Maxine Elliott was born on February 5, 1871, in Rockland, Maine, United States. Her real name was Jessie Carolyn Dermot, and she was the eldest daughter among four children of Thomas Dermot (formerly McDermott), a sea captain, and Mary Adelaide (Hall) Dermot. Both her parents were of Irish descent.
At the age of fourteen, after being tutored by her mother, Maxine entered a class of older girls at the Notre Dame Academy, Roxbury, Massachusetts, where she took a prominent part in theatrical entertainments.
In 1886, she accompanied her father on a long voyage to Spain and South America, continuing her studies on his ship.
It was Boucicault who gave Jessie the stage name of Maxine Elliott. After appearing as a super with the company of A. M. Palmer, she played small roles at Palmer's Theatre, New York, in The Middleman, on November 10, 1890, and John Needham's Double, on February 4, 1891, both plays starring the English actor E. S. Willard.
The next season, she continued to support Willard, acting such parts as Lady Gilding in The Professor's Love Story. In the fall of 1894, she joined the touring company of Rose Coughlan, gaining good experience in the important roles of Dora in Diplomacy, Grace Harkaway in London Assurance, Alice Varney in Forget-Me-Not, and Mrs. Allenby in A Woman of No Importance.
In January 1895, she was engaged by Augustin Daly and played a variety of parts at his New York theatre, improving greatly in finesse and stage carriage. On July 2, 1895, she made her first appearance on the London stage at Daly's Theatre, acting Sylvia in Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Leaving Daly's company, she appeared as Eleanor Cuthbert in A House of Cards at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, March 23, 1896, and then spent the summer in San Francisco, performing at the Columbia Theatre in Tim Frawley's stock company.
With her younger sister Gertrude Elliott, whom she had persuaded to go on the stage in 1894, she joined Nat (Nathaniel C. ) Goodwin in 1896 and toured Australia with him, returning to America in 1897, as his leading lady.
The death of a younger brother, Louis W. Dermot, who was lost at sea in February 1903, while serving as mate on a British bark, caused her temporary retirement, but at the Garrick Theatre, New York, on September 28, 1903, she made a hit as Georgiana Carley in Her Own Way.
This play, written for her by (William) Clyde Fitch, launched her as a star, and she repeated her success in it at the Lyric Theatre, London, April 25, 1905, Edward VII requesting an introduction after seeing her as Georgiana. It was her beauty in this part that prompted Ethel Barrymore to call her "the Venus de Milo with arms. "
For the next ten years, Maxine Elliott starred on the New York and London stages, chiefly in drawing-room comedy. In 1911, she returned to England, bought an estate, Hartsbourne Manor at Bushey, set up residence for herself and the family of her younger sister Gertrude, later the wife of the noted actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, and embarked on a brilliant career in British society, which had first opened its doors to her when she was acting with Goodwin.
Her appearance as Zuleika in Joseph and His Brethren with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree at His Majesty's Theatre, London, September 2, 1913, was a triumph, but it marked the end of her theatrical career, except for occasional roles between 1917 and 1920.
In 1917, she broke off her war work to make two American films for Goldwyn Pictures, and in 1918-19, she toured this country with William Faversham in Lord and Lady Algy. Her last professional appearance on the stage took place at her own theatre, February 2, 1920, when she played Cordelia in Trimmed in Scarlet.
Thereafter, she spent most of her time on the Riviera, entertaining so many members of the British aristocracy that her villa at Cannes became known as "The House of Lords. "
She died at the age of sixty-nine at Cannes, after having suffered a coronary thrombosis the previous summer, and was buried there in the Protestant Cemetery.
Besides her villa, Chateau de l'Horizon, near Cannes, built at a cost of $350, 000, and important properties in New York and at Bushey, she left a 339, 000 estate. In 1924, at the marriage of her niece and namesake, the eldest daughter of Forbes-Robertson, she had given the bride half a million dollars.
Maxine Elliott was never as capable an actress as her beloved and less attractive sister Gertrude, in part because she relied too much on her famous beauty, in part because she lacked the ambition to excel in her profession.
She always disliked the stage and never considered herself anything more than an entertainer.
Within her range of polite comedy, she was technically proficient. But her acting lacked warmth; it was mechanical.
She was, however, an excellent businesswoman, as her fortune attests, and turned her theatre into a very profitable venture. Though obviously jealous of her success, Goodwin after their divorce acknowledged that she was one of the cleverest women he had ever known and described her as having "the ambition of a Cleopatra, " the dignity of a Joan of Arc, and the "assertive quality" of a Nero.
Maxine Elliott married George A. McDermott, a lawyer, and began under Dion Boucicault to prepare for a stage career.
For several years, she supported Goodwin, whom she married on February 20, 1898, having obtained a divorce from McDermott two years previously.
After The Altar of Friendship in 1902, she and Goodwin went their separate ways, Goodwin divorcing her in 1908.
