Lilian Russell

Russell, Lillian (4 Dec. 1861-6 June 1922), entertainer, actress, and singer, was born Helen Louise Leonard in Clinton, Iowa, to a well-to-do family. Her father, Charles E. Leonard, was the publisher of the local newspaper, the Clinton Herald, and her mother, Cynthia Howland Van Name, was an early and ardent feminist. Her family moved to Chicago in 1865, and she attended local schools, completing her formal education at the Park Institute, a finishing school. However, as she later recalled, her most significant education occurred at home: "Our family was a musical one. We sang and danced and played, and all my sisters had exceptionally fine voices, which were carefully trained." Her parents subsequently divorced after separating in 1877, and, with her mother and sisters, she moved to New York City. Within a short time, she secured a chorus part in Edward E. Rice's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As she later recalled, "I travelled as a chorus girl in Mr. E. E. Rice's Pinafore company and was royally proud of my salary, because it was the first money I had ever earned. And how I worked. There was not a day that season that I was not hard at work acquiring voice technique and stage deportment" (Young, p. 995). Considering an opera career, she took voice lessons from Leopold Damrosch but to her mother's disappointment chose the popular stage as her venue. Impresario Tony Pastor engaged her as a singer in 1879, renaming her Lillian Russell. She made her debut for Pastor on 22 November 1880, billed as "Lillian Russell, the English Ballad Singer, a Vision of Loveliness and a Voice of Gold." Her voice and great personal charm helped Russell score personal successes in Pastor's travesties of Olivette and The Pirates of Penzance. She worked under Pastor's management until 1893, appearing in a variety of opéra bouffe productions. Her performance in Pastor's travesty of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience led to her employment in the Bijou Theater production of the original show in 1881.

Having made a name for herself in the United States, Russell spent the years from 1883 through 1885 in England, where she appeared in a few successful productions, including Spirit of the Times (1883) and Polly; or, The Pet of the Regiment (1884), which brought her triumphantly back to New York. While in New York under Pastor's management, Russell was offered $20,000 a year by manager Rudolf Aronson to appear at New York's fabled Casino, where she scored some of her greatest successes. These included her performances in The Princess Nicotine (1893) and An American Beauty (1896), the latter title supplying an epithet often used to describe Russell, who was also known to the public as "Airy Fairy Lillian." During this time Russell became close friends with the legendary Diamond Jim Brady, a high-rolling fixture of the Gilded Age's high society. Although their relationship was apparently platonic, they both gained in celebrity by their association with one another. Russell's charm, beauty, and hourglass figure perfectly suited the fashions of the era, and her friendship with the extravagant Brady, another icon of the period, captured the imagination of the American public who followed their escapades with rabid interest. Brady and Russell gave lavish parties, wore eye-popping jewelry, lived in the very finest homes with lavish furnishings and one-of-a-kind art works, and entertained the most celebrated figures of the day, and all of this was reported in daily newspapers for a public that simply could not get enough of lives that seemed to epitomize the Gay Nineties.

Over the years, critics debated the talents of Russell. Most acknowledged her unequaled popularity with her audience, but some were less certain of her true abilities as a vocalist. As biographer Parker Morrell noted, "Her voice while never rich, was at least a clear, full-throated, lyric soprano of true pitch and impressive quality." Perhaps her vocal prowess was insignificant because she became for the members of her audience a larger-than-life and singular image who perfectly suited their tastes for glamour and beauty and for whom they had considerable affection. As Ella McKenzie wrote in 1909: "All the world loves a beautiful woman. It doesn't make any difference who she is, or where she is, if a beautiful woman appears, she will attract the admiration of those who happen to see her. . . . It is this fact more than any other that accounts for the never ending popularity of Lillian Russell. Other stars may shine for a while--possibly a long while at that--but they go again, while Lillian shines on forever" (Young, p. 993). Beginning in the 1890s Russell struggled with weight problems that threatened her reputation as a beauty, and still her career continued unabated. She made a transition from operetta to burlesque by joining comedians Joe Weber and Lew Fields, who had previously worked closely with Russell's rival, Fay Templeton, in 1898. In an 1899 Weber and Fields show Russell introduced her most famous song, "Come Down, My Evenin' Star," which she subsequently recorded. Despite the inadequacies of the recording techniques of the time, Russell's recorded voice has a pleasant, pseudo-operatic quality but hardly suggests the impact her vocalizing apparently had on audiences at the peak of her fame. Russell continued with Weber and Fields in revues such as Fiddle-dee-dee (1900) and Whoop-dee-doo (1903) until 1904, when they disbanded their company. She next appeared in Lady Teazle (1904), a musical version of The School for Scandal.

