(Excerpt from The Greatest of These
This is the history o...)
Excerpt from The Greatest of These
This is the history of Three Weeks - and that sentence was written to attract your attention. I have it? Then, imprimis: This is the diary of a journey of mercy. Just as everybody can write one book on the war, through the inspiration of what he has seen, so I try this through the stimulus of what I have felt. And because the second book of the suddenly-talented warrior sometimes proves that the muse gave him true voice only once, before the cities and easy liv ing struck him dumb - I shall cheat the muse by writing only one! So whether you run as you read or read and then run, forgive me.
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Laurette Taylor was an American stage and silent film star.
Background
Taylor was born as Loretta Helen Cooney in New York City on April 1, 1884. She was the oldest of three children of James Cooney, a harnessmaker from Ireland, and Elizabeth (Dorsey) Cooney, the daughter of Irish immigrants. She grew up with the fanatical Catholicism, violent temper, drunkenness, and shiftlessness of her father, contrasted with the ambitiousness, willfulness, and love for theatrical gaiety of her dressmaker mother. To the neglect of Loretta's younger siblings, Edward and Elizabeth, the Cooney household centered around the obstinate Loretta.
Education
Expelled from high school for misconduct in her first year, she rebelled against the reality of life in the unhappy Cooney family and lived in a make-believe world of playacting spun from her imagination, her lies, and her talents. Loretta could play the piano by ear, do impersonations, recite, sing, and dance.
Career
At the age of thirteen she made her first, disappointing vaudeville appearances as "La Belle Laurette" in Lynn and Gloucester, Massachussets.
She married a prolific writer and theatrical showman known as "the master of melodrama", Charles Alonzo Taylor. They then toured in his new play, aptly titled Child Wife. Although Laurette played soubrettes and bit parts in her husband's blood-and-thunder productions on tour and in their Seattle stock company, she also acted roles that he had written for her, usually those of innocent, childlike virgins.
From 1901 to 1908, although frustrated by the stereotyped characters and stiff dialogue of Taylor's plays, she nevertheless sought to bring life to her roles in such typical Taylor melodramas as Escape from the Harem, Queen of the Highway, and Rags to Riches. She disciplined herself to believe in the roles she played, to seek the sense of a scene, and to bring imagination and humor to her performances. Laurette did not demand leads, but rather parts that gave her contrast, such as Marguerite in Taylor's adaptation of Faust and Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was reaching not for stardom, but for a versatility that she never achieved.
She deserted her philandering, abusive husband in 1907 and went to New York to further her stage career.
In May 1909 the Broadway critics "discovered" Laurette Taylor as May Keating in The Great John Ganton, by John Hartley Manners, a new English playwright and director. From then until 1911 she worked hard to establish herself, appearing in such plays as The Ring-master, Mrs. Dakon, Alias Jimmy Valentine, The Girl in Waiting, Seven Sisters, and The Bird of Paradise. These mediocre pieces, some not even financially successful, served to develop Laurette's flair for sentimental comedy. As a comedienne, Taylor was able to project wholesomeness, warm-hearted optimism, and soft, gentle charm, coupled with bubbling mischievousness.
Peg, which opened on December 20, 1912, at the new Cort Theatre in New York, was a simple play about a waifish Irish lass transplanted into an aristocratic English family. Critics did not think much of the play; most plays by Manners were considered flimsy and unworthy of Taylor's great talents. As Peg, however, Taylor, with her moments of comedy and pathos and her lilting Irish brogue, provided a rare treat to theatergoers.
After giving 604 consecutive performances in New York, Taylor took Peg to London in 1914, accompanied by her second husband, J. Hartley Manners. After more than a year's run in London, Taylor tired of Peg, but in 1921 she and Manners revived it for a brief American tour. In the minds of audiences she was destined to remain Peg for more than a decade. Companies toured with Peg throughout most of the world, and by 1919 the play had earned more than a million dollars.
Manners was to have great influence upon his wife's career, for she had unswerving faith in his ability as a playwright and found direction and love in his gentle temperament. As a professional team, they were most successful when Manners wrote plays whose leading character resembled the lovable Peg: Jenny in Happiness (December 1917) and " 'Aunted" Annie in Out There (April 1917). When Taylor played heroines of a different cast, the result was usually popular and financial failure; nonetheless, most critics applauded Taylor's performances as Miss Alverstone in The Wooing of Eve (November 1917), Madame L'Enigme in One Night in Rome (December 1919), Marian Hale in The National Anthem (January 1922), and The Visitor in Delicate Justice (November 1927).
