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Diseuse
A monologist (), or interchangeably monologuist (), is a solo artist who recites or gives dramatic readings from a monologue, soliloquy, poetry, or work of literature, for the entertainment of an audience. The term can also refer to a person who monopolizes a conversation; and, in an obsolete sense, could describe a bird with an unchanging, repetitive song. Dramatic monologist A dramatic monologist is a term sometimes applied to an actor performing in a monodrama often with accompaniment of music. In a monodrama the lone player relays a story through the eyes of a central character, though at times may take on additional roles. In the modern era the more successful practitioners of this art have been actresses frequently referred to by the French term “diseuse”.Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - the December 21, 1935 p. 11 Diseuse Diseuse (, ) French for "teller", also called talkers, storytellers, dramatic-singers or dramatic-talkers is a term, at least as used on the English-spea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joyce Grenfell
Joyce Irene Grenfell OBE (''née'' Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English diseuse, singer, actress and writer. She was known for the songs and monologues she wrote and performed, at first in revues and later in her solo shows. She never appeared as a stage actress, but had roles, mostly comic, in many films, including Miss Gossage in '' The Happiest Days of Your Life'' (1950) and Police Sergeant Ruby Gates in the St Trinian's series (from 1954). She was a well-known broadcaster on radio and television. As a writer, she was the first radio critic for ''The Observer'', contributed to ''Punch'' and published a volume of memoirs. Born to an affluent Anglo-American family, Grenfell had abandoned early hopes of becoming an actress when she was invited to perform a comic monologue in a West End revue in 1939. Its success led to a career as an entertainer, giving her creations in theatres in five continents between 1940 and 1969. Life and career Early years Born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Draper
Ruth Draper (December 2, 1884December 30, 1956) was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues and monodrama. Her best-known pieces include ''The Italian Lesson'', ''Three Women and Mr. Clifford'', ''Doctors and Diets'', and ''A Church in Italy''. Early life and family Ruth Draper was born in New York City, the youngest child of Dr. William Henry and Ruth (née Dana) Draper. Her father, who was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, had the affluence to support a large family with the help of several servants.US Census records 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900 Ruth Draper's mother was the daughter of Charles Anderson Dana, editor and publisher of ''The New York Sun'' and had married Dr. Draper in 1878 some years after the loss of his first wife, Lucy. Her nephew, Paul Draper, was a noted dancer and actor. Draper's second cousin was the society architect Paul Phipps, father of the British performer Joyce Grenfell. Her nephew Raimund Sanders Dra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert (; born Emma Laure Esther Guilbert, 20 January 1865 – 3 February 1944) was a French cabaret singer and actress of the ''Belle Époque''. Biography Born in Paris into a poor family as Emma Laure Esther Guilbert, Guilbert began singing as a child but at age sixteen worked as a model at the Printemps department store in Paris. She was discovered by a journalist. She took acting and diction lessons, which enabled her in 1886 to appear on stage at several smaller venues. Guilbert debuted at the Variette Theatre in 1888. She eventually sang at the popular Eldorado club, then at the Jardin de Paris before headlining in Montmartre at the Moulin Rouge in 1890. The English painter William Rothenstein described this performance in his first volume of memoirs: One evening Lautrec came up to the rue Ravignan to tell us about a new singer, a friend of Xanrof, who was to appear at the Moulin Rouge for the first time... We went; a young girl appeared, of virginal aspect, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Cornelia Otis Skinner (May 30, 1899 – July 9, 1979) was an American writer and actress. Biography Skinner was the only child of actor Otis Skinner and actress Maud Durbin. After attending the all-girls' Baldwin School and Bryn Mawr College (1918–1919), and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage in 1921. Skinner appeared in several plays before embarking on a tour of the United States from 1926 to 1929 in a one-woman performance of short character sketches which she had written. She also wrote numerous short, humorous pieces for publications such as ''The New Yorker''. These pieces were eventually compiled into a series of books, including ''Nuts in May'', ''Dithers and Jitters'', ''Excuse It Please!'', and ''The Ape in Me'', among others. In a "comprehensive study" of Skinner's work, G. Bruce Loganbill (1961) refers to Skinner's scripts as "monologue-dramas," which were extensions of the "linked monologues" developed by Ruth Draper. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beatrice Herford
Beatrice Brooke Herford (13 October 1867 – 18 July 1952) was an American actress, diseuseThe National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are doing the work and moulding the thought of the present time, Volume 2 by James Terry White - 1967 and vaudeville performer born in England. Biography The daughter of Dr. Brooke Herford, a Unitarian minister, Herford was born in Salford, Lancashire, and spent her youth moving between England and the United States, following her father's changing jobs, at first in Chicago and then in Boston. Her brother, Oliver Herford, was an artist and humorist. She developed a talent for impersonating characters she encountered, and, in her twenties, she participated avidly in private theatricals, writing her own monologues. In 1895, she made her public debut at the Salle Érard in London, when s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raquel Meller
