LEST WE FORGET EVA LE GALLIENNE
(January 11, 1899 - June 3, 1991)

"She evokes another age...a time when Leonardo (Da Vinci) lay for hours watching one tiny flower unfold, when living itself was a fine art. It is quite possible to picture Miss Le Gallienne, five years from now, bending her slender neck over a book in some quiet garden. She will have heavy earrings of turquoise or carved gold in her ears and her own strange beauty like a pale little Russian princess...."
      Rena Gardner, reporter, Boston Herald

An actress, director, producer, translater, playwright and feminist, she was born in London surrounded by art and literature. Her father was the noted poet Richard Le Gallienne; her beautiful Danish-born mother, Julie (Norregaard) Le Gallienne left Richard and took young Eva and her sister Hesper to Paris.  Eva was drawn to the theatre at a very early age and was particularly impressed by the acting of Sarah Bernhardt.  Lacking the money to buy Madame Bernhardt's 800 page Memoires, she borrowed it from a friend and copied the entire book by hand!   The great British actress Constance Collier gave her her first acting lessons.
         Her first major disappointment (at age 12) occurred when she was forced to turn down an invitation from renowned actor William Faversham to travel to America and perform Lucius in Julius Caesar starring Ms. Collier as Portia.  A few years later she made her professional debut when she "walked on" as Collier's page in Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna.
                      Her studies continued at Herbert Beerbohm-Tree's Academy in London (it became the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).  Hailed as a "brilliant new comedienne," she played the role of a cockney servant in The Laughter of Fools  aka The Rotters at the Prince of Wales Theatre (1915).

AMERICA
      She and her mother sailed to America in 1915. After minor roles in unmemorable plays and some bouts with unemployment she performed in a series of plays with such stars as Maxine Elliott and
Ethel Barrymore whom she admired and helped her develop her craft.  Her next major success was as a French girl (speaking only French) who was Elsie Janis's partner in the 1919 production of
Elsie Janis and Her Gang.

LILIOM, HER FIRST MAJOR ROLE
She had dreamed about playing Julie in a version of Ferenc Molnar's Liliom and finally in 1921 her dream came true. The play was so successful it moved from the Garrick Theatre to a larger theatre and it ran for over a year.  She toured in Liliom (1922-23). Following a period of rest, she returned to Europe, visited several cities, met Molnar in Vienna and returned to New York to perform in Liliom for another season.

IN LILIOM WITH J. SCHILDKRAUT

THE SWAN
One of her most memorable roles was the princess in Molnar's elegant comedy The Swan. It provided her with a wonderful acting opportunity as well as the chance to return to Europe to purchase her gowns.  In London she saw Eleonora Duse perform and was  so impressed  that she developed a close friendship which would ultimately lead to writing a  biography of Duse (The Mystic in the Theatre, 1966).
       .When the Actors' Equity Association strike curtailed the run of The Swan,  she decided to join Jasper Deeter's experimental Hedgerow Theatre in Moylan, Pennsylvania.  There she starred in her first Ibsen roles and became one of the foremost interpreters and translators of his plays.  The  Hedgerow Theatre inspired her to form The Civic Repertory Theatre at 107 W. 14th Street. Ocotber 25, 1926.

THE CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE

The opening ot The Civic Repertory Theatre was one of the major events in the American theatre of the 20th century. She renovated an old theatre which was affordable in its location. She produced as an actress and director such classics  as Chekhov's The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Sea Gull; Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet; an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland; Ibsen's The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman and Hedda Gabler and James M. Barrie's Peter Pan (in which she played Peter and took her curtain call by flying over the heads of the audience into the balcony.) Many of the plays were seen by American audiences for the first time.

Hedda in Hedda Gabler         Robert Lewis saw her play Hedda Gabler many times and reported that

     "When she said 'bored, bored, bored,' it shook the walls of the theatre."  She believed that Hedda should be played with "truth, pace, humor, and excitement."  In the preface to her translation, she wrote: "Try to imagine the impact of Hedda on an audience that knew nothing about it; an audience that had not been told for fifty years by innumerable critics what to expect, what to think, what to feel...The suspense must have been unbearable...The play is short, but when the curtain falls we are intimately acquainted with every one of the characters involved, this is typical of Ibsen's genius."
                             

The Nation chose her along with Charles Lindbergh for its honor roll of 1927 and sponsored by the National Woman's Party who sent her a congratulatory telegram conveying their delight "that this honor has gone to a woman who is a Feminist as well as an artist."
           She had already won the Pictorial Review prize and a cash award of five thousand dollars, given for the most outstanding achievement by an American Woman in the arts, letter, science, industry, or social science, the first actress to receive the award.
          In her autobiography she wrote "In my speech of thanks I tried to make clear the fact that I had been completely and utterly selfish. I had done what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it."

