Fay Courteney (about 1878 – July 18, 1943) was an American actress on stage and in radio.
Early life
Frances K. Courteney was born in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, the daughter of Herbert Courteney and A. H. Courteney. Her father was a building contractor.
Career
Courteney toured
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
in the Courteney Sisters, with her sister, and as a solo artist, with her "deep and voluminous" "organ-like contralto" voice. She was a fixture in stock companies in Cleveland, Columbus, Rochester, Detroit, and Toronto, and associated for many years with actor
Vaughan Glaser
Vaughan Glaser (November 17, 1872 – November 23, 1958) was an American stage and film actor. His stage career started a long time before the First World War; he often appeared opposite Fay Courteney in the 1910s. He appeared in numerous Broad ...
. In 1920, she played the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, co-starring in ''Bought and Paid For'' and ''The Matinee Hero'' with
Clay Clement
Clay Clement (May 19, 1888 – October 20, 1956) was an American stage, film, and TV actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1918 and 1947. Clement was one of the earliest members of the Screen Actors Guild.Broadway credits included roles in the comedies ''The Advertising of Kate'' (1922), ''She Couldn't Say No'' (1926), ''It Never Rains'' (1929-1930), and ''Off to Buffalo'' (1939). Later in her career, she was active in radio productions.
Personal life
Courteney, described as having "hypnotic eyes" and an "alluring manner", had "multitudes of suitors" as a young actress. She married Theodore L. Gamble in 1901 in New Jersey; they divorced in 1910. She enjoyed driving an automobile, and even raced her car on occasion. She died in New York City in 1943, in her sixties, from a
cerebral hemorrhage
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...