Maude Adams
|
|
- This article is about Maude Adams, the stage actress. For the Bond girl, see Maud Adams.
Maude Adams (November 11, 1872—July 17, 1953) was an American stage actress, most noted for her signature role, Peter Pan.
She was born Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden in Salt Lake City, Utah, the child of Mormons James Kisadden and his wife, Annie Adams, who acted under her maiden name. Maude joined her mother onstage at the age of nine months, and was soon traveling about the West with her mother in a group of traveling players, adopting her mother's maiden name as a stage name. At age 5, she appeared in Fritz in San Francisco. She returned to Salt Lake City to attend the Salt Lake Collegiate Institute, living with her grandmother.
After touring in Boston and California, she made her New York debut at age 16 as a member of E. H. Sothern's theatre company. She became a member of Charles H. Hoyt's stock company and then, in 1889, of Charles Frohman's, at last taking ingénue roles. She spent five years as the leading lady in John Drew's company.
Her greatest triumphs came in the works of James M. Barrie, including The Little Minister, Quality Street, What Every Woman Knows, and Peter Pan, the latter being the role with which she was most closely identified, and often repeated.
Adams last appeared on the New York stage in A Kiss For Cinderella in 1916. In 1917 she donated her estates at Lake Ronkonkoma to the Sisters of St. Regis for use as a novitiate and retreat house. Following a thirteen year retirement from the stage, during which she worked with General Electric to develop improved and more powerful stage lighting, she appeared in several regional productions of Shakespeare. She headed the drama department at Stephens College in Missouri from 1937 to 1943.
She died at her summer home, Caddam Hill, in Tannersville, New York and is interred in the cemetery of Cenacle Convent, Lake Ronkonkoma, New York.
Appearances on Broadway
- Lord Chumley - 1888
- A Midnight Belle - 1889
- Men and Women - 1890
- The Masked Ball - 1892
- The Butterflies - 1894
- The Imprudent Young Couple - 1895
- Christopher, Jr. - 1895
- Rosemary - 1896
- The Little Minister - 1897
- L'Aiglon - 1900
- Quality Street - 1901
- The Pretty Sister of Jose - 1903
- The Little Minister - 1904
- 'Op o' Me Thumb - 1905
- Peter Pan – 1905, 1906, 1912, 1915
- Quality Street - 1908
- The Jesters - 1908
- The-Merry-Go-Round - 1908
- What Every Woman Knows - 1908
- Chantecler - 1911
- The Little Minister - 1916
- A Kiss for Cinderella - 1916