During the 1920's Taylor's career started to change. Manners was not writing successful plays and Hollywood beckoned. In 1921 Taylor made Peg into a hit movie. Two other Manners plays, Happiness and One Night in Rome, were made into inconsequential films in 1923 and 1924, respectively. When not in Hollywood, Taylor attempted to broaden her repertoire and lessen her dependency upon Manners by appearing in limited-engagement revivals of such outdated plays as Sweet Nell of Old Drury (May 1923) and Trelawney of the Wells (June 1925). She tried to experiment with new playwrights, appearing as Lissa Terry in Philip Barry's In A Garden (November 1925) and as Fifi Sands in Zoe Akins' The Furies (March 1928).
In February 1923 Fannie Hurst's Humoresque provided Taylor with the type of role she hoped would break her image as a youthful heroine. As Sarah Kantor, an aggressive Jewish mother, Taylor felt that she had achieved new artistic depth, but the play was a box-office flop. Alcohol, moodiness, family disintegration, and plays that did not draw audiences made it impossible for her to regain stardom. After twenty-five years of uninterrupted acting, her personal and professional life reached its ebb with Manners' death on December 19, 1928. Alcohol became an escape from grief, a substitute for her dependency upon Manners, and a mask for her guilt (she had hurt Manners in his last years by revealing her short-lived love affair with screen star John Gilbert). Always an impetuous and sharp-tongued woman, now more than ever she lashed out at professional associates, friends, and family. Her attempts to grip reality by returning to the theater (as in her brief run in March 1932 as Mrs. Grey in Alice Sit-by-the-Fire) foundered. She often failed to appear for rehearsals or learn lines. In the 1930's she became known on the New York theatrical circuit as "unreliable. " In her struggle for self-preservation she turned from acting to writing and authored several insignificant plays: Enchantment, At Marian's, and Fun with Stella. In the summer of 1938 she tried the straw-hat circuit, and in December 1938 she made a successful, but temporary, comeback as Mrs. Midget in a revival of Outward Bound.
In the next six years she continued her battle with alcohol and tried to find herself professionally, waiting for the right role. She found it as Amanda Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, opening in New York on March 31, 1945. As the hard-driving, faded Southern belle, Laurette Taylor presented one of the great performances in American theatrical history, for which she received the Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Donaldson Award. The public glory matched her private victory over tremendous odds. The Glass Menagerie was Laurette Taylor's final gift to the theater. She died in her New York City home of coronary thrombosis and was buried next to Manners in the family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City.
It is unfortunate that the heartbreak in her own life limited Taylor's contribution to the theater and cut her career short. Aside from her days in stock, she played fewer than forty roles. The number and scope of her parts were meager compared to those of such contemporaries as Margaret Anglin and Minnie Maddern Fiske. Further, her career lacked versatility, despite the fact that she was a superb actress in both youthful and mature parts. She shackled her professional growth by acting primarily in the plays of men upon whom she personally depended. When she tried to branch out, such as in a matinee series of scenes from Shakespeare (April 1918) or in the mime piece Pierrot the Prodigal (March 1925), her audiences wanted to see her as Peg. She failed to move with the theater of her time. She did not interest herself in the work of such experimental groups as the Provincetown Players, and she disregarded the innovative work of European directors and playwrights because they failed to fire the imagination of Manners, who was, in essence, a late Victorian writer.
(Excerpt from The Greatest of These
This is the history o...)
Views
Quotations:
"Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them. "
"Acting is the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept. "
"Beautiful women seldom want to act. They are afraid of emotion and they do not try to extract anything from a character that they are portraying, because in expressing emotion they may encourage crow's feet and laughing wrinkles. They avoid anything that will disturb their placidity of countenance, for placidity of countenance insures a smooth skin. "
Personality
She had upturned nose, orange-gold hair, and an impish smile that lit up her hazel eyes.
Connections
When she appeared at the Athenaeum in Boston, she met Charles Alonzo Taylor, a prolific writer and theatrical showman known as "the master of melodrama. " On May 1, 1901, the seventeen-year-old Laurette married Taylor, who was twenty years her senior. But they divorced circa 1910. The Taylors had two children, Dwight Oliver and Marguerite.
On December 22, 1912, she married British-born playwright J. Hartley Manners, who wrote the play Peg o' My Heart. The marriage was successful and Taylor remained married to Manners until his death in 1928.