Eva Le Gallienne

Actress

• Born: January 11, 1899
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: June 3, 1991
• Place of death: Weston, Connecticut

English actor and director

Le Gallienne, a leading actor of classical plays, founded a repertory company with which she introduced dramas by Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen to American audiences. Hoping to build an audience, she drastically reduced the price of theater tickets, which was an innovation in its day.

Area of achievement Theater and entertainment

Early Life

Eva Le Gallienne (leh gahl-yehn) was born to an English father of French extraction and a Danish mother. Her father, Richard Le Gallienne, was a successful poet and novelist, the friend of such writers as Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Her mother, Julie Norregaard, was a correspondent for a well-known Danish newspaper, Politiken, and a friend of such distinguished English actors as Constance Collier and William Faversham.

When Eva was about seven, her parents separated and her mother took her to live in Paris, where she studied at the Collège Sévigné. They attended theater and ballet performances, and Eva was privileged to see the fabled French actress Sarah Bernhardt in some of her most popular roles. The experience made a deep impression on her, and she was determined to make the stage her career.

Life was difficult for mother and daughter, since Richard Le Gallienne contributed almost nothing to their support. (The couple’s divorce became final in 1911.) When her newspaper efforts did not bring in enough money, Julie Le Gallienne opened a dress shop in Paris, which became moderately successful thanks to her good taste and to the patronage of her eminent acquaintances. Every summer, mother and daughter returned to England to stay with friends. One of them, actress Constance Collier, noticed Eva’s interest in theater and volunteered to give her acting lessons. In 1914, Collier invited Eva to take the role of a page in Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna (1902; English translation, 1903), and Eva’s career was officially launched at the age of fifteen.

Feeling the need for more formal training, Eva enrolled in Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Academy for actors. Tree was one of the best-known actor-managers in England, and at his school Eva took classes in dancing, fencing, voice production, and elocution. In 1915, she had a role in playwright George Du Maurier’s Peter Ibbetson (1891), and soon the young actress was besieged with offers to do other plays. Some came from overseas. Eva, worried that the war, which had just broken out, might cause the curtailment of theater in England, decided to accept an offer from Broadway.

When Le Gallienne, accompanied by her mother, arrived in New York, she found that the so-called little theaters groups committed to producing plays for their artistic merit rather than for their financial rewards were in full swing. The Neighborhood Playhouse, the Provincetown Players, and the Washington Square Players were offering dramas by such new writers as Eugene O’Neill, as well as the work of Germany’s Georg Kaiser, Hungary’s Ferenc Molnár, and Russia’s Leonid Andreyev. This discovery gave Le Gallienne a taste for the kind of theater she would prefer and would come to champion in later years. From 1915 to 1920, however, she appeared in a number of negligible plays, most of them opening in New York and touring the country as far as San Francisco. Her employment was steady but her roles were unsatisfactory until she was cast as Julie in Ferenc Molnár’sLiliom (1909; English translation, 1921), when play and player came together to make Le Gallienne a name in the theater.

Life’s Work

The producers of Liliom, whose group had developed from the Washington Square Players into the Theatre Guild, were uneasy about the play, which had failed at its Budapest opening in 1909. (Many years later, it found another life as the successful Broadway musical Carousel.) The script possessed such charm and the acting, notably Le Gallienne’s, was so powerful that both critics and audiences were captivated by it. Le Gallienne’s performance was judged perfect: One critic noted that she was not poetic but was sheer poetry. Her early training at the Academy and her experience had prepared Le Gallienne for this moment; she enriched the role of a waiflike character whose love transcends tragedy with her attention to realistic detail, her imagination, and her perfectionism. Above all, her admiration of French actress Sarah Bernhardt had given way to her worship of Italian actress Eleonora Duse, because Bernhardt projected her own personality on to the part she was playing, while Duse submerged her personality in the role. These are two entirely different approaches to interpretation: One proclaims the star; the other, the actor. As she grew in her understanding, Le Gallienne chose the second, truer way.

After Liliom concluded its successful run, it was sent on tour with the company; again, when she was free to perform, Le Gallienne appeared in a few more mediocre plays, good scripts always being difficult to find. In 1923, however, another Molnár play, A hattyú (1920; The Swan, 1922) (1914), was offered to her, and she took the leading role of a princess who for a moment falls in love with her brother’s tutor but knows that she may not marry him because she is destined to be a queen. Although it is a slight comedy, the play is full of rueful charm. At the end of the play, the audience gave Le Gallienne a standing ovation (much rarer then than it is now), and the critics all agreed that she had surpassed her performance in Liliom. Le Gallienne gave full credit to the art of Eleonora Duse, saying that it would have been easy to stress the play’s winsome quality, but by bringing a sturdy reality to the part she was able to make the princess not only believable but also sympathetic. The Swan ran for more than a year in New York and then toured for the entire 1924-1925 season.

