Georgie Cayvan was a popular stage actress in the United States in the later part of the nineteenth century.
Background
Georgie Cayvan was born on August 22, 1857 in Bath, Maine, United States. Going to Boston in childhood with her parents, she early began to appear in public, giving recitations and readings before she was fourteen. By the time she was twenty, and for some years thereafter, she was frequently engaged for entertainments by societies, clubs, and lodges in Boston and vicinity. During this period she was also taking part in amateur dramatic performances, one of her earliest recorded appearances being at Union Park Hall, Boston, May 7, 1874, when, under the auspices of the Mercantile Library Association, she played Miss Mortimer in Naval Engagements, and Georgiana in a condensed version of Our American Cousin.
Education
She studied elocution at a private school in Boston.
Career
Her first professional acting was with the Boston Ideal Opera Company as Hebe in H. M. S. Pinafore at the Boston Theatre, April 14, 1879. On the tenth of the next month she acted Sally Scraggs in Sketches from India for her professional debut in the drama. Thereafter her advance was rapid. She went to New York in 1880, making her debut there on May 7, at the Madison Square Theatre, as Dolly Dutton in Hazel Kirke, later replacing Effie Ellsler in the title character. The next year, after playing Daisy Brown in The Professor at the same theatre, she gained considerable added repute by her acting, in Boston and New York. She went to San Francisco to become leading lady at the California Theatre, and when she returned to New York she replaced Sara Jewett at the Union Square Theatre, playing Marcelle in A Parisian Romance and Jane Learoyd in The Long Strike. At the Madison Square Theatre in 1885, she appeared in Alpine Roses, Young Mrs. Winthrop, and May Blossom, also playing on tour in Divorce, Impulse, and La Belle Russe. Joining the Lyceum Theatre Stock Company, then newly organized, on Nov. 1, 1888, she remained with it as leading lady until the fall of 1894, enlarging her reputation throughout the country, as well as in New York. After retirement on account of ill health she returned to the stage as a star in the season of 1896-97, but with limited success. Her permanent retirement came a little later, and during her last years she was an invalid, her death occurring at Flushing. With an attractive personality, she could always be relied upon to act a character with a certain satisfactory amount of comedy feeling and dramatic insight.
Personality
She was of dark complexion, with expressive eyes that were often more eloquent even than her voice.