| Rose Stahl | |
|---|---|
| Born | Montreal, Quebec |
| Occupation | Stage actress |
| Spouse | William Bonelli |
Rose Stahl (b. October 29, 1868/1870 - 1955) was a Canadian/American stage actress, born in Montreal. Her father was Col. Ernest Charles Stahl, a newspaperman who was drama and music critic for a newspaper called the Chicago InterOcean and her mother was French-Canadian. The Col in front her father's name suggests he was a veteran of the Civil War. Stahl spent her formative years in Chicago where her father worked. She later moved to Trenton New Jersey when Col. Stahl became editor of the Trenton Herald. She made her début in Philadelphia in 1887, toured with Daniel Bandmann in 1888, and appeared in New York in 1897. In 1902-03 she starred as Janice Meredith in a road touring version of the play of that name. She first appeared in her rôle of Patricia O'Brien in 1904 in the sketch called The Chorus Girl, which she carried to London in 1906, and she reappeared in New York in the revised four-act play, The Chorus Lady, in which she made a sensation and which continued to be her vehicle till 1911. Afterward she played in Maggie Pepper (1911) with Beatrice Prentice playing a supporting rôle, Moonlight Mary (1916), etc.
As with many turn of the century stage stars, Stahl showed no interest in the new medium of motion pictures when the fledgling studios came courting stage stars around 1912. Like David Warfield, she starred in a handful of plays, became famous for them, and played them for many years.
Stahl was married twice. First to an E.P. Sullivan, they divorced in the mid 1890s. Her second husband was William Bonelli, an actor whom she wed in October 1895. This was a happy marriage and lasted until Mr Bonelli's death. She bore no children in either of the marriages.
In the 1980 film Somewhere in Time Christopher Reeve plays a journalist researching an Edwardian actress in the library of a large hotel. Reeve pulls out a cache of photos and one of the photos shows a child standing holding a doll. The child is Rose Stahl as the same photo appears in Stahl's biographical entry in Daniel Blum's Great Stars of the American Stage.[1]
This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.