Otis Skinner was an American stage actor and writer.
Background
He was born on June 28, 1858 in Cambridge, Massachussets, United States, the second of three sons of the Rev. Charles Augustus Skinner, a Universalist minister, and Cornelia (Bartholomew) Skinner. His father traced his descent from Thomas Skinner, a mid-seventeenth-century English settler in Massachusetts; the family's Puritan ancestors included doctors, jurists, and clergymen.
In later years Otis marveled that he and his brothers (Charles, a poet and writer, and William, a painter) could have stemmed from such solid, unartistic forebears. As a small boy in Cambridge, Otis frequently crossed the Charles River with his parents to view the "educational" stage entertainments at the Boston Museum. When he was nine or ten, his father was called to Hartford, Connecticut.
Education
Otis attended the local high school at Hartford, Connecticut, but though he had a fine, inquiring mind and later became an avid reader as well as a graceful prose stylist, he disliked school and left before graduating.
Career
While he worked as an insurance clerk, a shipping clerk, and later as Hartford correspondent for the New York Dramatic News and editor of the Hartford Clarion, his thoughts constantly reverted to the theatre.
On a visit to his brother Charles in New York City he witnessed a gaslit performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and his early ambition to become an actor was strengthened. He read plays assiduously, developed the characters in his spare moments, and gave amateur performances as an "elocutionist and impersonator. " In 1877 a letter of recommendation from the showman P. T. Barnum, an acquaintance of his father, helped the youthful Skinner obtain a position as "utility" actor with the poverty-stricken stock company of William Davidge, Jr. , at the Philadelphia Museum.
During his first season he played ninety-two roles ranging from villains to black servants to frowsy old women in dozens of now-forgotten plays. He spent the next season (1878 - 79) with the more prosperous Walnut Street Theatre stock company in Philadelphia, a group which rehearsed long hours to support such visiting luminaries as Rose Eytinge, Fanny Janauschek, John McCullough, Frank Chanfrau, and Mary Anderson.
In the spring of 1880 he played minor roles for ten weeks with a company formed around Edwin Booth, who became his revered friend and teacher. From 1881 to 1884 Skinner acted with Lawrence Barrett, gradually acquiring such prized roles as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. He finally left Barrett's troupe because he felt he "had begun to lose the emotion of acting" and was taking on Barrett's peculiar mannerisms, defects which he remedied by laboring on the technical facets of his art for five seasons with the celebrated comedy company of Augustin Daly. Supporting there such renowned performers as Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, May Irwin, Ada Rehan, and John Drew, Skinner grew in popularity and dramatic stature.
Barrett, as Booth's business manager, engaged Skinner for second leads in the combined tour (1889 - 90) of Booth and the Polish tragedienne Helena Modjeska. He thus had the opportunity to increase his breadth with roles of dramatic substance, playing Bassanio and Macduff to Booth's Shylock and Macbeth.
Over the next few years he enjoyed many successes in new vehicles as well as in Shakespearean plays and nineteenth-century favorites. His most noteworthy appearances during this period were in His Grace de Grammont (1894), set in Restoration England; Villon the Vagabond (1895), written by Skinner and his brother Charles; Hamlet (1895); Sheridan's The Rivals (1899); a dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson's Prince Otto (1900), Skinner's first New York success as a star; a revival of Francesca da Rimini, an old Barrett favorite (1901); a season of classic comedies with Ada Rehan (1903); and a poetic French drama, The Harvester (adapted by Charles Skinner, 1904).
By 1904 Skinner was an established star on Broadway and in "the provinces. " That year he went under the management of the producer Charles Frohman, who presented him in Henri Lavedan's The Duel (1906) and in a dramatization of Balzac's La Rabouilleuse called The Honor of the Family (1907).
After appearing as a hammy old actor in Your Humble Servant (1910), Skinner went on to his greatest triumph. He played Kismet for three years (in New York and on tour) and made two films of the play, a silent version in 1916 and one with sound in 1930.
In the 1930's Skinner went on tour with Maude Adams, playing Shylock to her Portia, and appeared in several classic revivals presented by The Players, of whom he was a prominent member and sometime vice-president. In 1938 he was elected president of the Episcopal Actors' Guild.
He retired from the stage in 1940. Otis Skinner died of uremic poisoning at his New York City apartment at the age of eighty-three.
He was a devout Episcopalian and a member of the Episcopal Actors Guild.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Otis Skinner was, as Burns Mantle put it, "our most respected link with three generations of the American theatre" (New York Daily News, June 28, 1938).
Connections
On April 21, 1895, Skinner had married his leading lady, Maud Durbin, whom he met when they were both with Modjeska; she died in 1936. Their only child, Cornelia Otis (born in 1902), became a well-known author and actress.