Margaret Anglin as Electra

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARGARET ANGLIN
(April 3, 1876 - January 7, 1958)
"A pioneer of modern directing"

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, the youngest of nine children of newspaper editor and politician Timothy Warren Anglin, Margaret became a Broadway star, director and producer and was hailed as one of the most brilliant actresses of her day.

She graduated from the Empire School of Dramatic Acting in 1894. It was that same year that the impresario Charles Frohman was so impressed with her acting talent that he cast her as the lead in Bronson Howard's successful play Shenandoah. By 1896 she was James O'Neill's leading lady on tour both in the U.S. and in Canada. She played Ophelia to his Hamlet and in 1898 she was hired to play Roxanne in Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Richard Mansfield, the matinee idol of his day. She became Frohman's leading lady with his Empire Theatre Company in 1899.

The New York Times reported in December, 1905 that after she had performed at a benefit to assist the persecuted Jews in Russia, the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt asked her to perform with her in Pelleas and Melisande by Maeterlinck. (Note: Sarah had also played Pelleas opposite Mrs. Patrick Campbell's Melisande on July 1, 1905, Vaudeville Theatre, London).  Sarah's invitation to Ms. Anglin sealed her reputation as a great star in America.

In 1910, as an independent actress-manager, she starred in her first production of a Greek tragedy, Sophocles' Antigone at USC, Berkeley. For the next eighteen years she included the Greek classics in her repertory, presenting the plays in outdoor theatres or in opera houses. When she appeared as Clytemnestra in Iphigenia in Aulis in New York at the Manhattan Opera House in 1921, Alexander Woollcott praised her performance. "The unforgettable part of this evening of Euripides was the splendor of Miss Anglin, the lovely music of her voice and the prodigious, the amazing energy that is hers alone among the actresses of the American stage."

In her nearly fifty years on the stage, she played more than eighty roles, many of which were from Shakespeare's plays.  Her revival of Greek drama not only added to her reputation as an actress but to her adeptness as a stage director.  Thoda Cocroft, her publicity manager, wrote: "On her own shoulders, she loaded the multiple responsibility of directing, staging, selecting actors for the Greek chorus, arranging and rearranging business, choosing costumes, supervising electricians, actors, musicians and stage hands, up to the last detail relating to the performance."