From the personal collection of 19th and early 20th century American sculptor William Ordway Partridge, who was friends with many of the theatrical luminaries of his era. A rare original 1896 program clip for Maude Adams and John Drew in The Bauble Shop at Palmer's Theatre, New York. Dimensions six and a half by five inches, mounted to an eleven and a half by nine inch Victorian album page, clipped from a larger program with unrelated opera program clip to same page and Sarah Bernhardt program clip in La Tosca to the reverse. Maude Adams is rare this early. Light wear otherwise good.
See Maude Adams's extraordinary biography below.
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From Wikipedia:
Maude Ewing Kiskadden (November 11, 1872 – July 17, 1953), known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American stage actress who achieved her greatest success as Peter Pan.[1][2] Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful[3][4][5] and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than one million dollars during her peak.[3] She was often referred to simply as "Maudie" by her fans.
Adams was born as Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Asaneth Ann "Annie" (née Adams) and James (or John) Henry Kiskadden. Little is known of Adams's father. He died in 1878 when Maude was only six years old. It has been written that he came to Utah from Montana, and that the Kiskaddens originated in Ohio. He was not a Mormon, and Adams herself once wrote of her father as having been a "gentile". The surname "Kiskadden" is Scottish.[6]
Most of what is known of Adams's ancestry traces through her maternal grandmother, Julia Ann Adams (née Banker). The Banker family came from Plattsburgh, New York. Adams's great grandfather Platt Banker converted to Mormonism, and it is said that the family migrated to Missouri with fellow members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[citation needed] In Missouri, Julia married Barnabus Adams. The family then migrated to Utah, settling in Salt Lake City, where Maude's mother, Asaneth Ann "Annie" Adams was born. Adams was also a descendant of Mayflowerpassenger John Howland. The extent of Adams's connection to the LDS Church is unclear. Adams took long sabbaticals in Catholic rectories, and in 1922 she donated her estates at Lake Ronkonkomato one of these places, the Sisters of St. Regis, for use as a novitiate and retreat house.[7][8]
Adams's mother, Annie Kiskadden, was an actress and, travelling with her, Maude spent her early years in provincial theaters, first appearing in plays at the age of nine months when she was carried onstage in her mother’s arms. At the age of five, Adams starred in a San Francisco theater as "Little Schneider" in Fritz, Our German Cousin and as "Adrienne Renaud" in A Celebrated Case. Often described as shy, Adams was referred to by Ethel Barrymore as the "original 'I want to be alone' woman".[3] She was known as helpful to aspiring young actors and actresses. She was known at times to supplement the salaries of fellow performers out of her own pay.[4] Once while touring, a theater owner doubled the price of tickets knowing Adams's name meant a sold-out house. Adams made the owner refund the difference before she appeared on the stage that night.[4]
Early career in New York
After touring in Boston and California, she made her New York City debut at age 16 in The Paymaster. Remaining in New York after the close of the play, she then became a member of E. H. Sothern's theater company appearing in The Highest Bidder and finally on Broadway in Lord Chumley. Charles H. Hoyt then cast her in The Midnight Bell where audiences, if not the critics, took notice of her. Sensing he had a potential new star on his hands, Hoyt offered her a five year contract, but Adams declined in favor of a lesser offer from the powerful producer Charles Frohman who from that point forward took control of her career.
Association with Charles Frohman
The Masked Ball opened on October 8, 1892. Audiences came to see its star, John Drew, but left remembering Maude Adams. Most memorable was a scene in which her character feigned tipsiness for which she received a two minute ovation on opening night. Drew was the star, but it was for Adams that the audience gave twelve curtain calls, and previously tepid critics gave generous reviews. Harpers Weekly wrote: "It is difficult to see just who is going to prevent Miss Adams from becoming the leading exponent of light comedy in America.
The New York Times wrote that "Maud Adams [sic], not John Drew, has made the success of The Masked Ball at Palmer's, and is the star of the comedy. Manager Charles Frohman, in attempting to exploit one star, has happened upon another of greater magnitude." The tipsy scene started Adams on her path to being a favorite among New York audiences and led to an eighteen month run for the play. Less successful plays followed, including The Butterflies, The Bauble Shop, Christopher, Jr., The Imprudent Young Couple and The Squire of Dames. But 1896 saw an upturn with Rosemary. A comedy about the failed elopement of a young couple, sheltered for the night by an older man (Drew), the play received critical praise and box office success. J. M. Barrie (future author of Peter Pan) saw a performance and decided that Adams was the actress to play Miss Babbie in the adaptation of his book The Little Minister.
Stardom
Her greatest triumphs followed with more works of Barrie, including The Little Minister, Quality Street, What Every Woman Knows, A Kiss for Cinderella, The Legend of Leonora, and Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, the latter being the role with which she was most closely identified and which she often reprised. Adams was the first actress to play Peter Pan on Broadway. Only days after her casting was announced, Adams had an emergency appendectomy and it was uncertain whether her health would allow her to assume the role as planned. Peter Pan opened on October 16, 1905 at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. to little success.[15] It soon moved to Broadway, however, where the play had a long run, and Adams appeared in the role on Broadway several times over the following decade.[citation needed] The collar of her 1905 Peter Pan costume, which she had co-designed, was an immediate fashion success and was henceforth known as the "Peter Pan collar".[16]
Other plays
While Adams was mainly associated with the plays of Barrie from 1897 until her retirement in 1918, she also made appearances in other works during that period. The Little Minister was followed in 1899 with her portrayal of Shakespeare's Juliet. While audiences loved her in the role, selling out the sixteen performances in New York, the critics disliked it.
Romeo and Juliet was followed by L'Aiglon in 1900, a French play about the life of Napoleon II of France in which Adams played the leading role, foreshadowing her portrayal of another male (Peter Pan) five years later. The play had starred Sarah Bernhardt in Paris with enthusiastic reviews, but Adams's L'Aiglon received mixed reviews in New York. In 1909, she played Joan of Arc in Friedrich Schiller's The Maid of Orleans. This was produced on a huge scale at the Harvard University Stadium by Frohman.[17] The June 24, 1909 edition of the Paducah Evening Sun (Kentucky) contains the following excerpt:
Joan at Harvard, Schiller's Play reproduced on Gigantic scale. […] The experiment of producing Schiller's "Maid of Orleans" beneath starry skies … was carried out…by ... Adams and a company numbering about two thousand persons … at the Harvard Stadium. … A special electric light plant was installed … a great cathedral was erected, background constructed and a realistic forest created. … Miss Adams was accorded an ovation at the end of the performance.[18]
She appeared in another French play with 1911's Chantecler, the story of a rooster who believes his crowing makes the sun rise.[19] She fared only slightly better than in L'Aiglon with the critics, but audiences again embraced her, on one occasion giving her twenty two curtain calls.[19] Adams later cited it as her favorite role, with Peter Pan a close second.
Retirement and death
Adams last appeared on the New York stage in A Kiss for Cinderella in 1916. Following a thirteen year retirement from the stage, during which she worked with General Electric to develop improved and more powerful stage lighting, she appeared in several regional productions of Shakespeare. It has been suggested that the true reason for her association with General Electric (in developing better lighting instruments) and the Eastman Company (in developing color photography) during the 1920s was because she wished to appear in a color film version of Peter Pan, and this would have required better lighting for color photography.[20]
Adams headed the drama department at Stephens College in Missouri from 1937 to 1943, becoming well known as an inspiring teacher in the arts of acting.[9][21]
After her retirement in 1918, Adams was on occasion pursued for roles in film. The closest she came to accepting was in 1938, when producer David O. Selznick persuaded her to do a screen test (with Janet Gaynor, who would later play the female lead) for the role of Miss Fortune in the film The Young in Heart. After negotiations failed, the role was played by Minnie Dupree, who like Adams had been a girlish whimsical type of actress. The twelve-minute screen test was later preserved by the George Eastman House in 2004.[22]
She died, aged 80, at her summer home, Caddam Hill, in Tannersville, New York, and is interred in the cemetery of the Sisters of the Cenacle, Lake Ronkonkoma, New York.
William Ordway Partridge (April 11, 1861 – May 22, 1930) was an American sculptor, teacher and author. Among his best-known works are the Shakespeare Monument in Chicago, the equestrian statue of General Grant in Brooklyn, the Pietà at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Manhattan, and the Pocahontas statue in Jamestown, Virginia.
He was born in Paris, the younger son of George Sidney Partridge, Jr. and Helen Derby Catlin.[2] His father was the Paris representative for the New York City department store A.T. Stewart.[2] His mother was a cousin of the painter George Catlin.[2] His brother, Sidney Catlin Partridge, became a bishop of the Episcopal Church.[2]
Education
Partridge's family returned to New York City in 1868, and enrolled him in Cheshire Academy in Connecticut, followed by Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn.[2] He entered Columbia University in autumn 1881, but had to withdraw because of poor health.[1] He traveled to Europe in 1882,[2] and studied in Florence in the studio of Fortunato Galli,[1] where he became friends with the young Bernard Berenson.[3] Although he never formally enrolled at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, he audited classes there in autumn 1883, and studied briefly in the Paris studio of sculptor Antonin Mercié.[1] He returned to New York City in Spring 1884, and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[1] He appeared in a New York City production of David Copperfield,[2] and moved to Boston, where he supported himself by giving dramatic readings of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets.[1] He continued to sculpt, and received encouragement in this from his cousin, the sculptor John Rogers.[1]
In 1887, he married Augusta Merriam, a wealthy widow from Milton, Massachusetts, who was 15 years older.[1] They traveled to Europe that year, where he studied briefly in the Paris studio of painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. There he formed a close friendship with the neo-Gothic architect Ralph Adams Cram.[4] The couple moved to Rome, where he studied in the studio of Polish sculptor Pio Welonski.[1] They returned to Milton, Massachusetts in 1889, where he established his own studio.[1]
Sculptures
Partridge created two larger-than-life bronze statues of Alexander Hamilton, executed 15 years apart. The first was commissioned by the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn, installed in front of the club's headquarters in Brooklyn Heights, and dedicated on October 4, 1893.[5] For months before and after that dedication, Partridge's full-size plaster model of Hamilton was on exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.[5] The bronze statue stood in Brooklyn until 1936, when it was relocated to The Grange, Hamilton's country house in northern Manhattan.[5] The second Hamilton statue was commissioned by the Alumni Association of Columbia College [now University].[6] It was installed on campus in front of Hamilton Hall, and dedicated on May 27, 1908.[6] Both Hamilton statues stand in northern Manhattan, less than 1.5 mi (2.4 km) apart.
