speaking.”^[30]

Yet despite the mixed reaction to the plays in Nance O’Neil’s repertoire and the sometimes-critical response that greeted, in particular, her supporting company, the engagement as a whole seems to have been a successful one, at least for the actress herself. Such was demonstrated in the Post-Intelligencer’s dramatic pages on the Sunday following her engagement. “Nance O’Neil must have been much pleased with her audience and the reception which she obtained Thursday night [when presenting] Fires of St. John. Coming immediately after the grand opera season, it was a question of the size of her audiences, but Miss O’Neil’s engagement demonstrated that she is at once popular with local theater goers and that her reputation as a great actress is firmly established.”^[31]

Despite going unmentioned in the press throughout Nance O’Neil’s Seattle engagement, D.W. Griffith earned an opportunity with the company later that spring, as the troupe continued to travel the United States. Linda Arvidson, Griffith’s first wife, recalled that although the actor began the O’Neil tour playing supporting roles, he graduated to larger ones after McKee Rankin fell ill. Griffith apparently got his big break in Magda, where he took over Rankin’s former role as the stern father and, despite his youthfulness, impressed Nance O’Neil with his performance.^[32] The balance of the O’Neil tour then found him playing meatier parts than the Seattle engagement, where he seems to gone unnoticed by both audiences and reviewers.

While a temporary boost to his theatrical prospects, playing opposite Nance O’Neil didn’t jump-start Griffith’s stage career. But it wasn’t long before the aspiring playwright found his true calling – which, to some degree, gave him the satisfaction of authorship he always yearned for. Only two years after departing Seattle’s Grand Opera House with the O’Neil company, Griffith, in New York and out of work, found himself standing in front of a brownstone at 11 East 14^th Street, home of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, looking for an opportunity to sell photoplay scenarios. His written work was rejected, but he caught on as an actor, and later director; ultimately it was a union that produced some of early cinema’s finest screen moments. Griffith, of course, eventually graduated from his groundbreaking Biograph shorts into feature filmmaking, eventually producing the controversial blockbuster The Birth of a Nation (1915), followed by Intolerance (1916). Griffith continued to be an influential director until the early 1920s, when he retreated from Hollywood to establish his own film studio in Mamaroneck, New York. This move proved financially disastrous – though not before films such as Orphans of the Storm (1921) and America (1924) had been completed – so Griffith returned to contract studio work in Hollywood, though his projects were not nearly as ambitious or innovative as his earlier work. He had a fair success with his first sound film, Abraham Lincoln (1930), but would produce only one more film before retiring altogether. Griffith passed in 1948, nearly forgotten by the industry he helped popularize.

By Eric L. Flom – January 2026

Notes:
[1] Russell Merritt, “Rescued from a Perilous Nest: D.W. Griffith’s Escape from Theatre Into Film,” Cinema Journal, Volume 21, Number 1 (Fall 1981), Page 26.
[2] Richard Schickel, D.W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), Pages 67–68.
[3] Program, Grand Opera House (17 June 1905), J. Willis Sayre Collection.
[4] Although D.W. Griffith wrote a number of plays, in addition to several short stories and poems, only one of his full-length stage works, A Fool and a Girl, is known to have been produced. The play served as vehicle for stage actress Fannie Ward. In the spring of 1908 it opened in Washington, D.C., before moving to Baltimore after a week, but was received indifferently in both places and closed without much fanfare. The “Play Index” for the J. Willis Sayre Collection makes no reference to A Fool and a Girl as having been performed in Seattle. It also does not appear that another Griffith work, a vaudeville sketch entitled In Washington’s Time, ever played locally.
[5] See “London Life” program, Seattle Theatre (19 January 1900), J. Willis Sayre Collection.
[6] “The Drama,” Seattle Daily Times, 20 January 1900, Page 15.
[7] “London Life at the Seattle,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 21 January 1900, Page 17.
[8] Fight pictures were extremely popular with early filmmakers, and securing the exclusive motion picture rights to a championship bout was a prized acquisition. However, in an era when many early film companies openly copied the work of competitors by re-staging successful releases (or, in some cases, by duping an actual film and inserting their own titles), holding the “exclusive” rights to anything was a tenuous proposition. The Biograph Company received the rights to the Jeffries/Sharkey title bout and took special precautions to ensure the quality of the presentation – fight fans were not allowed to smoke lest it interfere with filming, for example. But Biograph was not alone in covering the event. The American Vitagraph Company managed to smuggle a camera into the match and film a few rounds, and Sigmund Lubin, as was his practice, staged a re-enactment of the actual bout with actors portraying both fighters. (Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990], Page 203.)
[9] See “Jeffries-Sharkey Contest Pictures at the Seattle,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 26 March 1900, Page 10; and “At the Theatre,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1 April 1900, Page 17.
[10] “Dramatic,” The Argus, 24 March 1900, Page 6.
[11] “The Three Musketeers,” Seattle Daily Times, 29 March 1900, Page 5.
[12] “The Three Musketeers,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 29 March 1900, Page 7.
[13] “The Three Musketeers,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 30 March 1900, Page 5; see also “The Three Musketeers,” Portland Oregonian, 27 March 1900, Page 7.
[14] “The Three Musketeers,” Seattle Daily Times, 30 March 1900, Page 7.
[15] Schickel, Page 61.
[16] Merritt, Page 23.
[17] In his unfinished memoirs, D.W. Griffith recalled once being offered a stock engagement with the Baker company in Portland, which he accepted despite a low salary. Rather than pay out-of-pocket travel expenses from San Francisco to Portland, Griffith instead took work on a lumber ship scheduled to dock there in return for passage. The ship, however, was caught in a storm at the mouth of the Columbia River, delaying its arrival. By the time Griffith reported for work, the Baker company had already filled the opening with another actor. (D.W. Griffith and James Hart, The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D.W. Griffith [Louisville: Touchstone Publishing Company, 1972], Pages 59–60.) Richard Schickel’s biography of Griffith places the missed Portland engagement as coming roughly a year after The Three Musketeers tour had ended. (See Schickel, Page 61.)
[18] “Miss Nance O’Neil Talks of Ideals,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 February 1906, Page 4. Magda was a play close to Nance O’Neil’s heart – her Persian cat, who traveled with her on the road, was also named Magda.
[19] “Nance O’Neil Tonight,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 February 1906, Page 7.
[20] “Talks of Stage Life,” Seattle Daily Times, 15 February 1906, Page 5.
[21] “The Theaters,” Seattle Star, 16 February 1906, Page 5.
[22] “Fires of St. John,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 February 1906, Page 4.
[23] “Nance O’Neil in Tragedy,” Seattle Daily Times, 16 February 1906, Page 5.
[24] “Monna Vanna,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 February 1906, Page 5.
[25] “Monna Vanna is Seen,” Seattle Daily Times, 17 February 1906, Page 7.
[26] “Nance O’Neil,” Seattle Star, 17 February 1906, Page 3.
[27] See “Nance O’Neil in Tragedy,” Seattle Daily Times, 16 February 1906, Page 5.
[28] “Macbeth” [dual review of Macbeth and Magda], Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 February 1906, Page 14.
[29] “Nance O’Neil Seen as Lady Macbeth,” Seattle Daily Times, 18 February 1906, Page 8.
[30] “Macbeth” [dual review of Macbeth and Magda], Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 February 1906, Page 14.
[31] “Dramatic,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 18 February 1906, Magazine Section, Page 10.
[32] Mrs. D.W. Griffith [Linda Arvidson], When the Movies Were Young (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), Page 17.