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Henrietta Crosman

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Henrietta Crosman
Crosman in a publicity still from the Broadway play Madeline (1906)
Born
Henrietta Foster Crosman

(1861-09-02)September 2, 1861
Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), Confederate States
DiedOctober 31, 1944(1944-10-31) (aged 83)
Pelham Manor, New York, United States
OccupationActress
Years active1883–1940s
Spouse(s)J. Sedley Browne (1886-1896; divorced);[1] 1 child
Maurice S. Campbell (1896-1942; his death);[2] 1 child
Children2
RelativesGeorge H. Crosman (grandfather)

Henrietta Foster Crosman (September 2, 1861 – October 31, 1944) was an American stage and film actress.

Early years

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Crosman was born in Wheeling, Virginia, to George Crosman Jr. a Civil War Major, and Mary B. Wick,[3] a niece of composer Stephen Foster.[4][5] Her grandfather was a Civil War General, George H. Crosman.

Crosman was born the year the Civil War started and moved all over the US from post to post with her army father, and so was educated in many places. On leaving school she decided to become an actress.

When she was 16, Crosman spent a year in Paris studying music with thoughts of singing grand opera. After her voice broke during a vocal lesson, she left France and thereafter turned her thoughts toward a career in theater.[6]

Theatrical career

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In her early career, Crosman's career was managed by Napier Lothian Jr..[7] She got her start in 1883 at the old Windsor Theatre, New York with the assistance of the long-time theatre manager John A. Ellsler. Her debut role was as Lilly in Bartley Campbell's The White Slave.[8][9]

She later toured the country with Robert L. Downing in classic parts. In 1889 she appeared in her first Shakespeare play, As You Like It, at Augustin Daly's theater. During the course of the early 1890s she was managed by Daniel Frohman and appeared in his stock company. From 1892 to 1894 her career was managed by Daniel's brother, Charles Frohman. For a short period during 1891, and in between Frohman brothers, she was under the aegis of A. M. Palmer.[citation needed]

Crosman as Nell in Mistress Nell (circa 1901)

In 1899, Crosman was hired as the Leading Lady for the summer season at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado. Shows that summer included The Charity Ball, The Senator, and a production of Cyrano de Bergerac that called for 100 actors. Crosman would return to Elitch Theatre in 1903 for several pre-season performances.[10]

By 1900 Crosman was a star and appeared for the first time as such in Mistress Nell keeping in line with the sort of costume adventures that were becoming her forte. In 1896 she had married Maurice S. Campbell, then a New York journalist from a wealthy family, and starting in 1902 Campbell produced a number of Broadway productions featuring her, starting with Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland's "Joan O' the Shoals" in 1902. "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" in 1903 was particularly successful, running for 206 performances. Campbell's 1905 version of the Ibsen play When We Dead Awaken, starring Crosman, was the first and only production. In 1911, she and her company staged 60 performances of Catherine Chisholm Cushing's comedy The Real Thing at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York, before taking the show on the road. In early July 1912, Crosman and company were in Regina, Saskatchewan following the Regina Cyclone, and staged a benefit performance of The Real Thing for the victims.[11] The last Campbell/Crosman production was The Tongues of Men by Edward Childs Carpenter in 1913. Several of these plays would be made as films in the silent era played by younger actresses.

Henrietta Crosman in The Sword and the King (1902)
Munsey's Magazine, 1910

Now in her forties, Crosman was starting to move away from the strenuous sword-carrying, heavy costume adventures that she was popular in. Much of the remainder of her theatrical career would consist of drawing room comedies and farces, a type of playing that was less hectic for an ageing actress. However, she would return to revivals of Shakespeare, i.e. The Merry Wives of Windsor, and in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals.[12]

Films

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Crosman in Charlie Chan's Secret (1936)

Crosman, like many a heralded stage star, held off from motion pictures. But by 1914 and possibly out of curiosity she 'signed up', as the popular motto went at the time, for a one-picture deal with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players. It was a film version of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch,[13] which as a play had been a winning success for Mrs Fiske in 1901 on Broadway. The Supreme Test followed in 1915 for Universal Studios but afterwards her silent film appearances were sporadic. Her husband Maurice Campbell joined his wife in the movie industry eventually becoming a noted director.

