Background
Foreign 18 years, Elstner voiced the serial"s title character, described by The New York Times as "the beautiful daughter of an impoverished farmhand who had married above her station in life."
Elstner was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Joseph and Sallie Elstner. She moved from her childhood home at the age of seven, and began a series of moves across the country with her family, as her father, an accountant, moved from job to job.
Education
She attended Senn High School in Chicago for her freshman year before transferring to Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy, a private Catholic all-girls school in Wheeling, West Virginia that was her mother"s alma mater, where she played lead roles in school performances and plays before graduating from the school in 1918.
Career
Moving to New York City, Elstner worked a variety of jobs and enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A role as an understudy in the play Liliom led to her breakout role on Broadway in the 1923 production of Sun-Up. When the farming didn"t work out, she returned to New York in 1928 and was given the opportunity to reprise her lead role in Sun-Up.
She broke into radio in the early 1930s on the half-hour-long serial drama Moonshine and Honeysuckle, which led to a career in which she performed thousands of roles in radio performances.
At one point she was performing on ten different radio programs a day. Her signature role came in 1936, when she was selected from dozens who auditioned for the title role in Stella Dallas, a serial based on the novel of the same name written by Olive Higgins Prouty.
During the show"s run she commuted daily from here home in Stockton, New Jersey, missing only one performance during the show"s 18-year-long run on National Broadcasting Company Radio from 1937 to 1955. The couple operated the restaurant until 1973.
With authority from the show"s producers, she was given permission to rename it as "Stella Dallas" Rivers Edge Restaurant", drawing fans seeking to have the opportunity to meet the proprietor and star.
Elstner died of a stroke on January 29, 1981, at Doylestown Hospital in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Membership
She joined Arthur Godfrey among the 21 members of the first class of honorees inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
