Pauline Lord (August 13, 1890 – October 11, 1950) was an American stage and film actress.

Early years

Lord was born in Hanford, California, to Edward Lord and Sara Foster. When the family moved to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

she attended Holy Rosary Academy, where she discovered her vocation from participating in a school play. As a youngster, she used her weekly allowance to attend Saturday productions at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco and eventually gained small parts in some of those plays. She was a graduate of the Jennie Morrow Long College of Voice and Action.

Career

At age 13, she debuted professionally with the Belasco Stock Company in the play '' Are You a Mason?'' where her first role was that of a maid. The comedian

Nat Goodwin Nathaniel Carl "Nat" Goodwin (July 25, 1857 – January 31, 1919) was an American actor and vaudevillian born in Boston. Life and career While clerk in a large shop Goodwin studied for the stage and made his first appearance in 1874 at the How ...

saw her act and invited her to look him up if she ever got to New York City. Three years later, after the

San Francisco Fire 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 ...

, Lord made the trip. True to his words, Goodwin put Lord to work with several tour engagements. Fired from her first tour, Lord returned to New York and acted in some plays there before returning to California. Anna-Christie-1921-1

Her first Broadway role was in January 1912 as Ruth Lenox in '' The Talker'' followed by more tours and vaudeville parts. Her next hit was in August 1917 as Sadie in ''The Deluge'', directed by

Arthur Hopkins Arthur Hopkins (October 4, 1878 – March 22, 1950) was a well-known Broadway theater director and producer in the early twentieth century. Between 1912 and 1948, he produced and staged more than 80 plays – an average of more than two per year � ...

. It was not until November 2, 1921, that she again scored another hit where she starred in the title role of Eugene O’Neill's ''

Anna Christie ''Anna Christie'' is a play in four acts by Eugene O'Neill. It made its Broadway debut at the Vanderbilt Theatre on November 2, 1921. O'Neill received the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this work. According to historian Paul Avrich, the ...

'' at the

Vaudeville Theatre The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on the Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each ...

on Broadway. This turned out to be her greatest success; the play was taken to London, where Lord received a half-hour ovation on April 10, 1923, at the Strand Theatre. In 1924, she starred as Amy in

Sidney Howard Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for ''Gone with the Wind''. ...

's '' They Knew What They Wanted'' and later in 1928 as Nina Leeds in O’Neill's ''

Strange Interlude ''Strange Interlude'' is an experimental play in nine acts by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill began work on it as early as 1923 and developed its scenario in 1925; he wrote the play between May 1926 and the summer of 1927, and complete ...

''.

Mary Pickford Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American stage and screen actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the US film industry, she co-founde ...

listed her as one of her favorite stars. Lord returned to the stage in 1932 playing Abby in Sidney Howard's '' The Late Christopher Bean''. She made her film debut in 1934 as '' Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch'', followed by ''

A Feather in Her Hat ''A Feather in Her Hat'' is a 1935 melodrama film starring Pauline Lord as a working-class woman with ambitions for her son. It is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by I. A. R. Wylie. Plot In 1925 London, middle-aged, widowed shopkeeper ...

'', released the following year. She found she was not interested in cinema and returned to the stage. In January 1936, she played Zenobia in Owen and Donald Davis’ dramatization of Edith Wharton's ''

Ethan Frome ''Ethan Frome'' is a 1911 book by American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The novel has been adapted into a '' film of the same name''. Plot The novel is a framed narrative. The framing sto ...

''. Her last appearance on stage was in 1946 as Amanda in a touring company's production of

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...

' ''

The Glass Menagerie ''The Glass Menagerie'' is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that premiered in 1944 and catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame. The play has strong autobiographical elements, featuring characters based on its author, his Histrionic persona ...

''.

Personal life and death

Lord married advertising executive Owen B. Winters on April 27, 1929. They divorced on October 26, 1931. She died on October 11, 1950, of chronic asthma and heart disease at Champion Memorial Hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico."Actress Pauline Lord, 60, Succumbs at Almogordo," ''Albuquerque Journal'', p. 19, Thursday, October 12, 1950. https://www.newspapers.com/image/158205495/?terms=%22Pauline%20Lord%22&match=2

References

* Behringer, Clara M. "Lord, Pauline" ''Notable American Women.'' Vol. 2, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975 .

External links

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Pauline Lord
portrait at NYP Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Lord, Pauline 1890 births 1950 deaths 20th-century American actresses American stage actresses American film actresses Actresses from California People from Hanford, California Deaths from asthma