Marguerite Namara
Encyclopedia
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
whose varied career included serious opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, Broadway musicals, film and theater roles, and vocal recital
Recital
A recital is a musical performance. It can highlight a single performer, sometimes accompanied by piano, or a performance of the works of a single composer.The invention of the solo piano recital has been attributed to Franz Liszt....
s, and who counted among her lifelong circle of friends and acquaintances many of the leading artistic figures of the first half of the twentieth century.
Childhood
She was born as Marguerite Evelyn Cecilia Banks in Cleveland, OhioCleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, to a wealthy family with New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
ties (she was descended on her father's side from Mayflower
Mayflower
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...
passengers John Alden
John Alden
John Alden is said to be the first person from the Mayflower to set foot on Plymouth Rock in 1620. He was a ship-carpenter by trade and a cooper for Mayflower, which was usually docked at Southampton. He was also one of the founders of Plymouth Colony and the seventh signer of the Mayflower Compact...
and Priscilla Mullens
Priscilla Alden
Priscilla Alden , , noted member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims, was the wife of fellow colonist John Alden . They married in 1623 in Plymouth.-Biography:...
and was a great-grandniece of Union General Nathaniel Prentice Banks
Nathaniel Prentice Banks
Nathaniel Prentice Banks was an American politician and soldier, served as the 24th Governor of Massachusetts, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a Union general during the American Civil War....
, Governor of Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
and Speaker of the House).
Raised in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
from the age of five, she attended St. Vincent's School and Girls' Collegiate High School, studying piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and voice from an early age. As a teenager, she and her mother, who served as one of her early vocal coaches, made a recording for Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
, singing the Flower Duet from the Delibes
Delibes
Delibes may refer to:People with surname Delibes:* Léo Delibes , French composer* Miguel Delibes , Spanish novelist...
opera, Lakmé
Lakmé
Lakmé is an opera in three acts by Léo Delibes to a French libretto by Edmond Gondinet and Philippe Gille. Delibes wrote the score during 1881–82 with its first performance on 14 April 1883 at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Set in British India in the mid 19th century, Lakmé is based on the 1880 novel...
.
Early operatic career
At 18, Marguerite began studying at the Milan ConservatoryMilan Conservatory
The Milan Conservatory is a college of music which was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione. There were initially 18 boarders,...
, debuting a year later in 1908 as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
at the Teatro Politeamo in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
. She fashioned her stage name of Namara from her mother's maiden name, McNamara. From then on, she was referred to professionally as Madame Namara, and was called by family and friends as, simply, Namara. From 1910 to 1926, she sang with the Boston Opera Company
Boston Opera Company
The Boston Opera Company was an American opera company located in Boston, Massachusetts that was active from 1909 to 1915.-History:The company was founded in 1908 by Bostonian millionaire Eben Dyer Jordan, Jr. and impresario Henry Russell...
, with the Chicago Opera Company (succeeding Mary Garden
Mary Garden
Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century...
in Thaïs
Thaïs (opera)
Thaïs is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role...
), with the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
, and with Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
's Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
. She sang lead roles in Cavalleria Rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
, Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
, Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
, La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
and La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
.
She also starred in operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
and musical comedy: Her 1915 Broadway debut came in a Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...
operetta written especially for her entitled Alone at Last. She later starred for the Shubert
Shubert
Shubert can refer to any of:*Franz Schubert, 19th Century Austrian composer*The Shubert family who were prominent in American theatre and founded the Shubert Organization, including:**Lee Shubert**Sam S. Shubert**Jacob J. Shubert...
s in revivals of H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
and The Mikado
The Mikado
The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
, and for the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company in Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
. In addition, she regularly toured nationally and in Europe with leading orchestras.
Circle of friends
Close friend of Isadora DuncanIsadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, pupil of Jean De Reszke
Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....
, Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
, and Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
, the circle in which she moved included such interesting figures of the early twentieth century as Enrico Caruso, Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Debussy, Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, Picasso, Dos Passos, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Eleanora Duse, Amelita Galli-Curci
Amelita Galli-Curci
Amelita Galli-Curci was an Italian operatic soprano. She was one of the best-known coloratura singers of the early 20th century with her gramophone records selling in large numbers.-Early life:...
, Marguerite d'Alvarez
Marguerite d'Alvarez
Marguerite d'Alvarez was an English contralto.Born in Liverpool, d'Alvarez studied in Brussels, and made her debut in Rouen, singing Delilah. She made her first American appearances with the Manhattan Opera in 1909 as Fidès in Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le prophète...
, Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
, Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
, Mischa Levitzki
Mischa Levitzki
Mischa Levitzki was a Russian-born American concert pianist.Levitzki was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine , to Jewish parents who were naturalised American citizens on a return trip to Ukraine...
, Carl Van Vechten
Carl van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.-Biography:...
, Fania Marinoff
Fania Marinoff
Fania Marinoff was a Russian-born American actress. She played supporting and lead roles in dozens of Broadway plays between 1903 and 1937, and eight U.S. silent movies between 1914 and 1917....
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
, Ed Wynn
Ed Wynn
Ed Wynn was a popular American comedian and actor noted for his Perfect Fool comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a dramatic actor....
, