Background
Jeanne Eagels was born on June 26, 1894 in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. She was the daughter of Edward Eagels, a carpenter, and Julia (Sullivan) Eagels.
(Adulteress Leslie Crosbie fires a bullet into her lover t...)
Adulteress Leslie Crosbie fires a bullet into her lover then, for good measure, five more. At trial, her plaintive testimony tilts the jury toward acquittal. Then scheming Leslie learns someone has a telltale letter she wrote to her paramour. Starring in the 1929 screen tale of Somerset Maugham's The Letter is the actress who made a name for herself as the stage's Sadie Thompson in Maugham's Rain: Jeanne Eagels. As Bette Davis did when she famously played Leslie 11 years later, Eagels earned a Best Actress Oscar(r) nomination for her volatile performance. Eagels tragically died six months after the film; today it remains the lone available talkie testament to her talent. Kim Novak played Eagels in 1957's biopic Jeanne Eagels.When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
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Jeanne Eagels was born on June 26, 1894 in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. She was the daughter of Edward Eagels, a carpenter, and Julia (Sullivan) Eagels.
Mrs. Eagels, a former school-teacher, accompanied and tutored her daughter, whose public school education had ended abruptly after her first stage appearance.
At an early age she commenced a stage career, appearing with O. D. Woodward’s stock company as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The next eight years she spent touring through small towns of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, principally with the Michelson and Levinsky tent company, and playing a wide variety of roles in such plays as, For Home and Honor, The Octoroon, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Jeanne’s experiences were colorful and exciting during this apprenticeship of barnstorming in cabooses.
Her facility at impersonating famous actresses of the day, a talent she always feared, brought her to the attention of Anna Held, who was greatly impressed by the slight, gawky girl, with her long yellow hair and gray eyes.
In 1911 she came to New York and in a few weeks was engaged for a small part in Jumping Jupiter, a musical show.
Her second part was Olga Cook in The “Mind- the-Paint” Girl, at the Lyceum in 1912.
Her beauty caused Florenz Ziegfekl to offer her a place in the chorus of the Pollies at $150 a week, but although she was receiving only $35 she declined, saying, “I am a dramatic actress. ”
John Emerson, then in the Frohman offices, gave her the assignment in her second Broadway play, impressed by what she herself termed her “tremendous nerve. ”
The first important part she played was in the Elsie Ferguson role of The Outcast, when that play went on tour in the season of 1915-16.
After this she appeared as George Ar- Iiss’s leading lady in three plays, and in David Belasco’s success, Daddies.
In 1922 began her four years’ engagement, under the management of Sam H. Harris, as Sadie Thompson in Rain, one of the outstanding characterizations of the decade.
She played her last legitimate stage role for Gilbert Miller in Her Cardboard Lover, the engagement ending in her suspension for eighteen months by the Actor’s Equity Association, in April 1928, because of her failure to appear in the play in Milwaukee and St. Louis.
When her tour thus came to a sudden close, she turned over her home at Ossining to her supporting English cast.
Her frail physique and an extremely nervous condition, which caused her to be treated by a nerve specialist for nine years before her death, were probably responsible for many of the scenes she created.
In the summer of 1924, she had hysterics at Southampton when English customs inspectors questioned her.
She twice interrupted performances in Her Cardboard Lover, once to have a stage door closed, the second time to have a drink of water.
She was the star of Man, Woman and Sin, directed by Monta Bell for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, and of The Letter and Jealousy for Paramount.
She was under contract to the latter company for another dialogue picture when she died at the Park Avenue Hospital, New York City.
Her death was ascribed by her personal physician to “a nervous toxic disorder. ”
During the sensational run of Rain for nearly 1, 500 performances, she missed but eighteen.
(Adulteress Leslie Crosbie fires a bullet into her lover t...)
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Ambitious and industrious, she told friends when she was being featured by Belasco, “I’m just beginning and this is not enough. ”
Eagels was married twice. Her first marriage was to actor Morris Dubinsky whom she married when she was a teenager. The couple reportedly had a son who either died (causing Eagels to have a nervous breakdown) or who was given up for adoption after the couple separated.
She was married to Edward Harris Coy, a former captain of the Yale football team, in August 1925 at the home of Fay Bainter in Stamford, Connecticut. Their marriage proved happy for a time, but in June 1928 she instituted divorce proceedings in Chicago, charging cruelty. The charges not being contested, she was granted a divorce on July 14.