A rare original Napoleon Sarony cabinet photo circa 1888 of the great American actress Sadie Martinot. Light wear otherwise good. An amazing early theatrical image! See Sadie Martinot's extraordinary biography below.
Shipping discounts for multiple purchases. Credit cards accepted with Paypal. Inquiries always welcome. Please visit my other eBay items for more early theatre and historical autographs, photographs and programs and great singer, actor and actress cabinet photos and CDV's.
From Wikipedia:
Sadie Martinot (August 19, 1861 – May 7, 1923) was an American actress and soprano singer who performed on stage in dramas, musical comedy and comic opera. Her career began at the age fifteen as Cupid in Ixion; or, the Man at the Wheel and, but for a few years absence, she remained active on stage in America and abroad until 1908. She was the first to play Hebe in an American production of H.M.S. Pinafore, the first Katrina in the comic opera Rip Van Winkle and the first to play the title role in an English adaptation of the operetta Nanon. Late in her life Martinot would fall victim to mental illness and spend her last few years confined to psychiatric institutions.
She was born Sarah Frances Marie Martinot in New York City on December 19, 1861, the daughter of William Alexander and Mary Lydia (née Randall) Martinot. Her father was the son of John P. Martinot, a French immigrant who founded a successful wholesale firm dealing in imported silk products. William Martinot worked for his father's firm and had served in the American Civil War[1] and later as a New York City police detective who once brought charges of corruption against a NYPD police captain.[2][3] Her mother was said to be of the family that once owned Randall's Island in Manhattan.[3] Before taking to the stage at 15, Martinot was educated at area public schools and the Ursuline Convent in New Rochelle, New York.[4][5][5] Some accounts[4] have her birth name as Sally Martin or Sally Eagan, the daughter of an Irish-American single mother who worked hard to ensure her a good education. In March 1894 Martinot stated to the press that, though she would have been proud to have been raised under such a circumstance, she in fact was the daughter of Mary and William Alexander Martinot.[6]
Career
In 1876 Martinot joined Manhattan's Eagle Theatre as a $5-a-week walk-on player. Her debut came about in late August of that year when an injury prevented chorus girl Maude Branscombe from performing Cupid in that evening's performance of F. C. Burnand's Ixion.[5][7] The next year she joined Adah Richmond's company at $18 a-week, touring in Chow Chow: or, A Tale of Pekin,[8] in which she performed a popular imitation of Marie Aimee,[9] singing Pretty as a Picture[10] Later came a Christmas 1877 engagement at the Boylston Museum, Boston [11] and a performance the following year at the city's Americus Club that led to an offer to join the Boston Museum stock company. That November she appeared at the Boston Museum in the original American production of Gilbert and Sullivan's[12] H.M.S. Pinafore and, over the following few seasons, rose to be their leading soubrette. Martinot left The Boston Museum after actor-manager Dion Boucicault offered her a substantial raise to join him in England and her request for a modest salary adjustment was rejected by the Museum's management.[5]
Martinot made her London debut on Boxing Day, 1880, at the Alhambra Theatre as the Spirit of the Bracken in the three-act comic opera Mefistofele II.[13] At the same theatre the following March, she played Celine in the Opéra bouffe Jeanne, Jeannette, et Jeanneton.[14] On October 14, 1882, she created at the Royal Comedy Theatre, London, the role Katrina in the comic opera Rip Van Winkle.[5][15]
By 1883 Martinot was back in New York with Boucicault for the inaugural season of his new Star Theatre (formerly Wallack's Theatre). Their first production premiered on March 26 with Boucicault's Vice Versa with Martinot in the role of Mrs. Clingstone Peach. Later one critic would declare the piece a failure and Martinot a success. On April 12 the season continued with Martinot playing Moya in The Shaughraun; Dora on April 19 in The Omadhaun; and that May as Eily O'Connor in The Colleen Bawn.[5]
At the Fifth Avenue Theatre in January 1884, Martinot played Portia in the farce Distinguished Gentleman and that August at the Union Square Theatre she was Florence Nightingale Fletcher in Queena. In April of the following year she played Sophie in Dakolar at the Lyceum Theatre and on June 29, 1885, at the Casino Theatre, she became the first to sing in English the part Nanon Patin in the operetta Nanon.[5][16]
Illness
In December 1885 Martinot sailed for an engagement in Florence, Italy, where after a short period she came down with a strain of malaria commonly called Roman Fever. A private train took her to Vienna, Austria where she spent the next several years convalescing and, as her strength returned, pursuing European art and culture.[5]
Later career
Martinot returned to New York to star in the much anticipated comic opera Nadjy, but after a disagreement with the Casino Theatre stage manager, she withdrew from the production before the piece debuted. Her first performance after returning from Europe was played in German at Amberg's German Theatre early in 1889 as Bettina in Das Maskottchen (The Mascot). At the Garden Theatre on September 27 of the following year she played Mrs. Horton in Hamilton Aide's Dr. Bill[17] and at the same venue that October 6, Lois in Jerome K. Jerome's Sunset. Over the following two seasons Martinot starred in a national tour performing the title role in the Charles Frederic Nirdlinger play Pompadour and Dora in Victorien Sardou's Diplomacy. Martinot would remain active in theatre, in New York or elsewhere, well into the first decade of the new century in roles such as:[18]
