Adelaide Keim Explained

Adelaide Keim
Other Names:Adelaide Murnane
Birth Date:February 15, 1879
Birth Place:New York City
Death Date:June 25, 1946
Occupation:Actress

Adelaide Augusta Keim (February 15, 1879[1] – June 25, 1946) was an American actress on Broadway and in vaudeville. She was known for playing the male title character in Hamlet in several American cities in 1905.

Early life

Keim was born in New York City, the daughter of Henry (Harry) Grant Keim and Mary Agnes Morrissey Keim. Her father, a milliner by trade,[2] was her manager and manager of the Harlem Opera House.[3] [4] Her younger brother Chauncey Keim became a theatrical producer.[5] Keim attended St. Joseph's Academy in New York.[6]

Career

Keim began her stage career being managed by Daniel Frohman in 1898 and appeared at his Lyceum Theatre. She appeared at such theatres as the Garden Theatre, Fifth Avenue Theatre, and the Bijou Theatre.[7] Keim's Broadway credits included roles in Trelawny of the 'Wells' (1898),[8] At the White Horse Tavern and Twelve Months Later (1900),[9] Terence (1904),[10] The Prince of India (1906),[11] [12] and The Right to Happiness (1912). She was also active in touring stock companies and on the vaudeville stage.[13] [14] [15] "I love the stage and would rather act than do anything else in the world," she told a Buffalo newspaper in 1911.[16]

In 1905 Keim played the title role in Hamlet in Baltimore, New York, and Chicago.[17] [18] "Miss Keim gave a thoughtful, impressive rendering of the Prince," said George C. Jenks in 1905, "but somehow you never could forget that it was a woman in man's clothes and not the young man you were supposed to be looking at."[19]

In 1918 she starred in Kate Douglas Wiggin's Mother Carey's Chickens in Maine.[20]

Personal life

Keim was involved with her Proctor's Theater costar Ned Howard Fowler in 1903 until her parents intervened, and both actors moved to other stock companies.[21] She married another fellow actor, Allan Louis Murnane, in 1910. They lived in New Rochelle, New York, and had two children together, Adelaide (born 1914) and Allan (born 1921). She died in 1946, in her sixties.

Notes and References

  1. Her birth year was sometimes given as 1885. See News: 1913-02-15 . Birthday Anniversary: Adelaide Keim . 4 . The Bismarck Tribune . 2022-07-03.
  2. May 1905 . From Millinery to the Stage . Millinery Trade Review . 30 . 47.
  3. News: 1907-03-30 . Plays the Princess in 'The Prince of India' . 12 . The Fort Wayne Sentinel . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  4. News: 1905-07-04 . Adelaide Keim, Young Actress Who Pleases as Hamlet . 2 . Herald and Review . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  5. News: 1933-12-13 . Leap from 15th Floor . 12 . Liverpool Echo . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  6. Who Was Who in the Theatre: 1912-1976, page 1337 book 3 I-P, by John Parker; compiled from annual editions by Parker; this 1976 edition by Gale Research
  7. Parker, John....Who Was Who in the Theatre: 1912-76
  8. Book: Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing . Trelawny of the "Wells": A Comedietta in Four Acts . 1900 . R. H. Russell . en.
  9. Book: The Cast . 1900 . 21 . en.
  10. Book: Dietz, Dan . The Complete Book of 1900s Broadway Musicals . 2022-06-14 . Rowman & Littlefield . 978-1-5381-6894-3 . 201 . en.
  11. September 1906 . The Rise of the Curtain . Theatre Magazine . 6 . 228.
  12. News: Butler . Robert . 1906-11-08 . 'The Prince of India' Presented . 7 . The Evening Statesman . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  13. Book: Briscoe, Johnson . The Actors' Birthday Book: First -third Series. An Authoritative Insight Into the Lives of the Men and Women of the Stage Born Between January First and December Thirty-first . 1907 . Moffat, Yard . 50 . en.
  14. January 29, 1910 . Adelaide Keim and Company . The New York Dramatic Mirror . 63 . 20.
  15. April 14, 1917 . 'Tidal Wave' at Bridgeport . Dramatic Mirror . 77 . 13.
  16. News: 1911-07-29 . Adelaide Keim, Pretty and Petite, Has Bade Pronounced Hit Here . 5 . The Buffalo Times . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  17. News: 1905-06-06 . Adelaide Keim in Hamlet. . en-US . The New York Times . 2022-07-03 . 0362-4331.
  18. Hope . Frances . Miss Marlowe, Hamlet, and some others . The Green Book Magazine . 1906 . 3 . 1024.
  19. Jenks . George C. . July 1905 . The Stage and its People . Broadway Magazine . 14 . 78.
  20. News: 1918-01-25 . Play by a Maine Author . 3 . Sun-Journal . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.
  21. News: 1903-03-20 . Stage Romance Now Shattered . 7 . The Evening World . 2022-07-03 . Newspapers.com.

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