By 1930 silent films had given way to talking pictures and as in 1914 the motion picture business courted stage trained actors. Crosman a veteran and now approaching seventy had a career resurgence endearing herself to a new younger generation who never had the chance to see her in her youth on stage. She gave a heartbreaking performance in a rare lead film role in Pilgrimage (1933) as the embittered mother of a soldier killed in World War I who travels to the Argonne and undergoes a spiritual renewal. An earlier talkie in which she appeared was The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), a Paramount version of the play by Edna Ferber, loosely based on the Barrymore family.

Personal life

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In 1886, Crosman married Sedley Browne. A year later, they had a son, Sedley Browne Jr. The Brownes divorced in 1896, after which their son changed his name to George Crosman. Later in 1896, she married newspaperman Maurice Campbell, who later became a stage producer and a director of silent films. They had a son, Maurice Campbell Jr.[14]

Maurice Campbell became a Broadway producer. He and Crosman joined the nascent silent film industry; he was a noted film director in the 1920s. The marriage to Campbell, eight years her junior, was a happy one and ended with his death in 1942. Henrietta Crosman survived her husband by two years, dying in 1944, aged 83. Biographical information for Crosman is archived in the University of Pittsburgh.[15]

Filmography

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Year Title Role Notes
1914 The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch Mrs. Hatch
1915 The Supreme Test Violet Logan
1915 How Molly Made Good Herself cameo appearance
1923 Broadway Broke Madge Foster
1925 Wandering Fires Mrs. Carroll
1930 The Royal Family of Broadway Fanny Cavendish
1933 Pilgrimage Mrs. Hannah Jessop
1934 Carolina Mrs. Ellen Connelly
1934 Three on a Honeymoon 'Ma' Gillespie
1934 Such Women Are Dangerous Aunt Sophie Travers
1934 Among the Missing Aunt Martha Abbott
1934 The Curtain Falls Sarah Crabtree - Lady Scorsby
1934 Elinor Norton Christine Somers
1934 Menace Sybil Thornton
1935 The Right to Live Mrs. Trent
1935 The Dark Angel Granny Vane
1936 Charlie Chan's Secret Henrietta Lowell
1936 Hitch Hike to Heaven Deborah Delaney
1936 The Moon's Our Home Lucy Van Steedan
1936 Girl of the Ozarks Granny Moseley
1936 Follow Your Heart Madame Bovard
1936 Personal Property Mrs. Cosgrove Dabney

References

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  1. ^ Historic Pelham: "Famous 19th and Early 20th Century Actress Henrietta Foster Crosman Lived in Pelham Manor" by Blake A. Bell, Pelham Historian; April 9, 2015 retrieved January 12, 2015
  2. ^ ..see Historic Pelham; Bell, Blake A.
  3. ^ "Henrietta Foster Crosman - Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia". www.wvgenweb.org. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  4. ^ "Theatre in Context Collection | Alexander Street, part of Clarivate". search.alexanderstreet.com. Retrieved September 11, 2023.
  5. ^ Great Stars of the American Stage by Daniel Blum c. 1952 Profile #15
  6. ^ Farmer, Frank J. (December 1900). "Broadway's Latest Theatrical Sensation". Broadway Magazine. VI (3): 162–163. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  7. ^ "NAPIER LOTHIAN, JR., DEAD.; Veteran Theatrical Manager Expires Suddenly of Appoplexy in Boston". The New York Times. January 4, 1903.
  8. ^ The Burr McIntosh Monthly The Burr McIntosh Monthly 1905; accessed May 25, 2013.
  9. ^ The Players Blue Book, 1901, p. 86; accessed May 25, 2013.
  10. ^ Dier, Caroline Lawrence (1932). The Lady of the Gardens: Mary Elitch Long. Saturday Night Pub. Co. p. 56. OCLC 21432197.
  11. ^ Karloff in Saskatchewan morethanamonster.com
  12. ^ Who Was Who In the Theatre: 1912-1976, originally by John Parker, culled from many of his editions published annually (Crosman, Henrietta profile; p. 564)
  13. ^ Pictorial History of the Silent Film by Daniel Blum c. 1953, p. 54
  14. ^ Nissen, Axel (2014). Mothers, Mammies and Old Maids: Twenty-Five Character Actresses of Golden Age Hollywood. McFarland. p. 35. ISBN 9780786490455. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  15. ^ "Henrietta Crosman in As You Like It". Archives and Manuscript Collections at the University of Pittsburgh Library System. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
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