Lotta Crabtree was an American actress, entertainer, and comedian. She was also a philanthropist. In the 1880s she was one of the highest paid actresses in America.
Background
Lotta Crabtree was born on November 07, 1847 in New York City, New York, United States. He was the daughter of John Ashworth Crabtree, a bookseller, and Mary Ann (Livesey) Crabtree, both of whom came of Lancashire stock. Caught by the gold fever, Crabtree left for California early in the fifties. His wife and Lotta followed in 1853, arriving in San Francisco at a climax in that free outburst of theatricals which had become one of the astonishing features of life on the Coast in those years. Handsome theatres had been built; the major theatrical talent of the period had hastened to California. Mrs. Crabtree was a woman of unusual enterprise, resourcefulness, and native wit. With Lotta she soon joined her husband at the flourishing mining camp of Grass Valley and there met Lola Montez, who taught Lotta to dance. At Lola’s cottage both Lotta and Mrs. Crabtree met traveling players.
In 1855, at Rabbit Creek, a remote, wild camp in the Sierras where Crabtree had gone in further search for gold, Lotta made her first appearance on the stage as a child of eight, dancing and singing in a rude hall before the assembled miners, who showered her with gold nuggets. Mrs. Crabtree learned to play the triangle, and with Lotta joined a small company of troupers, setting out in the spring of the same year through the mountains, traveling by wagon or on the backs of mules. For the next few years Lotta made many such tours, with highly-colored adventures on the road and unbroken success in the mining camps. Her tiny figure, bright black eyes, and mop of red hair, her blackface impersonations, her intricate step-dancing, charmed the exacting audiences of miners.
Career
In 1859 Lotta began long engagements at the variety halls of San Francisco. Five years later, still hardly more than a child, she left for the East. After a mistaken venture in New York and mouths of hard travel in the soutli and middle west, she attracted the attention of John Brougham, who dramatized for her scenes from The Old Curiosity Shop, under the title of Little Nell and the Marchioness. With her appearance in the doubled roles at Wallack’s in New York in 1867, her widespread popular triumphs began. Her plays were all slight in idea and plot; they were given character by Lotta’s gift for extravaganza. Her comic faculty seemed boundless. In the mining camps she had gained a free, infectious humor; she had also learned there the power of intimate communication with an audience. Her dancing and by-play were often considered daring, but she gave an innocent distinction to her most piquant innovations, and became an outstanding figure in the growing native art of burlesque and extravaganza.
Almost unbelievably child-like in appearance, known affectionately only as “Lotta, ” she remained a favorite throughout the country for many years. The only break in her long success came in 1888, when an unfortunate combination of circumstances brought her almost to the brink of failure in England. She triumphed in spite of these, returned to the United States, and continued on the stage until 1891.
Upon her retirement Lotta became a comparatively solitary figure. Her life off stage had always been in marked contrast to her public career. Widely beloved, she had bad few close friendships. Her single companion had been her mother, who had directed her early stage successes, and had managed her business affairs astutely. Her immense wealth—even at the end of her early California period she had possessed a comfortable fortune— was the cause of a fantastic episode after her death. All the members of her immediate family had died; she left no direct heirs. A woman who claimed to be her daughter by a secret marriage precipitated one of the most remarkable will contests of recent years. The claim was proved wholly fraudulent, however, and Lotta Crabtree’s large fortune was bequeathed mainly to charity.