Background
Edna Wallace Hopper was born as Edna Margaret Augusta Wallace on January 17, 1872 in San Francisco, California, United States. She was the daughter of Josephine and Waller Wallace.
Edna Wallace Hopper was born as Edna Margaret Augusta Wallace on January 17, 1872 in San Francisco, California, United States. She was the daughter of Josephine and Waller Wallace.
Little is known about Hopper's early life or education; it is recorded that she attended the Van Ness Seminary in San Francisco.
Hopper first appeared in New York City on August 17, 1891, in a featured role in The Club Friend, a musical comedy. Captivated by her charm and zest, the prominent theatrical manager Charles Frohman hired her for his stock company. After she had appeared in three of his productions, he persuaded his friend David Belasco, the foremost writer-producer of the day, to write a comedy for her; and on January 25, 1893, Edna Wallace opened Belasco's ornate Empire Theater with The Girl I Left Behind Me. A great critical and popular success, she went on to appear in a series of popular musical entertainments and extravaganzas, including El Capitan, The Silver Slipper, Jumping Jupiter, Girl o' Mine, Chums, and other.
Playing an assortment of enterprising, high-spirited characters and several times assuming the roles of boys, Hopper never ventured out of the popular mold. She made her career in plays that were meant only to entertain and seemed entirely pleased to confine her talents to purely escapist and ephemeral popular theater. Throughout the 1890s and into the first decade of the century, she was the toast of the town, courted by dukes and millionaires, applauded by the press and an adoring public. Every play in which she appeared was a hit. Her most popular was Floradora, which opened on November 10, 1900; the show is a landmark because it introduced the chorus line to the Broadway stage. Since she played Lady Holyrood, she was not part of the legendary Floradora Sextette, the original members of which all married millionaires. The life stories of the Floradora girls created the enduring myth of the gold-digging chorine. Hopper was wooed by most of the prominent playboys of the period.
Hopper made sporadic appearances in the usual "girl and music" shows until 1920, when she starred in a play that quickly closed. While realizing that her career as a Broadway star was over, she was not ready to abandon performing. Throughout the 1920s she went on a series of vaudeville tours to publicize a cosmetics firm bearing her name. The cosmetics were made from formulas created by her mother. Shrewdly promoted, her widely popular tours featured advertisements such as "Special Matinee for Women Only" and "See Her in Bed-Bath-Exercise, in a Most Elaborate Production Including $5, 000 Bath Furnishings. " It was at this time that Hopper began to cultivate the image of eternal youth, gleefully billing herself as the "Eternal Flapper. "
In 1927 she underwent what she called a process of "rejuvenation. " It was the first of her three face-lifts. She had the operation filmed and announced to the press that her physicians had pronounced her as "mentally and physically but fifteen years old. " She then embarked on an eight-year tour of film houses where she taught women "how to remain young and beautiful, or how to regain youth and become beautiful. " As part of her act, to impress her audiences with her youthful zest, she did acrobatic dancing.
Hopper had lost her fortune in 1919, and in the mid-1930s she lost most of her money again through stock market speculation. But once more she proved resilient and resourceful. This time she turned to Wall Street rather than the stage; in 1938 she decided to make investing in the stock market her third career and remained with it until her death. She was such a shrewd and steady customer at the brokerage house of L. F. Rothschild that the firm invited her to make her offices with them. For the last nineteen years of her life, she conducted daily transactions at a desk in the firm's boardroom. By 1953 she had quadrupled her capital.
Going to work every morning by subway, the ninety-year-old former entertainer dressed flamboyantly, retaining the fondness that she had developed at the turn of the century for girlish hats, high heels, and frills. Hopper returned to the stage for a sentimental appearance in June 1953, when the Empire Theater was to be demolished. She skipped on stage in the same role that Belasco had created for her sixty years before, in The Girl I Left Behind Me, stunning the audience by her apparent defiance of time. She died of pneumonia on December 14, 1959 in New York City.
Quotations: "My secret? It's leading a normal, full life. I keep busy. I take exercise. I've never smoked. I never drink. I eat sensible things, lots of proteins and no fats. I go to bed early during the week, not later than 9:30, and I get up at 6:30. Weekends, I entertain or am entertained. "
Hopper delighted New York theatergoers with her energetic, good-natured characterizations, her impish sense of humor, and her dainty beauty.
She prided herself on her perpetual youth. She never revealed her age, maintaining that the records of her birth were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake.
In appearance she was less than five feet tall and never weighted more than eighty-five pounds. She had a vivacious personality, grey-blue eyes, a good set of legs which she frequently displayed, and a light singing voice.
The noted comedian William DeWolf Hopper married Edna on January 28, 1893. Although they were divorced in 1898, she retained her husband's name for the rest of her life. On November 25, 1908, she married Albert Oldfield Brown, a stockbroker and later, a theatrical manager. They separated in 1913 but were reunited briefly in 1927. She had no children from either marriage.