Kay Laurell

Kay Laurell (c. 1890 – January 31, 1927) was an American actress. She appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies before moving on to plays and motion pictures. She died of pneumonia in London at the age of 37. She married Fox Film Company executive Winfield R. Sheehan in 1916.[1]

H.L. Mencken said she possessed "all the arts of the really first-rate harlot" and was "the most successful practitioner of her trade of her generation in New York." He said "Much of what I got from her, in fact, went into In Defense of Women", his 1918 book.[2] Playwright Channing Pollock wrote, however, "Kay could have gone far if she had been willing to exchange her favors for advancement, but she didn't 'want to get ahead that way'."[3]

References

  1. ^ "Kay Laurell Dead; Ex-'Follies' Star; Victim of Pneumonia in London -- Recently in Comedies and Moving Pictures." New York Times, Feb 2, 1927, p. 25.
  2. ^ Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast, Oxford University Press, 2005, pages 241-2.
  3. ^ Channing Pollock, Harvest of My Years - An Autobiography, page 356

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