Russell, Annie

Russell, Annie (1864–1936), actress. Born in Liverpool but raised in Canada, she made her first appearance in Montreal, playing opposite Rose Eytinge in Miss Multon in 1872. Her New York debut was in 1879 as Josephine in a traveling juvenile company of H.M.S. Pinafore. Russell continued to play with various tours, including one that took her to South America and Australia, before scoring a major success as Esmeralda (1881). Among her later roles were the title part in a dramatization of Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine, called simply Elaine (1887), and, after a long retirement because of illness, the title role in Bret Harte's Sue (1896) and Winifred in The Girl and the Judge (1901). In her final active years Russell organized the Old English Comedy Company, in which she assumed such roles as Kate Hardcastle, Beatrice, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle before retiring in 1918. George Odell later wrote of this frail, darkish woman, with a slightly lugubrious face, “All who saw Miss Russell know how sweet she was either in comedy or in pathetic plays, and will recall gratefully her charm, her grace, her exquisite voice, her genuine dramatic power.”