LEST WE FORGET JULIA MARLOWE
(September 23, 1866  - November 12, 1950)


"Experience has taught me that, especially in the plays of Shakespeare, we cannot go far wrong if we let the lines have the center of the stage and allow them to show the poet's meaning." Julia Marlowe

Born Sarah Frances Frost in England, her father, believing he had accidentally blinded a man, fled to Kansas in 1870 and then sent for his wife and children and settled in Cincinnati.  As Fanny Brough she attended public schools and frequented Cincinnati's National Theatre where she made her stage debut in 1880 as a member of a juvenile opera company.  She had small supporting roles in all the productions.  In 1884 she stopped touring to study with Ada Dow, a well-known stock company actress.  Dow coached her in voice, movement, and dramatic literature in order to develop her skills as a Shakespearean performer. In 1887 as Julia Marlowe she debuted in New London, Connecticut as Parthenia in Ingomar.  Her New York debut followed in the same role at the Bijou Opera Theatre's matinee.  The New York Sun wrote: "There is not a woman player in America or England that is --attractively considered--fit to unlace her shoe."

       For the next ten years she toured the country as a star in As You Like It, She Stoops to Conquer, The Hunchback, and The Rivals. A short marriage to Robert Taber, her leading man in 1894, ended in divorce in 1900.
     Under the management of Charles B. Dillingham, she became a leading actress with the
Theatrical Syndicate, starring in one of her most well known roles as Barbara Frietchie (1901) and became one of the top box office attractions in the country. Her greatest popular success came in 1902 as Mary Tudor in Paul Kester's When Knighthood was in Flower.      (PICTURE BELOW) 
She became financially independent.

Under the management of Charles Frohman, she returned to the classics in 1904. Edward H. Sothern, her co-star and romantic leading man, married her in 1911 and together they became the chief exponents of Shakespearean drama in America.

They toured in Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Macbeth, and
The Merchant of Venice and produced matinee performances for schoolchildren. In 1907 they appeared in London to great critical acclaim and on November 8, 1909, they opened the
The New Theatre  in Antony and Cleopatra.

Julia Marlowe was widely praised for her championing of Shakespeare and for her performances in classical plays. Her greatest successes came with Rosalind in As You LIke It and Viola in Twelfth Night.

 She had beauty, feminine charm and a melodious voice. A. C. Wheeler, writing in The Criterion (November 18, 1899) described her Viola:  "There are many women of Shakespeare's creation who demand for their incarnation more passion, more variety, more ability perhaps than Viola; but there are none that demand more womanliness, and it is a womanliness which has to be interpreted and sustained, and when it is, it is the very quintessence of femininity in that aspect which men most admire...in Miss Marlowe's performance of Viola there was but one tour de force and that was Viola in her completeness."
   From an article she wrote for Theater Magazine: "The last time I played Viola in reading the lines beginning 'She never told her love' I made an effort to keep everything still, even to the ends of my fingers. I aimed at achieving the whole effect by absolute repose. In my original conception of the role, I should have been appalled had anyone advised such paucity of 'business'.  Julia Marlowe
               
                                               MARLOWE'S BELIEFS

Romeo and Juliet

She believed in artistic excellence and moral uplift in the theatre, a goal she  pursued in both the choice and staging of her plays.  She felt that acting was an acceptable career for women. She believed that the theatre had an obligation to enlighten the public. And she was a strong advocate for a national theatre.

"A disheartening result of my observations of the present stage of the art of acting has been my realization that there are so few players that can give and take in acting--making it necessary, therefore, for the chief person in the scene of the play to carry the spirit of the author's intention and the thread of the various scenes quite unaided. To preserve his own poise he is compelled to concentrate mentally upon himself, making most performances one-sided, sometimes almost a monologue." Julia Marlowe

RETIREMENT AND RECORDINGS

In 1916 Julia and Edward announced their retirement form the stage. During World War 1, she made appearances at rallies and bond drives; and both actors entertained the troops in England and Scotland.

They made eleven phonograph recordings for the Victor Company in 1920 and 1921. These recordings are the only recorded evidence of Marlowe's voice today. They can be found on YouTube.
      After Sothern's death in 1933, she became somewhat of a recluse White-haired and still beautiful she'd occasionally visit close friends like ailing playwright Edward Sheldon In 1923. She received an honorary doctorate form George Washington University and another in 1943 from Columbia University.  She had no children and died in 1950 in New York City.

MARY TUDOR

Resources:  Wikipedia.  Notable Women in the American Theatre. 1989.  Rita M. Plotnicki
Russell, Charles Edward.  Julia Marlowe, Her Life and Art. New York. D. Appleton and Co. 1926
Marlowe, Julia, and E. H. Sothern. Julia Marlowe's Story. New York: Rinehart, 1954