Fanny Davenport MacVeagh
London, 1850 - 1898
Davenport's first notable role in New York City was as King Charles II of Spain in Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady on 14 February 1862 at Niblo's Garden Theatre. She continued to act with her father's company, appearing as Mrs. Mildmay in Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep at the Tremont Theatre in Boston in 1864. That same year, she became the soubrette in a Louisville, Kentucky, stock company, appearing as Carline in the musical The Black Crook, by Charles Barras, the role that launched her career. From Louisville, she went to Louisa Lane Drew's Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia. There she was seen and hired by John Augustin Daly, who had recently taken over management of the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City. Davenport opened successfully in New York City as Lady Gay Spanker in Dion Boucicault's London Assurance in 1869, with her father in the role of Sir Harcourt Courtly. During the nine years in which Davenport was leading lady with Daly's company, she performed in revivals, new plays, and Shakespearean plays. She excelled in such roles as Lady Gay Spanker and Lady Teazle in Richard Sheridan's School for Scandal.
Davenport startled audiences with her appearances as the tramp, Ruth Tredgett, in William S. Gilbert's Charity in 1874 when she concealed her beauty under the rags, dirt, and unkempt hair of the outcast and hopeless Tredgett. She displayed a dramatic presence that led Daly to create the role of Mabel Renfrew for her in Pique, one of Daly's great successes, which opened in 1876 and ran for 238 consecutive performances.
Davenport's success encouraged her to form a company and tour for several years, presenting an extensive and varied repertoire of comedies, tragedies, modern French plays, and plays by Shakespeare, including the Taming of the Shrew, in which she played Katherine to Edwin Booth's Petruchio.
Davenport married twice; first in 1879 to Edwin H. Price, a supporting actor in her company and later her business manager. They divorced in 1888. Less than a year later, Davenport married the leading man in her company, William Melbourne MacDowell, who had played opposite her for several years. They purchased a summer home in South Duxbury, Massachusetts, naming it "Melbourne Hall."
A significant turning point in Davenport's career occurred in 1883, when she obtained the American rights to Fedora by Victorien Sardou, which was being performed in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt. Her production was an immediate success, and for five years Davenport performed Fedora almost exclusively in the United States. In 1887 she secured the American rights to Sardou's La Tosca, followed by his Cleopatra, both of which Bernhardt had also performed. Gismonda, which opened in 1894, was the last of the Sardou/Bernhardt productions performed by Davenport, who reportedly paid $25,000 for the script. It was her most elaborate scenic production and remained part of Davenport's repertoire until her death. Davenport expanded her range by acting in these roles, which were more serious and emotionally demanding than many of her earlier roles.
Davenport's reputation rested primarily on her association with the four Sardou heroines she portrayed. "Miss Davenport's presence was well adapted to such roles; powerfully but well built, she added to her grace a marked beauty of feature. . . . she made her roles great through exertion, not through unconscious inspiration. Critics speak of her 'plastic demeanor,' of her well-simulated frenzies. She won by her extensive grasp of situation and movement, not by her quietude and repression" (Moses, p. 253). In 1897, after devoting thirteen years almost exclusively to productions of Sardou's melodramas, Davenport attempted a romantic drama about Joan of Arc, Soldier of France by Frances Aymar Mathews. It was an unfortunate choice, as the public could not accept the tall, matronly actress as the youthful Joan, and the production was a failure. She attempted to revive the Sardou plays to salvage the season despite ill health caused by her anxiety and exhaustion. Her last performance was in Cleopatra at the Grand Opera House in Chicago in March 1898, after which her illness forced her to end the season. She retired to Melbourne Hall, where she died later that year of a heart ailment and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston.
During the early part of her career, Davenport's success relied upon her beauty, personality, and vivaciousness. William Winter described the young Davenport in Vagrant Memories (1915) as "a voluptuous beauty, radiant with youth and health, taut and trim of figure, having regular features, a fair complexion, golden hair, sparkling hazel eyes, and a voice as naturally musical and cheery as the fresh, incessant rippling flow of a summer brook" (p. 229). As she matured, her dramatic talent grew. She excelled as the strong, emotional characters Gismonda and La Tosca. According to Jay Benton in Famous American Actors of To-day (1896): "The varying phases of Sardou's Tuscan heroine seem almost as if created expressly for her. In the soft, languorous moments, in her cooing petulance, in the rage of jealousy, in her pleading fondness, in her terrible struggles, in the carrying out of her horrible revenge on Scarpia she was always excellent, and oftentimes great" (pp. 117-18). Davenport was an outstanding and successful actress and manager who introduced new plays and new translations to the United States as well as presenting elaborate productions of old plays. A shrewd business woman, she was also an actress not afraid to attempt unusual and demanding roles.
Bibliography
The Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center in New York City has Melbourne MacDowell's scrapbook and clippings. "Some Childish Memories," an account by Davenport of her childhood, appeared in Lippincott's Magazine, Oct. 1888, p. 42. Biographical material on Fanny Davenport can be found in Montrose Moses, Famous Actor-Families in America (1906); Frederick E. McKay and Charles E. L. Wingate, eds., Famous American Actors of To-day (1896); Amy Leslie [Lillie W. Brown], Some Players: Personal Sketches (1899); and "The Daring Davenports," Greenbook Magazine, Mar. 1913. Supplementary material appears in George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (1939); John Ranken Towse, Sixty Years of the Theater (1916); Arthur Hornblow, A History of the Theatre in America from Its Beginnings to the Present Time, vol. 2 (1919); and Arthur Row, "Great Moments in Great Acting," Poet Lore, May-June 1918. Obituaries are in the New York Clipper and the New York Dramatic Mirror, 8 Oct. 1898.
Susan S. Cole
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Citation:
Susan S. Cole. "Davenport, Fanny Lily Gypsy";
http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-00283.html;
American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
Access Date: Mon Aug 05 2013 16:42:35 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)
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