Helena Modjeska
(1844-1909)

Modjeska, [Modrzejewska] Helena [neé Jadwiga Benda; Jawiga Opid] (1840-1909) Polish actress born on October 12th and raised in Krakow. Her widowed mother, Madame Benda, was a teacher and musician. Helena grew up in a household of six talented children. Four became actors, one a musician and one an architect. She became an actress at an early age in her native city where her half-brother was a popular performer. She made her acting debut at an amateur benefit when she was 20. Helena used the name of the family guardian Michal Opid until she became a provincial player in a strolling company managed by Gustave Sinnmayer Modrzejewski who fathered her two children, Rudolf and Marylka. The relationship last a short four years, but with a slight variation in spelling, it provided her with her stage name and she made her professional stage debut in 1861 as Helena Modrzejewska. After the death of her daughter, Helena left Gustave and returned to Krakow with her 4 year old son and joined the resident company of the Krakow municipal theatre. Here her beauty, talent, and dedication to her art soon led to critical recognition of her genius.

In 1868 married a Polish aristocrat, Karol Bozenta Chlapowski (Count Bozenta in America), under whose management she became an international star. Their marriage was a happy one, lasting until Helena's death for than forty years later. When their radical political views became known she fled with him, her 15 year old son Rudolf, and several other political dissidents to America in 1876. After visits to New York theatres and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, they ended up settling in southern California. Their Polish agricultural colony in the little pioneer town of Anaheim was a financial failure in the drought and depression of 1877. A need for quick funds forced Madame Modjeska to learn English quickly and return to the stage. She made her sensational American debut, complete with Polish accent, in San Francisco in August of that year in one of her greatest roles, Scribe’s Adrienne Lecouvreur. This appearance marked her as an important newcomer and she quickly followed this with performances as Ophelia, Juliet and Camille. For her New York debut later that same year, she returned to Adrienne Lecouvreur.

For the next thirty years, despite a slight paralytic stroke in 1897, her career was a series of triumphs, and she became one of the most respected and beloved of all American performers. Through most of her career, Modjeska directed her own company. As his wife's personal manager, Count Bozenta accompanied her everywhere. She and her acting company traveled for nine months each year by railroad, steamship, and horse and buggy. Modjeska appeared in eight performances every week, not only in the great theatres of Boston and New York but also in the makeshift halls and so-called opera houses in rural America. Among her 256 dramatic roles, besides those already mentioned were Magda, Frou-Frou, and Mary Stuart. She became one of America’s most distinguished Shakespearean actresses of the 1880s and 1890s and acted twelve of the bard’s ladies including Rosalind, Viola, Lady Macbeth, and Isabella. In 1883 she appeared in Louisville, KY in America’s first production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. After playing opposite Edwin Booth (1889-90) she toured the United States with Otis Skinner, Maurice Barrymore and Joseph Haworth. 

At the height of her career, Modjeska and her huband established a permanent home in Santiago Canyon, about 60 miles south of Los Angeles. From 1888 until 1906 the couple spent vacations and periods of retirement at their rambling white frame ranch house. Modjeska named the estate Arden, after the forest in Shakespeare's As You Like It.