Francisca Romana Marqués López (9 March 1888 – 26 July 1962), better known as Raquel Meller, was a Spanish diseuse, cuplé, and tonadilla singer and actress. She was an international star in the 1920s and 1930s, appearing in several films and touring Europe and the Americas. A vaudeville performer, she sang the original versions of well known songs such as "La Violetera" and "El relicario", both written by José Padilla Sánchez. Early life and career Meller was born in Tarazona (Province of Zaragoza, Zaragoza), Aragón in the neighborhood of Cinto. Her father, Telesforo Marqués Ibañez, worked as a blacksmith and her mother, Isabel López Sainz, ran a grocery store. Her family was one of the oldest in Aragón and were quite wealthy before becoming impoverished during the Carlist Wars. At the age of four, her family moved to Barcelona. Her father died when she was not yet 10 years old and she was placed under the care of her aunt, Sister María del Carmen, an abbess in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucienne Boyer
Lucienne Boyer (18 August 1901 – 6 December 1983) was a French diseuseMansfield News Journal 9 November 1934 pg. 20 and singer, best known for her song " Parlez-moi d'amour". Her impresario was Bruno Coquatrix. Early career Born as Émilienne-Henriette Boyer in Montparnasse, Paris, France. Her melodious voice gave her the chance, while working as a part-time model, to sing in cabarets. An office position at a prominent Parisian theater opened the door for her and within a few years she was cast as Lucienne Boyer, singing in major Parisian music halls. Popular success In 1927, Boyer sang at a concert by the great star Félix Mayol where she was seen by the American impresario Lee Shubert who immediately offered her a contract to come to Broadway. Boyer spent nine months in New York City, returning to perform there and to South America numerous times throughout the 1930s. By 1933, she had made a large number of recordings for Columbia Records of France including her signature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Dubas
Marie Dubas (3 September 1894 – 21 February 1972) was a French music-hall singer, diseuse and comedian. Biography Born in Paris, France, Marie Dubas began her career as a stage actress but became famous as a singer. Using the great Yvette Guilbert as her model, Dubas started singing in the small cabarets of Montmartre mixing comedy into her routine. She earned a following that led to offers to perform in Parisian operettas and musicals and during the 1920s and 1930s, starred at such places as the Casino de Paris and Bobino, the great music hall in Montparnasse. Her most famous song, '' Mon légionnaire'', was written by Raymond Asso and recorded in 1936. Her popularity became such that in 1939 she toured the United States. The occupation of France by the Germans during World War II proved a difficult time for the Jewish, Marie Dubas. Although married to a French gentile who served in the Air Force, she was nevertheless banned by the Vichy government and placed under house arrest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odette Dulac
Odette Dulac (14 July 1865 – 3 November 1939) was a French actress, singer and ''diseuse'' in the manner of Yvette Guilbert. Background Dulac was born in Aire-sur-Adour. She became a militant feminist and novelist. ''La houille rouge: les enfants de la violence'' (''The Red Coal'', 1916) narrated the horrors of raped and impregnated Frenchwomen at the time the First World War was being waged, in an anti-abortion polemic of triumphing French nationalism. She became a member of the Ligue des droits de femme (League for Women's Rights). At the start of her public career, as a singer-actress, she appeared in light opera at Antwerp in 1895 and was soon a star at the '' Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens'', where she appeared in André Messager's operetta, ''Les p'tites Michu ''Les p'tites Michu'' (The Little Michus) is an opérette in three acts, with music by André Messager and words by Albert Vanloo and Georges Duval (journalist), Georges Duval. The piece is set in Paris in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her first husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language cinema, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a jaded aristocrat in '' The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone'' (1961). She also played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie '' From Russia with Love'' (1963). Early career In 1922, Lenya was seen by her future husband, German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill, during an audition for his first stage score ''Zaubernacht'', but because of his position behind the piano, she did not see him. She was cast, but owing to her loyalty to her voice coach, she declined the role. She accepted the part of Jenny in the first performance of ''The Threepenny Opera'' (''Die Dreigrosche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Cyclopaedia Of American Biography
''The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography'' is a multi-volume collection of biographical articles and portraits of Americans, published since the 1890s. The primary method of data collection was by sending questionnaires to subjects or their relatives. It has over 60,000 entries, in 63 volumes. The entries are not credited. The overall editor was James Terry White. It is more comprehensive than the ''Dictionary of American Biography'' and the ''American National Biography'', but less scholarly because it doesn't cite the original sources used for the information. See also * ''Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography ''Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography'' is a six-volume collection of biographies of notable people involved in the history of the New World. Published between 1887 and 1889, its unsigned articles were widely accepted as authoritative fo ...'' References External links * Hathi Trust''National Cyclopaedia of American Biography''fulltext * '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Terry White
James Terry White (July 3, 1845 in Newburyport, Massachusetts – April 3, 1920 in Manhattan, New York) was an American publisher and poet. Given his wide range of interests and involvement in various businesses and cultural activities, he was reputed to be a Renaissance man. In 1862, he joined the San Francisco publishing firm H.H. Bancroft & Co. In 1869, White founded a publishing company bearing his name, James T. White Co. in San Francisco; and in 1886, with his son George Derby White, moved its headquarters to New York City. The firm published the first edition of ''The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography'' in 1891. At the death of his son in 1939, thirty-one volumes had been published, each containing about 1,000 biographies and 450 pages. Family successor of corporate positions White's uncle, Andrew Judson White, MD (1824–1898), had entered the wholesale drug business in New York and London — mainly, he, along with two other family members, obtained ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
