Blanche Walsh, the daughter of Thomas P. and Armenia (Savorie) Walsh. was born on the lower East Side of New York, where her father, popularly known as "Fatty" Walsh, was a well-to-do saloonkeeper and Tammany politician. She spent fifteen months of her girlhood in the living quarters of the Tombs, New York's famous prison, where her father then held the position of warden. Her parents (her mother in particular) were inveterate theatre-goers, and Blanche, even when a girl, began to take much interest in amateur acting.
Education
She received a common-school education.
Career
In 1888, at the age of fifteen, she made her first professional appearance in a small part in Bartley Campbell's melodrama, Siberia. Marie Wainwright, then a famous star, became interested in her and took her into her company in 1889, her first appearance in New York being at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in December, as Olivia in Twelfth Night. She was nearly a month short of her seventeenth birthday, but was tall and womanly enough in appearance to play mature parts. She remained with that company three years, playing also Grace Harkaway in Dion Boucicault's London Assurance and Queen Elizabeth in Amy Robsart. She often spoke of Miss Wainwright as her chief mentor in dramatic art. In 1892 she "created" - as the profession has it - the rôle of Diana Stockton in Bronson Howard's popular society drama, Aristocracy, following this with another success, The Girl I Left Behind Me. In January 1895 she went with Nat Goodwin as leading woman, playing in A Gilded Fool, In Mizzoura, David Garrick, The Nominee, The Gold Mine, and Lend Me Five Shillings. A dramatization of Du Maurier's novel, Trilby, was one of the hits of the autumn of 1895. When Virginia Harned, the star in it, was taken ill in 1896, Blanche Walsh assumed her place and completed the season amid much acclaim. She then returned to Goodwin's company and spent the summer with him in Australia, playing her former parts and adding Gringoire and Lydia Languish in The Rivals to the list. Returning to New York in the autumn of 1896, she joined A. M. Palmer's stock company, first appearing in Heartsease. In January 1897, in Straight from the Heart, she played two parts, those of a brother and sister. She once essayed briefly even the part of Romeo. In William Gillette's Secret Service, she went with the company to England. After a brief stay as leading woman with Sol Smith Russell in A Bachelor's Romance, she appeared with the Empire Theatre Stock Company in the winter of 1898-99. In 1899 she joined Melbourne McDowell, and for two years played the Sardou repertoire in which the late Fanny Davenport had long starred - La Tosca, Fédora, Théodora, and Cleopatra. In 1901-03 there followed Marcelle, More Than Queen, Joan of the Sword Hand, and La Madeleine. In 1903 she was cast in the greatest success of her career, and did probably her finest piece of acting in the rôle of the unfortunate servant girl, Maslova, in a dramatization of Tolstoy's novel, Resurrection. Next came another Tolstoy story, The Kreutzer Sonata, which she revived in later years. Among her later plays were The Woman in the Case, The Straight Road, The Test, and The Other Woman. During the last three years of her life, she appeared in one-act plays in vaudeville. She died in Cleveland, Ohio, survived by her husband.
Achievements
Personality
She was tall and had strongly handsome features which lent themselves fairly well to a not too heavy type of masculine characterization.
Connections
She married Alfred Hickman, actor, when he was playing the part of Little Billee with her in Trilby in 1896, divorced him in 1903, and on November 15, 1906, married William M. Travers, also an actor.