Elisabeth "Bessie" Marbury was an American theatrical and authors' agent.
Background
Elisabeth Marbury was the second daughter and youngest of five children of Francis Ferdinand and Elizabeth (McCoun) Marbury, and was born on June 19, 1856 in New York City. At ten she gave an illustrated lecture on the solar system to her child friends, charging five cents admission and using a lantern and slides belonging to her scholarly father, a prominent attorney. She was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and met many of the distinguished persons of the day who lived in or visited New York City.
Education
She was educated in private schools and at home.
Career
Daniel Frohman, then a well-known producer, advised her to develop her business qualities. Frances Hodgson Burnett had just written Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Miss Marbury, finding that the author was a woman of little business ability with no knowledge of the theatre, promptly applied for and obtained a position as her agent or manager, a post she held for several years. She also went to Paris and obtained the right to handle in America the dramas of Victorien Sardou, then enormously popular. Her honesty and success with his work brought her other French clients in the years that followed Feydeau, Meilhac, Halévy, Richepin, Pailleron, Moreau, de Croisset, Lavedan, Montesquiou, Rostand, and others. She was twice decorated by the French Government for services rendered to French authors. In 1903 Miss Marbury and her longtime friend, Elsiede Wolfe, actress and interior decorator, purchased the Villa Trianon, an adjunct of the Royal Park at Versailles, and it became their French home. It was remodeled and decorated by Miss de Wolfe and became world-famous for its beauty and the hospitality of its hostesses. Miss Marbury also became the American representative for such British authors as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Hall Caine. She encouraged and marketed in America some of the first dramatic works of other Englishmen, including W. Somerset Maugham, Jerome K. Jerome, J. M. Barrie, and Stanley Weyman. It was she who persuaded Barrie to make Babbie the leading character of the play, The Little Minister, rather than the minister, so that it might be a vehicle for Maude Adams, then a rising star under the management of another client of Miss Marbury's, Charles Frohman. She introduced the work of Rachel Crothers to the stage and for years handled all the plays of Clyde Fitch. She also brought the dancing couple, Vernon and Irene Castle, to New York and thus gave them their greatest fame. In partnership with F. Ray Comstock and Lee Shubert she became a producer of musical comedy on an "intimate" scale, with a comparatively small chorus, and with every girl dressed differently. Miss Marbury herself designed many of the costumes. The scores of these productions, beginning with Nobody Home and continuing with Very Good, Eddie and Love o' Mike, were written for the stage by Jerome Kern. Early in 1914 Miss Marbury had taken in some associates and incorporated her business as the American Play Company.
During the early years of the First World War she and Miss de Wolfe turned their home at Versailles into a hospital. In 1919 Secretary of the Interior Lane sent Miss Marbury to Europe to present to the American soldiers who were being sent home at long intervals his plan by which they were to buy land from the government. From this task she passed into the employ of the Knights of Columbus, serving among the soldiers still in France and Germany. She continued at her business until a short time before her death. Among her published writings are Manners; a Handbook of Social Customs (1888); The Faith of France (1918), translated from the French of Maurice Barrès; My Crystal Ball (1923), an autobiography; and numerous articles contributed to magazines.
Achievements
Politics
She had become active in New York City politics in 1918-19, and in 1920 she was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She became a Democratic national committeeman, fought the prohibition law ardently, and attended her last national convention in 1932, when she had become so enormously corpulent that she could scarcely walk.
Personality
She first visited Europe when she was sixteen, and she crossed the Atlantic about seventy times thereafter. At twenty-five, when living with her family in New York, she became interested in a new invention, the incubator. She bought one, set it up in her bedroom, and hatched a hundred chicks, of which eighty-seven survived. She took them to the family farm on Long Island, where she founded a thriving poultry business, became an exhibitor, and took many prizes on her fowls. She was also active in social, religious, and literary club life, welfare work, and athletics. A devotee of the theatre since childhood, in 1885 she managed a charity benefit performance which brought in $5, 000.