Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs was an American poet, playwright and theatre actress. She hosted a poetry and music program on New York radio station WOR that gained a strong popularity.
Background
Michael was born on October 1, 1890 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Her parents were a socially prominent New York couple, Charles May Oelrichs and Blanche (de Loosey) Oelrichs. In a Roman Catholic ceremony she was christened Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs.
Her paternal grandfather had emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1832, but it was with her mother's family, more recent arrivals who clung to their roots in "gay, autocratic Vienna, " that she more closely identified herself.
Her maternal grandfather had served for twenty years as the Austrian consul general in New York City. Her elder sister, Lily, later returned to Austria as the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Blanche was the youngest of the four children in the household, Lily being ten years older than she, and her brothers being senior by six and eight years. Her father continued the family tradition of banking and maintained his family in the affluent and genteel society of New York and Newport, Rhod Island.
Education
She rebelled against the primness of the schools to which she was sent, was expelled by both the Brearley School in New York and the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville, and completed her education under private tutors.
Career
Observing the public calumny being heaped upon the suffragettes in London, she adopted their cause. Bobbing her hair and assuming the rhetoric of a woman's emancipation, she became a temporary spokesman for the cause, and in 1915 led a march for woman's rights down Fifth Avenue, past a reviewing stand whose occupants included President Wilson. Concurrently, her enthusiasms began to overflow in verse.
From Walt Whitman she borrowed not only the majestic vers libre of her lines but also the benevolent idealism, which coincided with her own aspirations toward a free and democratic American society. Upon placing a poem in the New York Sun, she was approached by a publisher and agreed to collect her poetry into a book. In 1916 Miscellaneous Poems appeared under the pen name Michael Strange. Evidently chosen on impulse, in a moment of dissatisfaction with the appearance of the name Blanche Thomas on the title page, the name was used in all of her ventures in the arts.
Turning her focus from poetry to the drama, she wrote several plays, the most successful of which, Claire de Lune (1921), was produced in New York with John, Ethel, and Lionel Barrymore in the leading roles. The reviews were sufficiently mixed to discourage her for the moment. But on advice given to her by George Bernard Shaw, she started to learn about the theater from the inside, as a journeyman actress.
Joining a New England summer stock company, she performed in a Clyde Fitch play, Barbara Frietchie (1925), and was rewarded by offers from Broadway producers for the next season. Quite aware that she could be exploited merely as a "society woman, " she selected her parts carefully: Eleanora in Strindberg's Easter (1926) and Chrysothemis in Sophocles' Electra (1927), produced by Margaret Anglin. Over the ensuing years she appeared in Man of Destiny (1926), The Importance of Being Earnest (1926), and Richard III (1930).
The performance that brought her greatest recognition, however, was in a Broadway production of Rostand's L'Aiglon (1927), in which the costume of the male page set off her lithe figure and graceful mannerisms to their best advantage. She apparently overextended herself, however, by writing her own double part, male and female, in a short-lived play she called Lord and Lady Byron (c. 1927 - 1928).
Faced with the further erosion of her personal fortune by the Wall Street upheavals of the late 1920's and determined to be self-sufficient, Michael Strange supported herself and her children through a series of lecture tours.
Under the vague heading of "The Stage as the Actress Sees It, " she presented an evolving program of memories of her stage experiences, readings from her poetry, dramatic readings, and patriotic tributes. It made little difference what she did: the audiences paid, attended, and basked in her charm. After several such tours she developed a program of readings set to music, initially with a single harpist, but as she graduated to radio, with full orchestral accompaniment.
She fell ill from leukemia in the late 1940's and died in Boston on November 5, 1950.
She was raised within the conservative Catholicism brought over from Europe by their forebears and were expected to acquire the charm and polish appropriate to their station.
Politics
Her career led her into contact with Norman Thomas in 1932, and she quickly espoused his brand of socialism, explaining that to her it was merely simple democracy and common sense. In 1941, as a further gesture of egalitarian patriotism, she publicly supported the America First Committee.
Personality
Blanche was mischievous as a child, brimming with undisciplined imagination and energy.
Connections
On January 26, 1910 she married a rising young diplomat, Leonard Moorhead Thomas. They had two sons, Leonard Moorhead and Robin May Thomas, but domestic life left her unfulfilled.
She divorced Leonard Thomas in 1919, and embarked upon a tempestuous affair with the actor John Barrymore, which eventually led to their marriage on August 5, 1921. Diana Blythe Barrymore was the child of this marriage. After a period of separation from Barrymore, occasioned in part by his life style and her posture of feminine independence, she divorced him in 1928.
On May 23, 1929, Strange married Harrison Tweed, a prosperous lawyer and yachtsman. She and Tweed were divorced in 1942, and from that date she led a comparatively quiet life in Easton, Connecticut.