Boland, Mary

Boland, Mary (1885–1965), comic actress. The Philadelphia‐born comedienne made her debut in Detroit in 1901 in A Social Highwayman, and over the next several years she toured and played seasons with various stock companies before making her New York debut as Dorothy Nelson in Strongheart (1905), a role in which she continued for two years. Boland was at this time a young performer of notable beauty and charm, appearing as Dorothy Osgood in The Ranger (1907) and the saucy Lady Rowena Eggington in When Knights Were Bold (1907). Under Charles Frohman's supervision, she became leading lady to John Drew in Jack Straw (1908), Inconstant George (1909), Smith (1910), The Perplexed Husband (1912), Much Ado About Nothing (1913), The Will (1913), A Scrap of Paper (1914), and others. Boland then left Frohman to assume the roles of all the women who wore My Lady's Dress (1914), followed by the stepmother, Mrs. Wheeler, in Clarence (1919), her first essay as the sort of fluttery grande dame that would become her trademark. Among her major assignments in the 1920s were Paula Ritter, the amateur theatre buff in The Torch‐Bearers (1922); Gertrude Lennos, the inadvertent bigamist, in Meet the Wife (1923); and Susan Martin, whose plans to make her husband jealous backfire, in Cradle Snatchers (1925). One of her best performances was as the flighty matron Laura Merrick in The Vinegar Tree (1930), and she shone in two musicals, as the nouveau riche Mrs. Meshbesher in Face the Music (1932) and the Queen in Jubilee (1935). Boland returned from Hollywood to play Mrs. Malaprop in 1942, then again in 1954 as the domineering mother in Lullaby, her last New York appearance.