Lillian Russell was an American comic opera prima donna and internationally famous beauty. She was the foremost singer of operettas and musical theatre in the United States, performing continuously through the end of the 19th century.
Background
Lillian Russell was the daughter of Charles E. and Cynthia (Howland) Leonard and was named Helen Louise. Her father was a newspaper and book publisher, and her mother an ardent and well-known feminist. The future toast of Broadway, one of five daughters, was born in Clinton, Iowa. In 1865 the family removed to Chicago.
Education
"Nellie" was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and at Park Institute, a finishing school. Ambitious to become an opera singer, she studied singing in New York under Leopold Damrosch.
Career
In 1879 Lillian made her first stage appearance in the chorus of Edward E. Rice's Pinafore company. The following year saw her real debut. Tony Pastor had heard her sing at a friend's house, and offered her seventy-five dollars a week to appear at his Bowery variety theater. She first appeared there on November 22, 1880, billed as "Lillian Russell, the English Ballad Singer, " and made a favorable impression with her clear young soprano voice and vivacious personality. The stage name then chosen was retained for the remainder of her professional career.
After further study, both vocal and dramatic, and a California tour as the lead in Babes in the Wood, she returned to New York to achieve her first real success as D'Jemma in Edwin Audran's The Great Mogul: or, the Snake Charmer, which opened on October 29, 1881.
In June 1883, she eloped to London with Edward Solomon, an English Jew who wrote comic operas. At the time she was playing in The Princess of Trebizonde, and her departure was entirely unexpected. She made her London debut at the Gaiety Theatre, on July 16, 1883, playing in Virginia and Paul, by Solomon.
From the time of her return to the United States in 1884, the popularity of "airy, fairy Lillian" mounted rapidly. Beauty of face and figure and an excellent natural voice--not highly trained, nor adapted to grand opera--were her chief assets. An unfailing flair for publicity added to her box-office appeal. She kept herself constantly in the public eye--in one season she signed five contracts and broke four of them; in another, she sought a permanent injunction restraining any manager from requiring her to appear in silk tights.
Probably the most difficult parts she sang were Fiorella in Offenbach's The Brigands (1889), and the title role in the same composer's The Grand Duchess (1890). She specialized in the type of comic opera in which only the soprano lead was of importance, and in which practically no dramatic ability was required.
In 1899 a new phase of Lillian Russell's career began. She joined the burlesque company of Weber and Fields, and played with them for several seasons in such offerings as Fiddle-dee-dee and Whoop-dee-doo. She left the company only when it was broken up by a quarrel between Weber and Fields.
After an appearance as Lady Teazle in a musical version of The School for Scandal in 1904-05, and a brief interlude in vaudeville, she tried straight comedy. Her first venture in this field, Barbara's Millions, which reached Broadway on October 8, 1906, was a complete failure. Later she appeared in Wildfire, a melodrama of the race-track, which was a tremendous success, first on the road and then in New York. In 1912 she joined the Weber and Fields Jubilee Company to appear in Hokey-Pokey. After that her professional career, except for occasional vaudeville engagements, was ended.
The last ten years of her life saw such varied activities as the writing of beauty articles for the woman's page of the Chicago Herald and the Chicago Daily Tribune, and Liberty Loan and Red Cross work during the World War years. In 1920 she took the stump for Warren G. Harding, who sent her abroad in 1922 on a special mission to investigate immigration problems. She submitted a report favoring future restriction and temporary suspension of immigration. Her death in Pittsburgh was due to complications following a fall on shipboard while returning to the United States.
Achievements
Personality
Her extraordinary loveliness is borne out by photographs and by everything written about her lifetime.
Quotes from others about the person
A critic said about her role in "Barbara's Millions": "Singers, as a rule, are incompetent to act. Miss Russell furnishes no exception to the rule" (New York Tribune, Oct. 9, 1906, p. 7).
Connections
In 1880 Lillian had married Harry Braham, conductor of Rice's Pinafore orchestra, but separated from him shortly thereafter. Braham then divorced her in New York. She and Edward Solomon were married in Hoboken on May 10, 1884. There was one child of this marriage, a daughter. Subsequently it developed that Solomon had never been legally separated from his first wife. Lillian Russell left him in 1886, and later brought suit in New York for an annulment, which was granted on November 16, 1893. Her attorney was the notorious Abe Hummel.
On January 21, 1894, Lillian Russell was married, in Hoboken, to John Haley Augustin Chatterton, known on the stage as Signor Perugini and then playing as her leading man in The Princess Nicotine. In May of the same year both announced that they would never live together again, and on October 23, 1898, Perugini finally obtained a divorce.
On June 1912 she was married in Pittsburgh to Alexander Pollock Moore, publisher of the Pittsburgh Leader and, after her death, ambassador to Spain.