The next year, Le Gallienne decided to take a new play by Mercedes de Acosta, Jeanne d’Arc, to Paris, her background in French making the occasion a major event. American designer Norman Bel Geddes directed the play, but he so overwhelmed it with spectacle and the play itself was so lacking in power (George Bernard Shaw’s 1923 Saint Joan made every other portrait of the Maid of Orléans seem faded) that the result was a resounding failure. Le Gallienne returned to New York to appear in a play by Viennese dramatist Arthur Schnitzler, Der Ruf des Lebens (1906; The Call of Life, 1925); this time, the critics believed that the role of a young woman who poisons her father and runs away with her lover was an unsuitable vehicle for Le Gallienne. She was beginning to experience the difficulty that every prominent actor (and every playwright) undergoes: excessive praise followed by damnation that is not always justified but is dependent on the mood of an audience and the atmosphere of the times. Le Gallienne began to think about starting her own theater, where she could pick the scripts she preferred, rehearse them in the time she required, and present them to an audience at an affordable price. Before she could realize her dream, however, she had to find the financial backing necessary for such a project.

To her great good fortune, she was offered the role of Hilda Wangel in Henrik Ibsen’s Bygmester Solness (1892; The Master Builder, 1893) in 1925, which was a busy year for her. It opened at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York for an announced run of four matinees, but it was such a resounding success that the engagement was extended. The critics once more sang her praises, because the role seemed tailor-made for her. It is probably true that Le Gallienne achieved her best effects playing women of strong character; she was never at home in the lighter pieces that were so popular in the commercial theater. The success that Le Gallienne enjoyed in playing Hilda Wangel, who defies convention, challenges authority, and would even storm the ramparts of Heaven, made her realize that she had to make her own place in the theater.

Because she was again the darling of the critics, Le Gallienne was able to raise money for her project, and such patrons of the arts as banker Otto Kahn, who almost single-handedly rescued the Metropolitan Opera in its early days, gave her his enthusiastic support, both verbal and financial. Le Gallienne took a lease on a building in the lower part of Manhattan, on 14th Street, and she called it the Civic Repertory Theatre. She knew that there were many good young actors who would be willing to work with her in classical plays because there were so few opportunities to do so on Broadway; she also knew that there were dedicated people who cared more for art than for money. If they could make a living from their work, they had no need for riches. Fired with such idealism, she was able to attract a good company and to present plays unfamiliar to the public that would later prove to be theatrical landmarks: The dramas of Ibsen and, especially, Russia’s Anton Chekhov would form the basis of her repertory.

On October 25, 1926, the newly refurbished theater, which seated eleven hundred and which offered tickets for a top price of $1.50 (comparable Broadway tickets at that time cost at least five times as much), opened with Jacinto Benavente y Martínez’sLa noche del sábado (1903; Saturday Night, 1918), chosen because it needed a large cast that Le Gallienne wished to introduce to her audience. It was received with hostility: England’s favorite actor-playwright, Noël Coward, announced that “Eva was terrible, the production awful, and the play lousy.” Fortunately for Le Gallienne, however, the repertory system that made it possible to produce several plays in one season and alternate them in the course of a week saved her. The next evening, Chekhov’s Tri sestry (1901; The Three Sisters, 1920) expunged the previous night’s disaster: Le Gallienne was praised for her acting, for her directing, and for her determination to create an ensemble company instead of a collection of stars. Soon, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Carlo Goldoni’s La locandiera (1753; The Mistress of the Inn, 1912) were added to the list. Although all the productions were artistic and critical successes, they did not find favor with audiences; the playhouse was operating only at 60 percent of its capacity. Gregorio Martínez Sierra’s Canción de cun (1911; The Cradle Song, 1917), however, turned the tide: It was a genuine triumph, and all fifty-six performances sold out. Le Gallienne was urged to take the play uptown to Broadway, where she could make more money, but she refused, noting that by raising the price of the tickets she would be defeating the purpose of her “mission.” She would not compromise.

By the end of her first season, Le Gallienne had won enough acclaim to be convinced that she could make a success of the enterprise, even though she had barely broken even at the box office. The Nation magazine chose her for its Roll of Honor, along with Eugene O’Neill and novelist Ernest Hemingway, among others. She received an honorary degree, the first of many, from Tufts University in Massachusetts and was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Arts and Sciences for her contributions to the theater. The second season at the Civic was less impressive: Only Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1890; English translation, 1891), with Le Gallienne in the title role, was well received. The next two seasons, however, were profitable as well as artistically satisfying, with such plays as Chekhov’s Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard, 1908) and Chayka (1896; The Sea Gull, 1909), Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670; The Would-Be Gentleman, 1675), James Barrie’s Peter Pan, and Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux camélias (1848; Camille, 1857) with Le Gallienne in the lead. Camille was the greatest box-office success in the Civic’s short history. In 1931, Le Gallienne decided to close her theater for one year, to rest and map out plans for the future, which looked grim because the stock market had crashed, play attendance was falling everywhere, and even bankers with seemingly limitless funds could no longer subsidize the arts.

