Drew, Mrs. John

Drew, Mrs. John [née Louisa Lane] (1820–97), actress and manager. Born in Lambeth Parish, London, she was the daughter of performers who traced their theatrical heritage to Elizabethan times. After her father's death she was brought to America by her mother and made her American debut in 1827 playing the Duke of York to Junius Brutus Booth's Richard III at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre. Shortly thereafter she played Albert to Edwin Forrest's William Tell in Baltimore, then won critical acclaim in her New York debut at the Bowery Theatre as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child. She continued to act for the next seventy years, her most celebrated role being Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals, in which she often toured with Joseph Jefferson as Bob Acres. T. Allston Brown called her “the most wonderfully versatile actress on the American stage.” But her principal claim to fame was her stint as manager of Philadelphia's Arch Street Theatre, which she ran with an iron hand from 1861 to 1892 and which, under her rule, was generally considered to offer the finest company and finest productions outside of New York. She presented a repertory of classics interspersed with many of the most popular new plays of her era. A small, somewhat wispy woman with large eyes, which she passed on to her Barrymore heirs, her appearance belied her inner strengths. She was married at least three times, always to actors: Henry Hunt, whom she divorced, George Moosop, and John Drew. Under her stern tutelage her son John Drew and her daughter Georgiana Drew Barrymore began their own careers, and she was responsible for much of the upbringing of Georgiana's children: Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore. Autobiography: Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew, 1899.