Ellis, Edith

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ELLIS, Edith

Born 1876, Coldwater, Michigan; died 27 December 1960, New York, New York

Also wrote under: Edith Ellis Baker, Edith Ellis Furness

Daughter of Edward C. and Ruth McCarthy Ellis; married Frank A. Baker (died 1907); C. Beecher Furness

Ellis began her stage career as a child of three, performing with her parents' touring company in the Midwest and South. Before she was twelve, three plays were written with starring roles for "Little Edith Ellis, the Rising Star." Her varied theatrical experience on the road included everything from performing in vaudeville to heading her own stock companies.

Ellis and her first husband leased the Park Theater and later the Criterion Theater, both in Brooklyn, where she directed plays for several years before her audacious move to the Berkeley Lyceum in New York as director and leading lady of her own play, The Point of View (1903). According to a New York Times reviewer, it could "not be said that at present she shines in any of her three capacities."

After her husband's death in 1907, Ellis resumed her maiden name to avoid confusion with actress Edith Barker. She acted less frequently, but continued to write and direct. Of her approximately 35 plays, eight of them produced in New York, the best was Mary Jane's Pa (1908). A resourceful mother of two girls runs a smalltown printing press and struggles to make ends meet. When the scholarly ne'er-do-well who had abandoned her and their daughters 10 years earlier turns up, down on his luck, she hires him out of compassion as a cook and household help, without revealing his identity to their children. The town gossips are scandalized at the idea of a male live-in servant in a household of women. In Act III, he is almost tarred and feathered by rioting townspeople who have destroyed her press because of the politics of her newspaper. This moment of danger determines her true feelings. She acknowledges her husband, relinquishing a promising relationship with a young politician.

Laurette Taylor starred in Ellis' Seven Sisters (1911), adapted from the Hungarian of Ferencz Herczegh. The play was criticized for a situation that depended too heavily upon customs and manners considered alien to American audiences. Ten years later, in Betty's Last Bet, Ellis transparently attempted to transfer the plot of the Hungarian play, which involves getting four sisters married off to men of means and ideals, to an American milieu. But the situation is even more strained in that Ellis reduced the time span of the action—introductions, courtships, and engagements—from nine months to one day.

A forceful and outspoken personality, Ellis felt she had been handicapped by her sex. Her favorite character type, like the mother in Mary Jane's Pa, was a mature woman. "After all," said Ellis, "she is the only person about whom a play or a story can be written. This is the day of the mature woman in real life and on the stage."

Speaking of her own work, Ellis told an interviewer: "I know the forms of drama. I have eaten and drunk and slept them, but I don't believe in being hampered by them. I belong to a club of women dramatists, but I do not feel akin to them, for they discuss the forms and how to remain within the forms. I try to get on without them. I remember the forms, but am controlled by the impulse of character and the impetus of action." However, Ellis' instinct for the dramatic was not as sure as that of her model, G. B. Shaw, and she too often fell back on tired contrivances.

Other Works:

A Batch of Blunders (1897). Mrs. B. O'Shaughnessy (Wash Lady) (1900). Because I Love You (1903). Ben of Broken Bow (1905). Contrary Mary (1905). Mary and John (1905). The Wrong Man (1905). He Fell in Love with His Wife (1910). My Man (with F. Halsey, 1910). Partners (1911). The Love Wager; Vespers; Fields of Flax; The Man Higher Up (1912). The Amethyst Ring (1913). Cupid's Ladder; Make-Believe; Man with the Black Gloves; The Devil's Garden (1915). Making Dick Over (1916). Mrs. Clancey's Car Ride (with Edward Ellis, 1918). Bravo, Claudia (1919). Whose Little Bride Are You? (1919). Mrs. Jimmie Thompson (with N. S. Rose, 1920). The White Villa (1921; produced in London as The Dangerous Age, 1937). The Illustrious Tartarin (1922). The Judsons Entertain (1922). The Moon and Sixpence (1924). White Collars (1924). The Last Chapter (with Edward Ellis, 1930). Open the Door! by W. Brandon (dramatization by Ellis, 1935). Incarnation; a Plea from the Masters by W. Brandon (dramatization by Ellis, 1936). The Lady of La Paz (1936). We Knew these Men by W. Brandon (dramatization by Ellis, 1943). Love in the Afterlife by W. Brandon (dramatization by Ellis, 1956).