Eytinge, Rose

Eytinge, Rose (1835–1911), actress. Born in Philadelphia and raised there and in Brooklyn, the “black‐eyed, black‐haired Jewess,” as Daniel Frohman described her, made her debut in 1852 in Syracuse, New York, as Melanie in The Old Guard. Ten seasons in stock followed before she became an understudy to Laura Keene and made an unscheduled New York debut in 1863, playing Nellie O'Donaghue in Bantry Bay, when Keene was indisposed. Coming to Edwin Booth's attention, she played opposite him in The Fool's Revenge (Le Roi s'amuse), The Marble Heart, and Richelieu and impressed the Manhattan critics. Eytinge won more laudatory notices when she appeared with J. W. Wallack and E. L. Davenport in 1865 as Hortense de Piermont in The Iron Mask, as Mrs. Sternhold in Still Waters Run Deep, Florence in Our American Cousin, and Kate Peyton in Griffith Gaunt, prompting the Times critic in 1866 to write, “We have long considered Miss Eytinge the leading actress of the American stage.” With Wallack's ensemble she portrayed, among others, Nancy Sykes in Oliver Twist, Lady Gay Spanker, Beatrice, and other leading roles in many long‐forgotten but once‐popular contemporary plays. Eytinge left the group temporarily to perform in Under the Gaslight (1867), creating the role of Laura Courtlandt, who saves a benefactor from death under the wheels of a speeding train. After several seasons abroad she returned to play the French wife Gabrielle in The Geneva Cross (1873), the unsatisfied wife Armande in Led Astray (1873), and the outcast Marianne in The Two Orphans (1874). To many her greatest performance was the title role of Rose Michel (1875). According to the Herald, her performance “attained to the exalted pitch of perfect truth, in delineation of horror and agony, and it swept to this apex with the spontaneity of perfect ease.” Unfortunately, the hyper‐temperamental actress's battles with management and with talkers in her audience, notorious since early in her career, apparently became uncontrollable. Engagements with Mrs. John Drew in Philadelphia and at the California Theatre in San Francisco were both abruptly terminated. Thereafter, she toured for many years with her own company, mostly in her old successes, and appeared in New York only on occasion. Her last appearance was in the short role of the hero's mother in The Bishop's Carriage (1907). Autobiography: The Memories of Rose Eytinge, 1905.