CHRYSTAL HERNE

(June 17, 1882 - September 19, 1950)

From the beginning she wanted to be a star.

Born in the Boston suburb of Dorchester, she was one of four children of playwright and actor James A. Herne.  Her father pioneered the new realistic drama in America in the tradition of Henrik Ibsen. His play 

Margaret Fleming (1890) is considered the most realistic American drama of the nineteenth century for its confrontation of social issues.   Chrystal was named for the role her mother played in Hearts of Oak.

She was educated in private schools in Boston and New York but a self-confessed "poor scholar."  From an early age she dreamed of becoming a star.  At the age of 18 she made her New York debut in The Reverend Griffith Davenport at the Herald Square Theatre.   She appeared in her father's popular play Sag Harbor and appeared in a touring revival of The Christian.

In 1902 she joined the company of her childhood idol, 

E. H. Sothern, in minor roles.  Then she played Hippolyta in Midsummer Night's Dream with Nat C. Goodwin. Her first important role on Broadway was in Clyde Fitch's Major Andre (1903).  The play was a failure and Chrsytal's acting was adversely criticized.  But her season in Nat Goodwin's company gave her excellent training in the techniques of farce and light comedy, improving her range and her skills.

The turning point came when the actor Arnold Daly chose her to be his leading lady in a series of plays by George B. Shaw at the Garrick Theatre in New York.  She would play Candida, Gloria in You Never Can Tell, Nora in John Bull's Other Island, and Vivie Warren in the American production of 

Mrs. Warren's Profession.   On opening night in New York the cast was was jailed on opening night. The play was not repeated though the actors were acquitted several months later. Other Shavian roles included Raina in Arms and the Man and the Lady in 

The Man of Destiny, her last significant work with Arnold Daly.

By the time she played Mrs. Clayton in Augustus Thomas' 

As A Man Thinks (March , 1911) she had become an excellent actress. Critics praised her performance in this play, which, like Margaret Fleming, dealt with the double standard in marriage.   

The next most important role would be as Lady Grayston in 

Somerset Maugham's Our Betters (March 1917). The scheming and unsympathetic character had been turned down by 

Ethel Barrymore.

In 1917 Ms. Herne joined the Stage Women's War Relief, organized by Rachel Crothers, Josephine Hull, Dorothy Donnelly, and

Louise Closser Hale.  As a result of her association with this group, many of her subsequent roles were in plays written by women.

In January, 1920, she appeared in Rita Weiman's The Acquittal, a murder mystery that enjoyed a successful run on Broadway and prompted Kenneth MacGowan to write that she "was perhaps the greatest emotional actress in America".  She also played the role of Minnie Whitcomb in Rachel Crothers's Expressing Willie in 1924, a critical and popular hit that had a run of 293 performances.   But the role that brought her the greatest fame was that of the vengeful Harriet Craig in George Kelly's Pulitzer prize-winning play Craig's_Wife.  Critic John Mason Brown recalled Herne's performance as one of the most enduring images of the theatre in the twenties.

Chrystal Herne's acting style was marked by restrained emotion, somewhat in the tradition of 

Matilda Heron and Clara Morris, but tempered by the realistic drama in which she usually appeared.  

In her unpublished autobiography she declared: "The one real gift I had in the theatre was a power to move people emotionally."

Reference:  Notable Women in the American Theatre (1989)  Craven Mackie