Maud Allan

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Maude Allan as Salomé with the head of John the Baptist.
Maude Allan as Salomé with the head of John the Baptist.

Maud Allan (born Beulah Maude Durrant circa August 27, 1873; died October 7, 1956 in Los Angeles, California) was an actress and dancer.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Maud Allan was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Sources give conflicting years for her birth date, ranging from 1873 through 1880. She spent her early years in San Francisco, California, where she studied music from a young age. Before the turn of the century she moved to Europe, and was accepted in 1895 by the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. She later changed her name, prompted in part by the scandal surrounding her brother Theodore Durrant, who was hanged in 1898 for the sensational murder of two women in San Francisco.

[edit] Stage and dance career

In 1900, in need of money, Allan published an illustrated sex manual for women titled Illustriertes Konversations-Lexikon der Frau. Shortly thereafter she began dancing professionally. Although athletic, and having great imagination, she had little formal dance training. She was once compared to professional dancer and legend Isadora Duncan, which greatly enraged her, as she disliked Duncan.[1]

She designed and often sewed her own costumes, which were creative. In 1906 her production "Vision of Salomé" debuted in Vienna. Based loosely on Oscar Wilde's play, Salomé, her version of the Dance of the Seven Veils became famous (and to some notorious) and she was billed as "The Salomé Dancer". Her book My Life and Dancing was published in 1908 and that year she took England by storm in a tour in which she performed 250 performances in less than one year. [2]

In 1910 she left Europe to travel. Over the next 5 years she visited the United States, Australia, Africa, and Asia. In 1915 she starred as "Demntra" in the silent film, The Rug Maker's Daughter.

[edit] Libel suit

In 1918 the British MP Noel Pemberton Billing, in his own journal, Vigilante, published an article, "The Cult of the Clitoris" which implied that Allan, then appearing in her Vision of Salome, was a lesbian associate of German wartime conspirators. Allan sued Billing for criminal libel, to wit:

1. The act of publishing a defamatory article about Maud Allan and Mr. J. T. Grein, her impresario. 2. The separate offense act of including obscenities within the article.

This led to a sensational court case, at which Billing represented himself. Lord Alfred Douglas also testified in Billing's favour. Allan lost the case. The trial became entangled in obscenity charges brought forth by the state against the performance given by Allan in her dance. She was accused of practising many of the sexually charged acts depicted (or implied) in Wilde's writings herself, including necrophilia. At this time, the Lord Chamberlain's ban on public performances of Wilde's play was still in place in England, and thus the Salomé dance was at risk.

From the 1920s on Allan taught dance and she lived with her secretary and lover, Verna Aldrich.[3]

Maud Allan died in Los Angeles, California.

She is often confused with Maude Allen - a character actor with a similar name film who appeared in Hollywood in the 1930s, including small roles in the 1936 film of "Show Boat" and the 1936 film "San Francisco", and playing "Dutchess" in the 1940 serial The Adventures of Red Ryder.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian ... Culture
  2. ^ ibid
  3. ^ ibid

[edit] Further reading

  • Felix Cherniavsky, Maud Allan and Her Art, Dance Collection Danse Presse (1998)
  • Toni Bentley, Sisters of Salome, Yale University Press, 2002

[edit] External links



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