In June of 1931, while she was in the basement of her home in Connecticut trying to light the hot-water heater, the heater exploded, engulfing Le Gallienne in fire. Her entire body was burned, and for a week it was believed that she would not live. Part of her face and both of her hands were severely burned. Yet within a year, despite great pain and innumerable operations, Le Gallienne was back. She reopened the Civic in 1932, repeating some of the productions she had presented before and adding an adaptation that she and actress Florida Friebus had made of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The play, which was extremely successful, was moved uptown to Broadway.

Growing financial pressures forced Le Gallienne to lease out her theater and take her company on the road with some of the plays that had done well. By 1936, it was clear that the Civic could not survive. Le Gallienne disbanded the company, allowing its members to go their separate ways and find work wherever they could. In the ensuing years, she appeared on Broadway sporadically but spent most of her time in the hinterlands playing in the classics. Gradually, she fell out of favor with the public, which was becoming more interested in American playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. For a brief time in 1946, Le Gallienne, director Margaret Webster, and producer Cheryl Crawford banded together to form the American Repertory Theatre, presenting plays by Shaw, Ibsen, Chekhov, and Shakespeare, playing in New York and on the road. Financial problems doomed their efforts. Yet Le Gallienne kept touring, convinced of the rightness of her cause. In 1975, a new company headed by Ellis Rabb and Rosemary Harris invited Le Gallienne to appear in a revival of a 1927 comedy, The Royal Family, by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman. Both Le Gallienne and the production were successful. A new generation discovered Le Gallienne and listened to what she said about the theater. In 1986, she was awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Ronald Reagan in recognition of her service to the drama. Gradually, her strength began to ebb, and she died in her ninety-second year.

Significance

When Eva Le Gallienne first made her mark on the American stage, audiences were not prepared for her concept of theater. She believed in producing plays that had stood the test of time and in holding down ticket prices so that nonaffluent audiences would not be driven away. To her, the theater was a necessity; no one should be kept from it because of cost. She believed in a repertory system that would keep actors fresh in their roles because they would not be performing the same piece night after night. She believed that actors should have a permanent place in which to work, a theater that belonged to them, such as existed in Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. She believed that a theater should be supported by the government, just as public schools and libraries were supported. Above all, she believed in improving the taste of the audience, not because of snobbery, but because people deserved the best.

Although her Civic Theatre failed, Le Gallienne’s dream did not. In subsequent years, professional groups have formed throughout the United States. Actors are engaged on a more permanent basis, the classics as well as new plays are produced, local audiences are loyal in their attendance, and the best companies are now supported not only by ticket sales but also by local, state, and even federal monies.

Bibliography

Arden, Estelle. “’To Doubt Is Fatal’: Eva Le Gallienne and the Civic Repertory Theatre, 1926-1932.” In Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices: The Theatre of the 1920’s Celebrates American Diversity, edited by Arthur Gewirtz and James J. Kolb. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. The essay about Le Gallienne is one of twenty essays in this book focusing on ignored or unknown aspects of the American theater during the 1920’s.

Brown, John Mason. Upstage. New York: W. W. Norton, 1930. The drama critic of the New York Post discusses the structure and contributions of the Civic Repertory Theatre and analyzes the character of its founder. He mentions Le Gallienne’s strength in the face of adversity and her enjoyment in doing battle for her principles.

Le Gallienne, Eva. At Thirty-three. New York: Longmans, Green, 1934. This is Le Gallienne’s own account of her early years and the beginning of her work to establish the Civic Repertory Theatre. The photographs are particularly valuable.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. With a Quiet Heart. New York: Viking Press, 1953. This book continues the story of the Civic, detailing Le Gallienne’s attempts to keep it open. It also deals with her later venture, the American Repertory Theatre, and its problems. Excellent photographs.

Middleton, George. These Things Are Mine. New York: Macmillan, 1947. An account of the Civic by a playwright who studied acting with Le Gallienne. He also discusses her detailed study of Eleonora Duse’s acting technique.

Reynolds, Moira Davison. Immigrant American Women Role Models: Fifteen Inspiring Biographies, 1850-1950. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997. Le Gallienne is one of the women whose biography is included in this volume.

Schanke, Robert A. Eva Le Gallienne: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. This comprehensive annotated bibliography of the actor covers her articles, reviews by critics, and records of her performances. A photograph of Le Gallienne as Hedda Gabler is included. An invaluable reference work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Shattered Applause: The Lives of Eva Le Gallienne. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. This exhaustive biography of the actor discusses both her career and her troubled personal life. The author based his book on many interviews he had with Le Gallienne. Many excellent photographs, a complete record of the actor’s performances, and a short bibliography are included.

Sheehy, Helen. Eva Le Gallienne: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1996. Drawing from Le Gallienne’s personal papers, Sheehy relates both Le Gallienne’s professional accomplishments and personal anecdotes, from childhood to work to her establishing repertory theater in the United States. Includes photographs.