Daly, (Peter Christopher) Arnold

Daly, [Peter Christopher] Arnold (1875–1927), actor and producer. Born in Brooklyn, he began his theatrical career as an office boy for Charles Frohman. Daly's first acting assignment was a small role opposite Fanny Rice in The Jolly Squire (1892). After touring for several seasons, he made his New York debut as Chambers in Pudd'nhead Wilson (1895). Among his important early roles were the rejected Jack Negly in Barbara Frietchie (1899), the drunken, brutal husband in Hearts Aflame (1902), and the hero's Irish servant in Major André (1903). Daly's family back in Ireland had connections to George Bernard Shaw and Shaw's family, so Daly and Winchell Smith secured the rights for the first American production of Candida, with Daly as Marchbanks. He became Shaw's strongest advocate in America and in 1904 organized, with Liebler and Company, an ensemble devoted to presenting Shaw, in several instances giving the first New York or American mountings of plays such as You Never Can Tell, The Man of Destiny, How He Lied to Her Husband, John Bull's Other Island, and Mrs. Warren's Profession. The performance of the last play led to Daly's arrest for presenting an immoral work, but he was acquitted in court. Constant harassment from authorities continued, however, and this, coupled with the continuing disdain from moralistic critics, led him to abandon his hope for “a theatre of ideas.” His last years were spent largely in standard commercial vehicles, most notably creating the role of the Vagabond in George M. Cohan's The Tavern (1920). A somewhat stocky man with a large round head, Daly was considered a good, if occasionally erratic and temperamental, actor. He possessed “an Irish voice of lilting cadence and great variety of tone.” Biography: Arnold Daly, Berthold H. Goldsmith, 1927.