In 1890, Partridge won a national competition to create a statue of William Shakespeare for Chicago, Illinois.[1] He returned to Paris, where he set up a studio to work on the project.[1] He exhibited his full-size plaster model of Shakespeare at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago,[1] along with nine other works.[a] His bronze Shakespeare was installed in Lincoln Park the following spring, and dedicated on April 23, 1894, the Bard's 330th birthday.[8] Partridge wrote a sonnet for its dedication.[b]
The Equestrian Statue of General Ulysses S. Grant (1895-1896) was Partridge's most colossal work. Commissioned by the Union League Club of Brooklyn, it was installed in the center of Bedford Avenue, in front of the Club's headquarters, and dedicated on April 27, 1896.[10] The bronze horse and rider are approximately 12 ft (3.7 m) in height, and stand upon a granite pedestal approximately 15 ft (4.6 m) in height.[10]
A bequest from Englishman James Smithson (c.1765-1829) funded the creation of the Smithsonian Institution. Partridge was commissioned in 1896 to create a bronze memorial tablet commemorating that bequest for Smithson's gravesite in Genoa, Italy.[c] He based his relief portrait of Smithson on an 1817 relief portrait taken from life by Pierre-Joseph Tiolier (formerly attributed to Antonio Canova).[11] Partridge initially made two casts of the bronze tablet, one for the gravesite and the other for the nearby Protestant Chapel of the Holy Spirit.[12] He made a third bronze cast in 1898 for Smithson's alma mater, Pembrook College, University of Oxford. The gravesite's bronze tablet was stolen, and the chapel's bronze tablet was used to make a marble copy, that was installed at the gravesite in 1900.[12] Upon learning that the Genoa cemetery was to be destroyed for the expansion of an adjacent quarry, Alexander Graham Bell, a member of the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, proposed that Smithson's remains be brought to the United States.[13] In 1904, Smithson's remains and grave monument were relocated to the Crypt of the Smithsonian's Castle Building in Washington, D.C.[13] The 1900 marble copy of Partridge's tablet was part of that move.[12] The Chapel of the Holy Spirit was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. A marble copy of Partridge's tablet was carved in 1963, and stands today at the site of the chapel.[12]
Partridge's most famous religious work is the larger-than-life Pietà he created for St. Patrick's Cathedral, Manhattan. The dead Christ is collapsed before a seated Mary, who cradles his face with her hand. Critic Robert Burns Wilson wrote a sensitive appreciation of the work.[d] Carved from white Carrara marble, Pietà is located in the Ambulatory behind the High Altar.[15]
The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities commissioned Partridge to create a larger-than-life bronze statue of Pocahontas, the Native American princess, for the 1907 Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk, Virginia.[16] The exposition commemorated the 300th anniversary of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Pocahontus stood in front of the Administration Building for the exposition, and APVA later loaned the statue to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[16] APVA donated the statue to Jamestown, where it was re-dedicated on June 3, 1922.[16] Queen Elizabeth II visited Jamestown in 1957 for the 350th anniversary, and was charmed by the statue. Her reaction inspired a posthumous replica to be cast, which was presented by the Governor of Virginia as a gift to the British people. Dedicated on October 5, 1958, the bronze replica was installed outside St. George's, Gravesend, the English church in which Pocahontas had been interred in 1617.[17]
Teacher
Partridge lectured at the National Social Science Association, the Concord School of Philosophy, and the Brooklyn Institute.[2] From 1897 to 1903, he lectured at what is now George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.,[2] and went on to lecture at Stanford University in California.
He wrote a manual on sculpting: Technique of Sculpture (1895).
Partridge's studio was at 15 West 38th Street, Manhattan. Lee Lawrie was among his studio assistants.
Personal
Partridge and Augusta Merriam had a daughter together, also named Augusta (d. 1916). The couple divorced in 1904.[1]
On June 14, 1905 he married the poet Margaret Ridgely Schott.[18]: p. xxx They had a daughter together, also named Margaret.[e]
Partridge died in Manhattan, New York City, on May 22, 1930.