Marguerite Namara
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Marguerite Namara (November 19, 1888 - November 5, 1974) was a classically trained American lyric soprano whose varied career included serious opera, Broadway musicals, film and theater roles, and vocal recitals.
She was born Marguerite Evelyn Cecilia Banks in Cleveland, Ohio, to a wealthy family with New England ties (she was descended on her father's side from Mayflower passengers John Alden and Priscilla Alden and was a great-grandniece of Union General Nathaniel Prentice Banks, Governor of Massachusetts and Speaker of the House).
Raised in Los Angeles, California from the age of five, she attended St. Vincent's School and Girls' Collegiate High School, studying piano and voice from an early age. As a teenager, she and her mother, who served as one of her early vocal coaches, made a recording for Thomas Edison, singing the Flower Duet from the Delibes opera, Lakmé. At 18, Marguerite began studying at the Milan Conservatory, debuting a year later in 1908 as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust at the Teatro Politeamo in Genoa. She fashioned her stage name of Namara from her mother’s maiden name, McNamara, and was from then on called by family and friends as, simply, Namara.
During her career she sang with the Opera Company of Boston, the Chicago Opera Company (succeeding Mary Garden in Thaïs), and the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where she sang the lead roles in Manon, La Traviata, Tosca, Carmen, and La Bohème. Her 1915 Broadway debut came in a Franz Lehár operetta written especially for her entitled Alone at Last. She later starred for the Shuberts in revivals of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado and toured nationally and in Europe with leading orchestras.
Close friend of Isadora Duncan, pupil of Jean De Reszke, Manuel de Falla, and Nellie Melba, the circle in which she moved included such interesting figures of the early twentieth century as Enrico Caruso, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Debussy, Rodin, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dos Passos, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Eleanora Duse, Amelita Galli-Curci, Marguerite d'Alvarez, Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini, Ed Wynn, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and P.G. Wodehouse, the latter four being collaborators of her second husband Guy Bolton. During her years in Paris she also studied painting with Claude Monet, who gave her lessons in return for her singing to him.
Stolen Moments, a silent picture in which she starred with Valentino, was one of her few film projects, and it included a small part for her infant daughter Peggy as well. In 1932, she starred in the first musical film version of Carmen, a British Film Company picture given the unfortunate name of Gipsy Blood (sometimes billed as Gypsy Blood but usually referred to by Namara as "The Bloody Gypsy"). Exteriors were filmed in Ronda, Spain, but the troupe recorded the music in London with the London Symphony Orchestra. Later films in which Namara played small parts included Thirty Day Princess (1934) with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney, and Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Gary Cooper and Ann Harding.
In the 1930s, her voice strained from overwork, she began teaching voice, counting the actors Ramón Novarro and Frances Drake among her pupils, and appeared in the London cast of the Ivor Novello play, Party. Subsequent theatrical performances on Broadway and on tour included supporting parts in Enter Madame, Night of Love, Claudia, and Lo and Behold. During the 1940s and 50s, her voice mellowed to that of a mezzo-soprano and she enjoyed modest success on the concert recital circuit, singing occasionally on radio.
She was married three times: from 1910-1916, to her manager Frederick H. Toye, with whom she had a son, Frederick Namara Toye; from 1917-1926, to the playwright Guy Bolton, with whom she had a daughter, Marguerite Pamela (Peggy) Bolton -- "Pamela" and "Peggy" chosen to honor the baby's godfather P.G. (Pelham) Wodehouse; and from 1937 until her death, to landscape architect Georg Hoy. In between her second and third husbands, she was involved in relationships with artist and film director Harry Lachman and, later, with writer Mindret Lord.
In the 1940s and 50s, she divided her time between New York City and Europe. In the early 1960s, she and her third husband retired to a secluded ranch house on several acres in California's Carmel Valley, where she painted prolifically and recorded her last album in 1968, the year she turned 80. She died on November 5, 1974, in Marbella, Spain, two weeks shy of her 86th birthday.
[edit] External Links
- Extensive Web site on Marguerite Namara
- Marguerite Namara at the Internet Movie Data Base
- Marguerite Namara Movies Filmography New York Times
- Marguerite Namara at the Internet Broadway Data Base
- Giverny News: Monet et la Musique (about Marguerite Namara and Claude Monet), in French
[edit] Sources
- The private papers and archives of Marguerite Namara in her family's possession
- "Beautiful Society Bud Has Rare Ability as Composer," Los Angeles Examiner, 1907
- Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern: The Men Who Made Musical Comedy, by Lee Davis, New York: James H. Heineman, Inc., 1993 ISBN 0-87008-145-4
- Bring On The Girls, by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953
- Forsaken Altars: An Autobiography, by Marguerite D'Alvarez, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
- Here Lies Leonard Sillman -- Straightened Out at Last, by Leonard Sillman, New York: Citadel Press, 1962
- "Los Angeles Music: Frederick H. Toye," by Belford Forrest, Society Magazine, December 27, 1913, 23-25
- "Madame Namara Makes Comeback In Concert Here," Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1940
- "Makes Operatic Debut In Genoa," The Cleveland News, 1908
- Melba, by John Hetherington, New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1967
- Metropolitan Opera Annals, by William H. Seltsam, New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1957
- "Multifaceted Star Namara Marks 80th Birthday With New Recording," by John Woolfenden, Monterey Peninsula Herald, August 13, 1968
- "Music in the Home," The Cleveland News, 1923
- The Musician's International Director and Biographical Record, New York: Shaw Publishing Company, 1950
- My Life, An Autobiography, by Isadora Duncan, Garden City Publishers, 1927
- "Namara Returns to Recital Stage," New York Times, January 25, 1940
- "Opera Honors Won By Local Girl," by Archie Bell, The Cleveland News, 1923
- "Postlude," by Ray C.B. Brown, The Washington Post, January 17, 1940
- Rudolph Valentino, The Man Behind the Myth, by Robert Oberfirst, New York: Citadel Press, 1962
- "She Too Longs For The Day When She Can Retire On A Farm," by Virginia Tracy, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 19, 1954
- Who's Who in the East, Chicago: Marquis Press, 1957