On 2 October 1905 Russell made her debut in vaudeville at Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theatre for a salary of $100,000 for a 33-week engagement. Diamond Jim Brady bought a box for Russell's entire run. The New York Sun critic, Acton Davies, wrote of her appearance, "Songs may come and songs may go, but age cannot wither nor variety custom stale Miss Russell. She is the same old Lillian, and her voice is the same old voice" (3 Oct. 1905). She remained in vaudeville until 1907, when she attempted two nonmusical productions, Butterfly (1907) and Wildfire (1908). She was moderately well received in these productions but soon returned to vaudeville, where she could command enormous salaries and maintain complete control over her performance.

In 1912 Russell made a successful comeback on the musical stage with Weber and Fields in Hokey-Pokey, costarring Templeton and George Beban. Russell returned to vaudeville periodically, and when she played New York's Palace Theatre in 1915, Variety wrote, "What matters how she sings or why she sings, she's Lillian Russell, and there's only one." Russell's vaudeville act evoked the Gay Nineties, and she always included "Come Down, My Evenin' Star," a nostalgic favorite with audiences. She played another celebrated engagement at the Palace in 1918, leading Variety's Sime Silverman to call her a "feminine freak of loveliness," and critic Alan Dale noted that she "is one of the very, very few women who never needed advertising."

In 1915 Russell made her only movie appearance in a World Film production of her 1908 play, Wildfire, costarring Lionel Barrymore. The film was only a minor success, and since she was still able to command huge salaries on the stage, Russell saw little reason to return to the screen.

Improbably enough, Russell became involved in politics in the last years of her life, encouraged by her fourth husband, Alexander P. Moore. Russell had previously been married to Harry Braham from 1880 to 1883, and their union produced a son who died in infancy, with each parent blaming the other for his tragic death. Russell was next married to showman Edward Solomon from 1884 to 1893, and their marriage produced a daughter. Following her 1886 separation from Solomon (with an annulment granted in 1893), Russell married John Haley Augustin Chatterton (known in the theatrical profession as Signor Don Giovanni Perigini) in 1894, but this marriage ended in divorce four years later. Moore, who Russell married in 1912, was a staunch Republican who encouraged Russell's political interests. She worked vigorously to sell war bonds during World War I and encouraged other stars to join the effort. In 1922 President Warren G. Harding asked her to investigate immigration issues for his administration. Her appointment by Harding was particularly pleasing, since there were occasional public scandals in Russell's life, some involving romantic interludes following the breakups of her first two marriages as well as broken contracts, but despite all this, as one obituary noted, Russell "left a trail of affection wherever she passed."

In 1922 Russell suffered a fall while traveling on a transatlantic liner returning to the United States from Europe. Complications arose, and she died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after ten days of illness. In 1940 20th Century-Fox produced a highly fictional motion picture about Russell's life titled Lillian Russell, with Alice Faye in the title role. As a result of the popularity of that film, Russell's name has remained synonymous with the Gilded Age stage of the 1890s.

Bibliography

Archival materials are available at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, and in the Harvard Theatre Collection. Russell provides some vivid views on life as an actress in her article "Is the Stage a Perilous Place for the Young Girl?" Theatre, Jan. 1916, p. 22. For additional information on Russell, see Albert Auster, "Chamber of Diamonds and Delight: Actresses, Suffragists, and Feminists in the American Theater, 1890-1920" (Ph.D. diss., State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook, 1981); Djuna Barnes, Interviews, ed. Alyce Barry (1985); De Witt Bodeen, Ladies of the Footlights (1937); James Brough, Miss Lillian Russell: A Novel Memoir (1978); John Burke, Duet in Diamonds: The Flamboyant Saga of Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady in America's Gilded Age (1972); "Lillian Russell: Her Path to Fame," Literary Digest, 24 June 1922, pp. 40-41; Ella McKenzie, "Lillian Russell To-day," Greek Book Album, Feb. 1909, pp. 358-60; Parker Morrell, Lillian Russell: The Era of Plush (1940); Lois Rather, Two Lilies in America: Lillian Russell and Lillie Langtry (1973); and William C. Young, Famous Actors and Actresses of the American Stage (1975). Burke and Rather provide the most complete accounts of Russell's life, while Auster offers useful accountings of Russell's stage credits. An obituary is in the New York Times, 6 June 1922.

James Fisher

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American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

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