Edna Wallace Hopper (January 17, 1872 – December 14, 1959) was an American actress on stage and in silent films.
[ She was known as the "eternal flapper".
]
Biography
Hopper was believed to have been born on January 17, 1872, as Edna Margaret Augusta Wallace in San Francisco, California to Josephine and Waller Wallace. Hopper claimed her birth records were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...
. Her father was the head night usher at the California Theater. She had one sibling.
Hopper trained for the stage in New York. While there, she had married DeWolf Hopper
William DeWolf Hopper (March 30, 1858September 23, 1935) was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. A star of vaudeville and musical theater, he became best known for performing the popular baseball poem "Casey at the Bat". ...
on June 28, 1893. They appeared in several comic operas together, including John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa ( ; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to dist ...
's ''El Capitan
El Capitan ( es, El Capitán; "the Captain" or "the Chief") is a vertical Rock formations in the United States, rock formation in Yosemite National Park, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The El Capitan Granite, granit ...
'', before divorcing in 1898. The couple presented a striking physical contrast on stage. DeWolf stood 6 ft 5 or 6 in, while Hopper stood under five feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds.
Hopper starred in her most famous role, Lady Holyrood in the popular musical ''Florodora
''Florodora'' is an Edwardian musical comedy. After its long run in London, it became one of the first successful Broadway musicals of the 20th century. The book was written by Jimmy Davis under the pseudonym Owen Hall, the music was by Leslie St ...
'', which had premiered in London. Though not part of the renowned Florodora Sextette, she shared in some of the wild adulation of male admirers who mobbed the stage door after every performance.
Hopper remained active over the next decade, starring in George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan (July 3, 1878November 5, 1942) was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudev ...
's ''Fifty Miles from Boston'' in 1907. She married Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
broker Albert Oldfield Brown
Albert Oldfield Brown (December 30, 1872 – March 5, 1945), sometime known as A. O. Brown, was an actor and the president of The Lambs from 1921 to 1924 and again from 1930 to 1932. He was president of the Percy Williams Home for Retired Actors an ...
in 1908. Her professional activity lessened in the 1910s but resumed in the 1920s. One of the earlier stage actors to have a facelift
A facelift, technically known as a rhytidectomy (from the Ancient Greek () "wrinkle", and () "excision", the surgical removal of wrinkles), is a type of cosmetic surgery procedure used to give a more youthful facial appearance. There are mul ...
, Wallace Hopper had the operation filmed and then made personal appearance tours over the next eight years showing the film and revealing beauty tips. (Many decades later, veteran actress Jeanne Cooper
Wilma Jeanne Cooper (October 25, 1928 – May 8, 2013) was an American actress, best known for her role as Katherine Chancellor on the CBS soap opera ''The Young and the Restless'' (1973–2013). At the time of her death, she was eighth on the ...
would follow a similar path and have her own facelift procedure filmed and shown on the soap opera on which she had been appearing, ''The Young and the Restless
''The Young and the Restless'' (often abbreviated as ''Y&R'') is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in fictional Genoa City (not the real-life similarly-named Genoa City, Wi ...
''.)
Hopper became associated with a line of personal care
Personal care or toiletries are consumer products used in personal hygiene, personal grooming or for beautification.
Products
Personal care includes products as diverse as cleansing pads, colognes, cotton swabs, cotton pads, deodorant, eye lin ...
products and cosmetics, ''Edna Wallace Hopper Cosmetics,'' sold by American Home Products
Wyeth, LLC was an American pharmaceutical company. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1860 as ''John Wyeth and Brother''. It was later known, in the early 1930s, as American Home Products, before being renamed to Wyeth i ...
. In 1953, she performed the same role she had begun her acting career with in 1893, at the final performance at the Empire Theater in Manhattan, which was scheduled for demolition. The June 8, 1953, issue of ''Life Magazine
''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...
'' featured an article on Hopper, considering her a popular stage actress and singer during the turn of the 20th century.
Hopper had separated from her second husband by 1923 and moved from New York to Los Angeles. She went on to become a stock trader and was the first (and, during her tenure, only) woman of the thirty-six member board of L. F. Rothschild & Co.
Death
Edna Wallace Hopper died on December 14, 1959, in New York City. She is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
References
External links
Edna Hopper at Find a Grave
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Edna Wallace Hopper
photo gallery at NY Public Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hooper, Edna Wallace
19th-century American actresses
American stage actresses
20th-century American actresses
American silent film actresses
Vaudeville performers
1959 deaths
1872 births
Burials at Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland, California)
American stock traders
Women stock traders