Margaret Anglin

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Anglin, Margaret (1876–1958), actress. Born in Ottawa, where her father was Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and her brother later the country's Chief Justice, she came to New York to train at the Empire Dramatic School, which Charles Frohman ran in conjunction with his Empire Theatre. Impressed by her work, Frohman offered her the part of Madeleine West in Shenandoah, in which she made her first New York appearance in 1894. She then toured with James O'Neill and with E. H. Sothern, performing in such varied pieces as The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord Chumley, and Hamlet. She won plaudits in 1898 for her Roxane opposite Richard Mansfield's Cyrano, followed by her Mrs. Dane, the foredoomed woman with a past, in Mrs. Dane's Defense (1900) and the wrongly suspected Dora in Diplomacy (1901). However, Anglin felt most of Frohman's offerings were too insubstantial, so in 1903 she joined forces with Henry Miller, and the two toured together with a repertory that included The Devil's Disciple and Camille. She gave one of her most memorable portrayals as Ruth Jordan, the traditional New Englander who finds love with a rough‐hewn Westerner, in The Great Divide (1906) and she enjoyed long runs in The Awakening of Helen Richie (1909) and Green Stockings (1911). In the 1910s Anglin turned her attention to revivals, appearing in the principal woman's roles in As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Antony and Cleopatra, and Lady Windermere's Fan. She also essayed a number of classic Greek roles, mounting some of the first important professional productions of the school, including Antigone, Electra, Hippolytus, and Medea. She scored major hits as Vivian Hunt, the long‐suffering, faithful wife in The Woman of Bronze (1920); Clytemnestra in Iphigenia in Aulis; and Joan in The Trial of Joan of Arc. Anglin's last New York appearance was as the impoverished but resourceful Lady Mary Crabbe in Fresh Fields (1936), although she played several of her old roles in summer stock thereafter. Of her Katherine, Walter Prichard Eaton wrote, “She herself is the best Shrew since Ada Rehan. . . . She is brilliantly vitriolic, edged like a saber, and she is properly and convincingly subdued, but only after a tussle that kindles the blood.” Biography: Margaret Anglin, A Stage Life, John Le Vay, 1989.

Anglin, Margaret (1876–1958), Canadian-born actress, who made her first professional appearance in 1894 in a revival of Bronson Howard's Shenandoah. Her first outstanding success was as Roxane in Mansfield's production of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1898) and she was later the leading lady of Frohman's stock company at the Empire Theatre, New York, where she appeared in a wide variety of parts, being particularly admired in Henry Arthur Jones's Mrs Dane's Defence. Later she was seen in Camille by the younger Dumas, as Antigone, Electra, Iphigenia, and Medea, and in such Shakespearian parts as Viola, Rosalind, and Cleopatra. She was also excellent as Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's The Rivals, which she first played in 1936.