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Annie
Russell
(1864-1936)
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| "All
who saw Miss Russell know how sweet
she was either in comedy or in
pathetic plays, and will recall
gratefully her charm, her grace, her
exquisite voice, her genuine dramatic
power." George Odell |
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Russell, Annie
(1864-1936) Dubbed the
"Duse of the English-speaking
stage" she was born in Liverpool,
England but raised in Canada, this
"frail, darkish woman with a
slightly lugubrious face", she
made her stage debut in 1872 in
Montreal playing opposite the
temperamental American actress Rose
Eytinge in Miss Multon a
play built on a French version of East
Lynne. Her New
York debut came in 1879 as Josephine
in a juvenile traveling company of H.M.S.
Pinafore. After that she toured
all over North and South America as
well as Australia. In 1881 she scored
a huge success in New York with her
brilliant portrayal of the girl whose
newly rich parents would prevent her
from making a love match in Esmeralda.
Due to illness she retired from the
stage for three season but returned in
1894 and regained her popularity. When
she was thirty-two in 1896 she played
the role of a girl who marries a man
she does not love to escape the
brutality of her father in Bret
Harte’s Sue and the
daughter of a kleptomaniac in Clyde
Fitch’s The Girl and the Judge
in 1901. She first played London in
1898 and in 1905 created Shaw’s
heroine in Major Barbara. She
gave memorable performances as Puck in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(1906), Viola in Twelfth Night
(1909) and Beatrice in Much Ado
About Nothing (1912). In her final
active years she organized the Old
English Comedy Company where she
played such roles as Kate Hardcastle,
Beatrice, Lydia Languish and Lady
Teazle in School for Scandal.
She retired in 1918 to head the
dramatic program at Rollins College,
Winter Park, FL where subsequently a
theatre (The
Annie Russell Theatre) was named in her honor. |
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Esmeralda |
Portrait |
as
Puck |
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| Portrait |
Mice
& Men Poster |
Mice
& Men |
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| Postcard |
Portrait |
Portrait |
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| Portrait |
Portrait |
A
Royal Family |
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| The
Imposter Poster 1910 |
Portrait |
The
Annie Russell Theatre,
Winter Park,FL
Winter Park, FL |
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Joseph
Haworth & Annie Russell |
| Joseph
Haworth co-starred with Annie Russell
in Bret Harte’s
Sue,
which opened at Hoyt’s
Theatre on September 15, 1896. It
marked Haworth’s return to
commercial New York theatre after
nearly two years of classical
performances in Boston-based
productions. It represented an
artistic risk for Joe because the role
of Ira
Beadsley was the title character’s
loutish and largely unsympathetic
husband, but he played the part with
great success. Joseph Haworth wrote
charmingly of Annie Russell:
"And for bonnie
Annie Russell ‘I would lay me down
and dee,’ but that I fear being
considered a plagiarist. Nevertheless
her eccentricity consists in making
all her associates think it, even if
their coward conscience prevents its
utterance. Yet she is not all angelic,
for practical jokes awaken in her a
responsive chord not in the repertoire
of cherubs.
"In the second
act of Sue she mixes a cocktail
for the edification of the sheriff and
his constable; one night someone
substituted a bottle of dandelion
bitters for the sweetened water. Being
forced to take it first she realized
that something was wrong, and
simultaneously entered into the spirit
of the joke, and put an extra dose in
the sheriff’s glass. Making her exit
in the most conventional manner, she
joined the other members of the
company and fiendishly watched the
unfortunate sheriff quaff it off at a
single draught. I was sitting on the
edge of the wall; the sheriff looked
at me and I tumbled backward, head
foremost in." |
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