Mabel Love
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Mabel Love (October 16, 1874 - May 15, 1953), was a British dancer and stage actress. She was considered to be one of the great stage beauties of her age, and her career spanned the Victorian and Edwardian periods. In 1894, Winston Churchill wrote to her asking for a signed photograph.
[edit] Life and career
The grand-daughter of entertainer William Edward Love, and the second of a former stage actress' three daughters, Love made her stage debut at the age of twelve, at the Prince of Wales Theatre, playing The Rose, in the very first stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In 1887, she played one of the triplet children in Masks and Faces at the Opera Comique, and the same year, she appeared in the Christmas pantomime at Covent Garden.
In March 1889, under the headline Disappearance of a Burlesque Actress, newspaper The Star reported that Love had disappeared, and later, after she had returned home, it was reported that she had gone to the Thames Embankment, considering suicide.
As always, the publicity only increased the public’s interest in her. For the following 30 years, she appeared almost without a pause in a succession of burlesques, pantomimes and musical comedies. Among her successes were, as Francoise in La Cigale, and as Pepita in Caryll’s Little Christopher Columbus. Later, she also appeared at the Folies Bergeres in Paris, and in Man and Superman on Broadway.
Love retired from the stage in 1918 and returned only once. In May, 1938, she played Mary Goss in Profit and Loss at the Embassy Theatre.