Suzette in The Voyage of Suzette (1893)[19]
Mrs. Darcey in The Passport (1894)[20]
Lady Angela in Patience (1896)
Hattie in A Stranger in New York (1897)[21]
Leonie in The Turtle (1898)[22]
Lady Carnby in The Marriage Game (1901)[23]
Paula in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1903)
Mary Erwin in Mary and John (1905)[24]
Mrs. Temple in Mrs. Temple's Telegram (1906)[25]
Lady Dover in Toddles (1908)[26]
Personal life
Martinot married twice, first to Fred Stinson (d. 1895),[5] a theatrical manager, on March 30, 1879, in Boston, and then to Louis F. Nethersole (d. 1936), a theatrical manager, producer and press agent and a brother of actress Olga Nethersole. While it was reported she married Max Figman, a comedian-actor, with whom she fell into financial difficulty, her marriage record to Louis Nethersole on May 30, 1901, in Manhattan, New York, lists her name as Sarah F. Stinson.[27] At the time of her death Martinot was thought to be divorced from Nethersole.[5][28][29] Martinot was the author of a number of magazine articles over her career, a student of Wagnerian opera and an accomplished equestrian.[5]
Decline
On January 5, 1916, Martinot jumped unclad from a second story window of an apartment building on Fort Washington Avenue, New York. She did not, from press reports, appear seriously injured when she landed in an adjacent courtyard, though it was apparent she was mentally unstable. Martinot was transported to Washington Heights Hospital and then later in the day transferred to the Psychiatric Ward at Bellevue Hospital.[30] In March 1918 Martinot was committed to the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane and later that year moved to St. Lawrence State Hospital, Ogdensburg, New York. At some point early in 1918 Martinot escaped her confinement and was eventually found in Washington, D. C., disorientated and unable to recall her name. She died of heart disease five years later while still institutionalized at St. Lawrence Hospital.
Napoleon Sarony (March 9, 1821 – November 9, 1896)[1] was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular and great portraitphotographer, most known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as an accomplished theater and film star photographer.
Life
Sarony was born in Quebec in 1821 and moved to New York City around 1836. He worked as an illustrator for Currier and Ives before joining with James Majorand starting his own lithography business, Sarony & Major, in 1843. In 1845, James Major was replaced by Henry B. Major in Sarony & Major and it continued operating under that name until 1853. From 1853 to 1857, the firm was known as Sarony and Company, and from 1857 to 1867, as Sarony, Major & Knapp. Sarony left the firm in 1867 and established a photography studio at 37 Union Square, during a time when celebrity portraiture was a popular fad.[2][3] Photographers would pay their famous subjects to sit for them, and then retain full rights to sell the pictures. Sarony reportedly paid famed stage actress Sarah Bernhardt $1,500 to pose for his camera, the equivalent of more than $20,000 today.[3] In 1894 he published his portfolio of prints titled, "Sarony's Living Pictures."
Associations
Included among the thousands of people that came into Sarony's world were many distinguished people, such as American Civil War General, William T. Sherman, and American authors Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Lew Wallace and Oscar Wilde.
William T. Sherman
In 1888, Sarony photographed William T. Sherman, three years before he died in 1891. Sarony's photograph would be used as a model for the engraving of the first Sherman Postage stamp.[4]
Samuel Clemens; the Lotos, Salmagundi and Tile Clubs
Sarony took numerous photographs of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain).[3] Clemens and Sarony were in the same social circles and shared many mutual acquaintances. They both belonged to the Lotos Club in New York City. Sarony helped in the founding of the Salmagundi Club, an association of artists, and was also a member of the Tile Club, whose members included well-known authors and journalists. In 1883, English author Wilkie Collins dedicated his anti-vivisection book Heart and Science to Sarony. In 1884, Sarony was a participant in an April Fool's joke played on Clemens when George Washington Cable arranged for 150 of Clemens's friends to write to him simultaneously, requesting his autograph. As part of the joke, no stamps or envelopes were to be provided for a reply.
Oscar Wilde
One of Sarony's portraits of writer Oscar Wilde became the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case, Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony 111 U.S. 53 (1884), in which the Court upheld the extension of copyright protection to photographs. Sarony sued Burrow-Giles after it used unauthorized lithographs of Oscar Wilde No. 18 in an advertisement, and won a judgment for $610 (the modern equivalent of just over $12,000) that was affirmed on appeal by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Sarony later photographed the Supreme Court itself, to celebrate the centennial of the federal judiciary in 1890.[3][5]
Family
Sarony was married twice. His first wife died in 1858; his second, Louie, reportedly shared his tendency towards eccentricity and preference for outlandish dress. She rented elaborate costumes that she wore during her daily afternoon walk through Washington Square, wearing them once before returning them.
His brother, Oliver François Xavier Sarony, was also a portrait photographer, working primarily in England, and who died in 1879. Napoleon's son Otto (1859–1903) continued the family name for a few years until his own early death in 1903.
Sarony was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.[3]