May Robson (Mary Jeanette Robson) was born in Australia on 19 April, 1858. She was a theatrical and movie actress, and cooperated with authors in writing screen adaptations of some plays in which she had been a member of the cast.
Background
May Robson (Mary Jeanette Robison) was born on 19 April, 1858, at Wagga Wagga near the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales, Australia, the daughter of English parents, Henry and Julia Robison. .
Her father, a former sea captain, had retired and migrated with his family to the Australian bush in an effort to regain failing health; he died three months after Mary's birth. Mrs. Robison took her baby and the older children--two boys and a girl--to St. Kilda, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, and, when Mary was seven, moved to England.
Education
In London, Mary studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Highgate. There she learned to sew; a passion for needlework remained with her throughout her life.
Her education proceeded at the Pension Semboiselle in Brussels and the Pension Passy in Paris.
Career
Left penniless in New York after her husband's death, with a son, Edward, to support, Mary tried painting china and menu cards for Tiffany's, and taught painting. Her earnings were meager, however, and she turned on impulse to the stage. She had had no previous theatre experience, but in her debut on September 17, 1883, at the Grand Opera House, Brooklyn, she played Tilly, a kitchen slavey, in Hoop of Gold so successfully that the manager enlarged the role.
Through a printer's error, her name appeared on the program as May Robson, a form which she retained for luck.
Her first role served in important respects as a prototype for most of the eighty-odd characterizations which she evolved for the stage. She displayed her capacities now in melodrama or realistic plays and again in vaudeville, musical comedy, or burlesque.
Between 1884 and 1901 May Robson played in the stock companies of three famous managers: A. M. Palmer of the Madison Square Theatre, Daniel Frohman of the Lyceum, and Charles Frohman of the Empire.
She also taught character acting at the schools connected with the Frohman theatres and, later, at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.
After leaving Charles Frohman's management in 1901, May Robson searched for a script that would capitalize on her peculiar talents, all the while continuing to play featured roles such as Mrs. Meade in Cousin Billy (1905) and Mrs. Sibsey in The Mountain Climber (1906), both with Francis Wilson. The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary launched her as a star at Scranton, Pennsylvania, on October 8, 1907.
Although New York rejected the piece, she toured the whole of the United States and Canada in it for most of a decade, transporting it in August 1910 to England for an interim stand.
From time to time she tried, with indifferent success, to wean her audiences away to other plays--notably The Three Lights, renamed A Night Out, which she co-authored with Charles T. Dazey. She made a movie of The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary for Cecil B. DeMille, released in 1927.
Her film experience, however, dated back to work with Vitagraph in 1911 and continued on through the late 1920's and '30's, when she supported some of the era's biggest stars.
Although she appeared in such important films as Strange Interlude (1932), Reunion in Vienna (1933), and Dinner at Eight (1933), her greatest single success came in 1933 as Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day.
She was a trouper to the last, continuing to play film roles, despite failing eyesight, until a few months before her death of cancer at the age of eighty-four.
Personality
The auburn-haired beauty May Robson delighted in playing eccentrics, usually elderly or unhandsome. She diverted her painting skills to greasepaint, gaining renown as a makeup expert. Although adept at eliciting tears from her audiences, she excelled in comedy.
A beloved member of the motion picture colony, she was a trouper to the last, continuing to play film roles, despite failing eyesight, until a few months before her death of cancer at the age of eighty-four.
Connections
While home on vacation from the Pension Passy, she met and quickly married Charles Levison Gore. In 1877 they sailed for America and settled in Fort Worth, Texas, where their three children were born. After several years, Gore lost his capital in an unsuccessful venture in livestock and moved his family to New York City. He died soon afterward, and two of the children also died at about this time.
She died at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. , survived by her son, a grandson, and two great-grandchildren.
On May 29, 1889, she was married to Dr. Augustus Homer Brown, police surgeon for New York City. She had no children by this marriage, which lasted until Brown's death in 1920.
She died at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. , survived by her son, a grandson, and two great-grandchildren. Following cremation, her ashes were buried in Flushing, N. Y. , beside those of Dr. Brown.