Background
Her mother, of Scotch-English ancestry, was Sarah Jane Proctor, a servant-maid, who, after being rescued from a mad dog by a French-Canadian cab-driver, Charles La Montagne, married him.
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Clara Morris
Edit ProfileEducation
Clara learned to read and write, however, and in 1862, at fourteen, was engaged by John Ellsler, manager of the Cleveland Academy of Music, as an extra at fifty cents for each public performance.
Career
Mrs. Morrison, as she was known, had a struggle for existence, and the two suffered misery and hardship.
She clipped her name to Clara Morris and began her stage appearances.
In 1869 she went to Cincinnati to play at Wood's Theatre and in the spring of 1870 she appeared at the National Theatre, Louisville, Ky. , with Joseph Jefferson.
By the fall of the year she had reached New York, where she was engaged by Augustin Daly to play in his Fifth Avenue Theatre.
The opening play of the season was Man and Wife.
By chance she was given the leading rôle, Anne Sylvester, which she played with sufficient effect to gain an ovation on the opening night, Sept. 13, 1870.
She remained with Daly until 1873, when she went to A. M. Palmer of the Union Square Theatre.
There, in November 1873, she appeared in The Wicked World.
Her first season as a star took her to the West Coast, after which she returned to Daly's to appear on Nov. 22, 1875, in The New Leah.
In November 1876 she appeared at the Union Square Theatre in Miss Multon, and a year later she appeared at Wallach's Theatre as Jane Eyre.
Thereafter "season followed season until she was known throughout the United States as the most prominent if not the greatest emotional actress on the American stage" (Clapp and Edgett, post, p. 266).
Her rôles included Camille, Lady Macbeth, Alixe, Blanche de Chelles in The Sphinx, Mercy Merrick in The New Magdalen, Cora in L'Article 47, and Fanny Ten Eyck in Divorce.
It was said of her that she could draw bigger houses on short notice than any other actress, and in certain parts she excited and moved her audiences.
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The structure of it was perplexed by aimless wanderings across the scene, motiveless posturings, facial contortions, wailing vocalization, extravagant gesture, and spasmodic conduct--as of a haphazard person taking the uncertain chance of somehow coming out right at last. "
"Nym Crinkle, " commenting in the New York World after seeing her in Camille, wrote: "The wet eyes, the sobs, the hysterical tremor like a little wave of electricity that went through the house.
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Nothing like it when Bernhardt or Modjeska plays Camille.
Why?
I give it up.
Criticism has wrestled with that condition in and out of season--how she can play upon all sensibilities and sweep as with supernatural fingers the whole gamut of emotions, passes critical knowledge" (World, Sept. 25, 1885).
When she left the stage she retired to her home, "The Pines, " in Riverdale, N. Y.
As her finances waned she took up writing for magazines and papers, and published some separate works.
Included among these are: A Silent Singer (1899), a volume of short stories; Life on the Stage (1901); A Pasteboard Crown (1902); and The Life of a Star (1906).
In 1909 her eyesight failed.
After five years of blindness she partially regained her vision.
I, and Vagrant Memories (1915); T. A. Brown, A Hist.
of the N. Y. Stage (1903), vols.
II and III; J. B. Clapp and E. F. Edgett, Players of the Present (1900); J. R. Towse, Sixty Years of the Theatre (1916); Brander Matthews and Lawrence Hutton, Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the U. S. (1886); John Parker, Who's Who in the Theatre, 1922; Theatre Arts Monthly, Jan. 1926; N. Y. Times, Sept. 15, 1870, Nov. 21, 1925, Oct. 28, 1927. ]
Personality
To another critic she was a marvel of cunning.
Connections
The marriage was discovered to be bigamous after three children had been born, the eldest of whom was Clara.
The mother assumed her grandmother's maiden name, Morrison, and fled to Cleveland, Ohio, with Clara.
The other children were adopted: the daughter by a family in Buffalo; the son, who died at six, by a family in Cleveland.
Her husband died in 1914, her mother in 1917, and she herself passed away in 1925 in New Canaan, Connecticut, and was buried from "The Little Church Around the Corner. "
Her property, which would have escheated to the state, finally went to her sister, whom Clara Morris had been unable to trace during her own lifetime.
