Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner (9 February 1865 – 9 April 1940), better known by her stage name Mrs Patrick Campbell or Mrs Pat, was an English stage actress, best known for appearing in plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Barrie. She also toured the United States and appeared briefly in films.[1]
Campbell was born Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner in Kensington, London, to John Tanner (1829–1895), son and heir of a wealthy British Army contractor to the British East India Company, and Maria Luigia Giovanna ("Louisa Joanna") née Romanini (1836–1908), daughter of Italian Count Angelo Romanini.
Her father John Tanner (1829–1895), a descendant of Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St Asaph,[2] was a Consul and merchant who "managed to get through two large fortunes",[3] in part through losses in the Indian Mutiny. Her mother, Louisa Joanna Romanini, was one of the eight daughters of Angelo Romanini of Brescia and Rosa née Polinelli of Milan. Angelo had joined the Carbonari and, as a result, had to leave Italy. He and his family travelled over Eastern Europe aided by a firman from the Sultan of Turkey. Six of his eight daughters, all under eighteen, married Englishmen.[4]
In 1900, "Mrs Pat", having become her own manager/director, made her debut performance on Broadway in New York City in Heimat by Hermann Sudermann, a marked success. Subsequent appearances in New York and on tour in the U.S. established her as a major theatrical presence there. Campbell would regularly perform on the New York stage until 1933. Other performances included roles in The Joy of Living (1902), Pelléas et Mélisande (1904; as Melisande to the Pelleas of her friend Sarah Bernhardt), Hedda Gabler (1907), Electra, The Thunderbolt (both 1908), and Bella Donna (1911).
In 1914, she played Eliza Doolittle in the original West End production of Pygmalion, which George Bernard Shaw had expressly written for her.[6][7] Although forty-nine years old when she originated the role opposite the Henry Higgins of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she triumphed and took the play to New York and on tour in 1915 with the much younger Philip Merivale playing Higgins. She successfully played Eliza again in a 1920 London revival of the play.[8][9]
A couple of "Mrs Pat"'s later significant performances were as the title role in the 1922 West End production of Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler[10] and Mrs. Alving in the "Ibsen Centennial" (1928) staging of Ghosts (with John Gielgud as her son Oswald).[11] Her last major stage role was in the Broadway production of Ivor Novello's play A Party, where she portrayed the cigar-smoking, Pekingese-wielding actress "Mrs. MacDonald" – a clear takeoff on her own well-known persona – and made off with the best reviews. In her later years, Campbell made notable appearances in films, including One More River, Riptide (both 1934), and Crime and Punishment (1935). Her tendency, however, to reject roles that could have vitally helped her career in later years caused Alexander Woollcott to declare "...she was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers".[12]
Relationship with George Bernard Shaw
In the late 1890s Campbell first became aware of George Bernard Shaw–the famous and feared dramatic critic for The Saturday Review–who lavishly praised her better performances and thoroughly criticised her lesser efforts. Shaw had already used her as inspiration for some of his plays before their first meeting in 1897 when he unsuccessfully tried to persuade "Mrs Pat" to play the role of Judith Anderson in the first production of his play The Devil's Disciple.[13] Not until 1912, when they began negotiations for the London production of Pygmalion, did Shaw develop an infatuation for "Mrs Pat" that resulted in a passionate, yet unconsummated, love affair of mutual fascination and a legendary exchange of letters.[14] It was Campbell who broke off the relationship[15] although Shaw was about to direct her in Pygmalion. They remained friends in spite of the break-up and her subsequent marriage to George Cornwallis-West, but Shaw never again allowed her to originate any of the roles he had written with her in mind (e.g. Hesione Hushabye (Heartbreak House), the Serpent (Back to Methuselah), etc.).[16] When Anthony Asquith was preparing to produce the 1938 film of Pygmalion, Shaw suggested Campbell for the role of Mrs Higgins, but she declined.[17]
In later years, Shaw refused to allow the impoverished Campbell to publish or sell any of their letters except in heavily edited form, for fear of upsetting his wife Charlotte Payne-Townshend and the possible harm that the letters might cause to his public image.[18] Most of the letters were not published until 1952, two years after Shaw's death.
Famous quotes
Campbell was infamous for her sharp wit. Her best-known remark, uttered upon hearing about a male homosexual relationship, was "My dear, I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses",[19] although this remark has been attributed to others as well.
At a dinner in the United States, she was seated next to a scientist who talked incessantly to her about ants. "They even have their own police force and army", he enthused. "No navy?" she replied.[20]
Personal life
In 1884, she eloped with Patrick Campbell (1855–1900) to St Helen, Bishopsgate, while pregnant with their child, Alan "Beo" Urquhart Campbell.[21] Patrick was the son of Patrick McMicken Campbel, a banker and chief manager of the Oriental Bank Corporation, and Montgomerie Anne (née Kerr). Four months prior, they first met at a card party at the house of Mrs Gifford in Dulwich.[22] Their second child, Stella Campbell, was born in 1886.
