Katharine Cornell

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Katharine Cornell (February 16, 1893-June 9, 1974) was born on February 16, 1893 (although most sources cite the incorrect year of 1898) in Berlin, Germany to American parents, and raised in Buffalo, New York.

[edit] Acting and writing career

She was a stage actress, writer, and theater owner/theatrical producer.

She is noted for her major Broadway roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic. Theirs was a lavender marriage as he was a homosexual and she a lesbian, having had a long on-again off-again affair with Mercedes de Acosta, another relationship with actress Maude Adams, as well as other noted women of the time. [1]

Her most famous role was as English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Other appearances on Broadway included: W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter (1927), Sidney Howard's The Alien Corn (1933), Maxwell Anderson's The Wingless Victory (1936), S. N. Behrman's No Time for Comedy (1939), and a revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife (1951).

Primarily regarded as a tragedienne, she was admired for her refined, romantic presence. One reviewer observed, "Hers is not a robust romanticism, however. It tends toward dark but delicate tints, and the emotion she conveys most aptly is that of an aspiring girlishness which has always been subject to theatrical influences of a special sort." ^[1] Her appearances in comedy were infrequent, and praised more widely for their warmth than their wit. When she appeared in The Constant Wife, critic Brooks Atkinson concluded that she had changed a "hard and metallic" comedy into a romantic drama. ^[2]

Cornell died on June 9, 1974, in Tisbury, Massachusetts at the age of 81.

There is a theater space at the State University of New York at Buffalo named in her honor. Many student productions are presented there year round.

[edit] References

1. ^ Anon. "That Lady". Theatre Arts Monthly February 1950.
2. ^ Brooks Atkinson. Review of The Constant Wife. The New York Times: December 10, 1951.

[edit] External links

• Katharine Cornell at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs from the George Eastman House: [2] [3] [4] [5]