Cowl, Jane

Cowl, Jane (1884–1950), actress. Born in Boston, she studied at Columbia then began her career under the aegis of David Belasco, appearing first in his 1903 production of Sweet Kitty Bellairs and then in The Music Master, The Rose of the Rancho, A Grand Army Man, The Easiest Way, and Is Matrimony a Failure? Leaving Belasco, she became a major star as the wronged, vengeful Mary Turner in Within the Law (1912), then scored another success as another wronged woman: Ellen Neal in Common Clay (1915). Cowl starred in and co‐wrote Lilac Time (1917), Information Please (1918), and the hugely successful tearjerker Smilin' Through (1919). Her classical roles included Juliet, Melisande, and Shakespeare's Cleopatra. Stark Young observed in the New Republic, “Miss Cowl's Juliet is beautiful, first of all, to see. She is a child, a tragic girl, a woman convincing to the eye as few Juliets ever have had the good fortune to be.” Her later successes included the mismarried heroine Larita in Easy Virtue (1925), the noble beauty Amytis in The Road to Rome (1927), a puppet come to life in The Jealous Moon (1928), and the glamorous actress Jenny (1929). The failure of her Viola in 1930 signaled a series of disappointments before she again scored as Katherine Markham, the dedicated writer, in Old Acquaintance (1940). Her last appearance was in a 1947 revival of The First Mrs. Fraser. To the end she remained a slim, dark‐haired, dark‐eyed beauty, her eyes “so black, so limpid, it was a wonder they didn't dissolve and run down her cheeks.”