Patrick's health was poor, and in 1887 he was ordered by his doctor to take a sea voyage.[23] He went to Australia, and later to South Africa staying for six-and-a-half years.[24] He found some work but never sent enough back for Beatrice and the children to live on. When he returned in 1893, she saw that "his health and energies were undermined by fever, failure, and the most bitter disappointments".[25] In mid-March 1900, Patrick returned to South Africa to join Lord Chesham's Yeomanry in the Boer War in 1900.[24] He was killed in a charge at Boshof on 5 April,[26] the same action in which Colonel George de Villebois-Mareuil died.
Their son Beo worked as an actor and toured with his mother in 1908.[27] Their daughter Stella (1886–1975)[28] also joined her mother on stage, and toured with her in the United States, but "made up her mind to marry a man [Beatrice] scarcely knew, who had lived in Africa for many years".[29]
In 1909, Campbell produced His Borrowed Plumes by Lady Randolph Churchill, whose husband, George Cornwallis-West, was "seriously attracted to me".[30] They married on 6 April 1914, the day after the decree absolute of his divorce.[31] Notwithstanding her second marriage, she continued to use the stage name "Mrs Patrick Campbell".[1]
Campbell died on 9 April 1940 in Pau, France, aged 75, of pneumonia.[1] Her death was one of the few deaths of a personal nature that George Bernard Shaw ever noted in his personal diaries.[32]
Legacy
A note book belonging to Campbell is housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections Department. Several collections of Campbell's correspondence, including her letters to Shaw (MS Thr 372.1), are part of the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard University. A number of her letters and her annotated script for Chester Bailey Fernald's The Moonlight Blossom are in the theatre manuscripts collection of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. The Ransom Center's collection of Shaw papers includes letters from Campbell, and the library includes a number of Shaw's published works from Campbell's private library.[33]
Mrs. Pat: The Life of Mrs. Pat Campbell, a biography by Margot Peters, was published in 1984 by Hamish Hamilton. Also London-based, play publisher Samuel French released Mrs. Pat in October 2015, the script of a one-woman show by Anton Burge, to coincide with its production in the Minerva Theatre at Chichester Festival Theatre, West Sussex. It was performed by Dame Penelope Keith DBE,DL.
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Dame Alice Ellen Terry,, was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dame Edith Mary Evans, was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Major George Frederick Myddleton Cornwallis-West was a British officer of the Scots Guards. George Cornwallis-West was noted primarily for his marriages, the first to Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill, and the second to the renowned actress Stella Campbell, who was also known on the stage as Mrs Patrick Campbell. George Bernard Shaw wrote the part of Eliza Doolittle in his play Pygmalion for her.
Man and Superman is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 21 May 1905 as a four-act play produced by the Stage Society, and then by John Eugene Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker on 23 May, without Act III. A part of the third act, Don Juan in Hell, was performed when the drama was staged on 4 June 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not performed in its entirety until 1915, when the Travelling Repertory Company played it at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.
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Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.
Alma Murray (1854–1945) was an English actress.
Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the 1913 George Bernard Shaw play of the same name, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard as Professor Henry Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle.
Jerome Timothy Kilty was an American actor and playwright. He wrote Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters. He worked extensively on the stage, both in the United States and abroad.
Dorothy Anna Sturgess, known professionally as Sydney Sturgess, was a British-Canadian actress. She is best known for her work with the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival of Canada. Primarily a stage actress in Canada, England and the US, she occasionally worked in television and film.
Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend was an Irish political activist in Britain. She was a member of the Fabian Society and was dedicated to the struggle for women's rights. She married the playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Beatrice Moss Elvery, RHA was a painter, Irish stained-glass artist and sculptor.
The First Night of Pygmalion is a play by Richard Huggett, first performed in 1968. It depicts backstage events during the first British production of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.
Viola Tree was an English actress, singer, playwright and author. Daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she made many of her early appearances with his company at His Majesty's Theatre. Later she appeared in opera, variety, straight theatre and film.
Eliza Doolittle is a fictional character and the protagonist in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (1913) and its 1956 musical adaptation, My Fair Lady.
Margot Peters was an American novelist and biographer, including of Charlotte Brontë, George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the Drews and Barrymores, May Sarton, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. She was a recipient of the Ambassador Book Award.
Elizabeth Handley-Seymour (1867–1948) was a London-based fashion designer and court-dressmaker operating as Madame Handley-Seymour between 1910 and 1940. She is best known for creating the wedding dress worn by Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, for her marriage to the Duke of York, the future King George VI, in 1923; and later, Queen Elizabeth's coronation gown in 1937.
Pygmalion is a 1948 British TV production of the 1913 play by George Bernard Shaw. It was the first time the play was done for television and was the longest production done by the BBC to that time.
Dear Liar, full title Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters is a play by American actor, director, and playwright Jerome Kilty. It was first staged in 1957 and published in 1960. A television adaptation was made in 1964, directed by David Gardner for National Educational Television. Two film adaptations were later created, one in English by director Gordon Rigsby in 1981 and another in French as Cher menteur in 1982 by French director Alexandre Tarta.
References
Notes
1 2 3 "Mrs. Campbell, 75, Famous Actress". The New York Times. 11 April 1940. Retrieved 29 June 2008. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, famous actress, died last night in Pau, according to word received here to day. She had taken leading roles in plays of Shakespeare, Shaw and Barrie, and on several occasions had toured America.
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