Gertrude
Lamson (October 8, 1874 – February 7, 1965), known professionally as Nance
O'Neil or Nancy O'Neil, was an American actress of stage and silent cinema of
the early 20th century, dubbed the American Bernhardt. Queer Places:
Academy of Notre Dame, 180 Middlesex Road
Tyngsboro
, Middlesex County
, Massachusetts
01879
The Lillian Booth Actors Home, 155-175 W Hudson Ave, Englewood, NJ 07631
Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries, 1712 S Glendale Ave, Glendale, CA 91205
Gertrude
Lamson (October 8, 1874 – February 7, 1965), known professionally as Nance
O'Neil or Nancy O'Neil, was an American actress of stage and silent cinema of
the early 20th century, dubbed the American Bernhardt.
O'Neil was born in Oakland, California to George Lamson and Arre Findley.[1] When she decided to become an actress, her religious father, an auctioneer, denounced his daughter in church for going on the stage and asked the congregation to pray for her.
Early in her acting career, she was managed by McKee Rankin, an actor, manager, and producer who made her a star in Australia and oversaw her London debut in 1902 in the play Magda, in which she was described as "intense, imperious and unequal".[3] (In 1899, Rankin and O'Neil were rumored to have married but the announcement was declared incorrect.) In her role as the title character in the 1906 adaptation of Leah, the Forsaken, she recreated the role made famous by Italian actress Adelaide Ristori. Her performances in Leah (an adaptation of a translation of Salomon Hermann von Mosenthal's Deborah) were described as 'genius' by Fremont Older. She also appeared in Trilby, Camille, The Common Standard, The Wanderer, Macbeth, Agnes, Sappho, The Passion Flower, Hedda Gabler, and many other productions in the United States and Europe.
For a period in the early 1900s, O'Neil owned her own acting company, in which Lionel Barrymore came to early public notice.
In 1904, O'Neil met Lizzie Borden while in Boston. Apparently, Lizzie first made friends with Ricca Allen, and through Ricca she arranged to meet Nance at a summer resort near Lynn, Massachusetts in 1904. From there, Lizzie became a kind of groupie to the O’Neil troupe. The two had a close friendship, which incited considerable gossip.[5][6] During O'Neil's two year stay in Boston, Lizzie paid her legal expenses in several law suits; the reclusive Lizzie even accompanied O'Neil into the courtroom for moral support. After one of the suits had been settled, Lizzie rented a house in the resort town of Tyngsboro so that "she and Nance's company could enjoy a week-long house party." Later, when O'Neil decided to buy a summer home in Tyngsboro, Lizzie helped her with the down payment. Nance O'Neil's beloved country property, called Brinley Farm, is now the Academy of Notre Dame in Tyngsboro, MA. After one all-night party given for O'Neil and her company at Lizzie's home in Fall River, Emma, Lizzie's sister, left the house and never spoke to Lizzie again. It is unclear how or when the two women parted company, but by 1906 the bank had foreclosed on O'Neil's Massachusetts home and no more money was forthcoming from Lizzie.
A critic in The New York Times wrote of O'Neil's talents in 1908, stressing the positives of her performances while warning of the actress's drawbacks. "There is no actress on the stage at present who has a more remarkable gift for emotional expression, nor is there a single one who has been more lavishly endowed by nature with the physical gifts which enter into the equipment of great actresses", he wrote. "Miss O'Neil has a kind of massive beauty, and she is not without much natural grace. Her voice is a splendid organ, rich and deep, with plenty of color and sweetness. There are moments when it is expressive of deep feeling. But there are more extended periods when it is pitched in monotonous cadences, during which the actress speaks seem to be delivered without a hint of genuine feeling or understanding, when, in short, she is simply an actress giving voice to words that she has conned and learned by rote and delivered in a sort of phonographic manner without a suggestion of the thought behind them".[2]
In Hollywood, she began in silent movies, such as The Kreutzer Sonata (1915). She successfully made the transition to sound films, appearing in movies such as Ladies of Leisure, The Royal Bed, and The Rogue Song (all in 1930), Cimarron and Transgression in 1931, and False Faces (1932), which proved to be her final film.
In 1916, O'Neil married Alfred Hickman (né Alfred Scott Devereaux-Hickman), a British-born film actor who was previously married to actress Blanche Walsh. He died in 1931. Hickman and O'Neil costarred as Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra in the silent film, The Fall of the Romanovs (1917).
The statuesque[4] O'Neil performed in Louisville, Kentucky, opposite such actors as Wilton Lackaye, Edmund Breese, William Faversham, Tom Wise and Harriet E. MacGibbon. There were regular productions, including Ned McCobb's Daughter, The Front Page, The Big Fight. A "transcontinental tour" of The Big Fight began in Boston, took in New Haven and Hartford, and ended at Caine's storehouse. She also acted in plays by Shakespeare and Ibsen in Boston in the late 1920s. On November 29, 1922, she was featured at the opening night of the Columbia Theatre in Sharon, Pennsylvania.
O'Neil was a resident of the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, and died there on February 7, 1965, aged 90.[9]
She was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
O'Neil was a character in the musical Lizzie Borden: A Musical Tragedy in Two Axe, where she was played by Suellen Vance. The women's implied romantic relationship was explored in the 2010 play Nance O'Neil by David Foley.[7]
O'Neil was also a character in a play by William Norfolk, The Lights are Warm and Colored. Set in 1905, it uses Lizzie's friendship with O'Neil and other theatrical players as a vehicle for a play within a play. The actors recreate scenes from the murder trial in an improv-like setting, coached or criticized by Lizzie and Emma. The playwright seems to think that Lizzie was innocent, and the real perpetrator was the maid, who makes a surprise visit at the end.[8]
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