Despite popular and critical success, there were financial difficulties and in 1933 the theatre was disbanded. Her first autobiography At 33 (1934) contains her passionate defense of the repertory system.
         "In the theatre there are plays which you cannot possibly understand or get full benefit from seeing them played just once.  You go to a play like The Master Builder or The Cherry Orchard or Hedda Gabler, you see it once and you say 'I have seen the Master Builder and I don't understand it, therefore there must be nothing in it.'  Go back. Think about it. After all the fruit of a man's life such as Henrik Ibsen cannot be devoid of everything. If you fail to get anything from it, it is your fault and not Henrik Ibsen's.  She fervently believed that "everywhere in the country there will be a People's Repertory Theatre, a theatre created by the people, so that in the lives of their children may flow some of the beauty that springs from knowledge."

For several years she had been planning to return to the repertory plan and in 1946 she co-founded the
American Repertory Theatre with her long-time friend Margaret Webster and producer Cheryl Crawford.  Unfortunately the absence of strong support from the critics and severe financial problems, repertory plans were abandoned.
The company revived Alice in Wonderland which played for a long run.

She wrote her second autobiography With a Quiet Heart in 1953 and wondered if "there is any longer a place for me in the American theatre..." However she continued to act in many productions and nationwide tours and in 1955 appeared on television including Alice in Wonderland for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. With undiminished energy she established the National Repertory Theatre in 1959 and toured until 1964. She also co-produced a number of plays at the White Barn Theatre in 1966; performed at the American Shakespeare Theatre Festival in Stratford, CT' directed Ibsen's A Doll's House at the
Seattle Repertory Theatre and at the age of 76 performed on Broadway with Rosemary Harris,
Ellis Rabb directing, in the revival of Kaufman and Hart's comedy about the Barrymores--The Royal Family.  In 1980 she starred in To Grandmother's House We Go in Houston, Texas and received a Tony nomination for her performance when the play was produced in New York (1980-1981). She amazed audiences when she revived Alice in Wonderland in 1982, playing the White Queen and made a flying entrance, reminiscent of her triumphant entrance as Peter Pan.
 
PERSONAL LIFE
       She never hid her lesbianism inside the acting community, but reportedly was never comfortable with her sexuality, struggling privately with it. She even briefly considered arranging for a "front" marriage with actor Basil Rathbone (on whom she had a crush). During the early days of her career she often was in the company of witty, possibly bisexual actresses like Tallulah Bankhead and
Estelle Winwood.  In 1918 she began an affair with the great actress Alla Nazimova who was at the height of her fame.  Even though the affair ended, Nazimova introduced her to many influential people She was also madly in love with married actress Josephine Hutchinson and later with Margaret Webster.
       In Helen Sheehy's brilliant, detailed, well researched biography of Eva Le Gallienne, she quotes Le Gallienne's words of advice to her close friend May Sarton, also a lesbian. "People hate what they don't understand and try to destroy it. Only try to keep yourself clear and don't allow that destructive force to spoil something that to you is simple, natural, and beautiful."

AWARDS
      Her numerous honors include honorary degrees from ten colleges including Tufts and Smith. She was presented with a special Tony Award in recognition of her 50th year as an actress and in honor of her work with the National Repertory Theatre in 1964.  The National Endowment for the Arts recognized her achievements with the National Medal of Arts in 1986. And for her role in the film Resurrection she won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

IN REMEMBRANCE OF HER CAMILLE AND HER COURAGE

On opening night  Eva Le Gallienne was weak and having difficulty breathing after suffering with bronchitis. A doctor gave her treatments in the wings between scenes. In black-and-white gowns designed by Helene Pons, a dark, curled upswept wig, and dangling jeweled earrings, she had a "majestic radiance and beauty."  She held nothing back and was rewarded after the performance with ten curtain calls, cheering with wild shouts of joy. "It was her own Lady of the Camellias," said one critic, "which did not mimic the traditions of Bernhardt and Duse...It was Eva Le Gallienne in the greatest performance of her career and the audience at the Civic Repertory Theatre, which stood three deep in the rear of the orchestra, applauded without stopping to remove tear stains from cheeks and nose."      Brooks Atkinson: "If you see a mob pressing impetuously about the portals of the Civic Repertory Theatre these winter evenings, you probably will find that the bill is Camille with Miss Le Gallienne expiring into sweet and silken limbo at the end of act four.  It is a major hit that turns 'em away at the box office."

There have been so many books, articles, interviews and discussions about her life and her work but there is one quote in which  Eva LeG (her nickname) defines her belief in art vs. commerce.
     "Actors should be free, rebellious spirits.  The insensitive and rapacious curiosity which has nothing to do with the true love of the theatre has done much to making creatures who should be artists mere peacocks without brains and without souls."

RESOURCES:   Wikipedia.  Notable Women in the American Theatre. 1989 Yvonne Shafer
Le Gallienne, Eva.  At 33, an autobiography. 1934
Le Gallienne, Eva.  With A Quiet Heart, an autobiography. 1953
Le Gallienne, Eva  The Mystic in the Theatre: Eleonora Duse. 1966
Schanke, Robert A.  Shattered Applause The Eva LeGallienne Story. foreword by May Sarton. 1992
Sheehy, Helen.  Eva Le Gallienne A Biography.  1996