Katharine Cornell

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Cornell, Katharine (1893–1974), actress and manager. The daughter of a onetime theatre manager, she was born in Berlin where her father had gone to study medicine, and made her stage debut with the Washington Square Players in 1916. She afterward continued her apprenticeship in her hometown of Buffalo and in Detroit with Jessie Bonstelle's stock company before calling attention to herself as the determined flapper Eileen Baxter‐Jones in Nice People (1921). Further accolades came when she portrayed Sydney Fairfield, the daughter who stands by her mentally disturbed father, in A Bill of Divorcement (1921); as the lively Mary Fitton in Will Shakespeare (1923); and as the shy, homely Laura Pennington in The Enchanted Cottage (1923). Cornell's performance as Candida in 1924 consolidated her reputation, and was followed by two of her most sensational roles: the carnal, doomed Iris March in The Green Hat (1925) and Leslie Crosbie, who kills her lover, in The Letter (1927). Other successes at that time included Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence (1928) and Madeline Carey in Dishonored Lady (1930). With Guthrie McClintic, whom she had married in 1921, Cornell embarked on a career as actress‐manager, and scored her greatest triumph in her very first offering when she played Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931). “By the crescendo of her playing,” Brooks Atkinson observed, “by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records.” In 1934 she reprised her Elizabeth Barrett on tour, playing in seventy‐seven cities in seven months. Among her subsequent roles were St. Joan in Shaw's play, the tragic princess Oparre in Wingless Victory (1936), the playwright's wife Linda Esterbrook in No Time for Comedy (1939), Jennifer Dubedat in a 1941 revival of The Doctor's Dilemma, and her Masha in a 1942 revival of The Three Sisters. She then spent much of the war years playing Candida and Elizabeth Barrett for soldiers, followed by Antigone (1946), Shakespeare's Cleopatra (1947), Constance Middleton in The Constant Wife (1951), U. N. delegate Mary Prescott in The Prescott Proposals (1953), and the Countess in Christopher Fry's The Dark Is Light Enough (1955). Her last appearance was as Mrs. Patrick Campbell in Dear Liar (1960). Although Cornell seemed tall and regal on stage, she was not quite five feet seven inches, with dark hair, a dark complexion and broad features that were called Oriental and even negroid. With Lynn Fontanne and Helen Hayes, she was one of the great actresses of her era, and even though she hated performing, she was far more willing than either of her rivals to extend her range and attempt classics from the entire history of the theatre. Biography: Leading Lady: The World and Theatre of Katharine Cornell, Tad Mosel with Gertrude Macy, 1978.

Katharine Cornell 1898–1974, American actress, b. Berlin. Cornell made her debut in 1916 with the Washington Square Players. In 1921 she married Guthrie McClintic, a producer-director. From their first production together, The Green Hat in 1925, they proved to be a successful team, with such productions as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931, repeated on television, 1956), Saint Joan (1936), Candida (1937), The Doctor's Dilemma (1941), and The Three Sisters (1942). She was often able to carry a weak production on the basis of her strong voice, expressive face, and acting style. Cornell played Mrs. Patrick Campbell in Dear Liar on Broadway in 1960. After McClintic's death in 1961, Cornell retired from the theater.

Bibliography: See her autobiography (1939); G. McClintic, Me and Kit (1955).