Margaret Anglin

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Margaret Anglin, 1914

Mary Margaret Anglin (April 3, 1876 - January 7, 1958) was a Canadian-born Broadway actress, director and producer whom Encyclopædia Britannica calls "one of the most brilliant actresses of her day."

Margaret Anglin was born in Ottawa, Ontario, one of nine children of newspaper editor and politician Timothy Warren Anglin (1822-1896) who at the time of her birth was the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons. Her older brother, Francis Alexander Anglin (1865-1933) served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1924 to 1933.

Ms. Anglin attended Catholic convent schools in Montreal, and then in Toronto, where her family moved in 1883. At age seventeen she attended acting school in New York City where she studied under Nelson Wheatcroft. Her acting skills brought the attention of theatre impresario Charles Frohman who provided her with the opportunity to make her professional stage debut in 1894 in the Bronson Howard production of "Shenandoah." She went on to make her first Broadway theatre appearance in the 1898 production of "Lord Chumley" then achieved considerable fame that year on tour portraying "Roxane" in the Edmond Rostand play, Cyrano de Bergerac.

By 1905 she had gained wide recognition for her acting skills and in December of that year the New York Times reported that, following a benefit matinee for the Jewish sufferers in Russia, the doyenne of the stage Sarah Bernhardt asked Anglin to perform with her in the Maurice Maeterlinck play Pelléas et Mélisande. The blessing by the great Bernhardt sealed Margaret Anglin's reputation as the new star of American theatre.

Inspired by reading the classics and a love for the Greek tragedies that centered on women, Margaret Anglin became the dominant dramatic actress of the first two decades of the 20th Century in Greek tragedies and acclaimed for her performances in Shakespearean plays, acting and producing The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night in repertory at Broadway's Hudson Theatre in 1914.

In 1911, Margaret Anglin became a U.S. citizen through her marriage to fellow actor Howard Hull. In 1929, after her husband had not been cast in a Broadway production for twenty years, she insisted that producers give him a role in her plays. Balked at by the producers, she walked out on a production and did not return to until 1936 in what would be her final Broadway appearance.

Margaret Anglin returned to live in Toronto in 1953 where she died in 1958. She was interred there in the Anglin family plot at Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery.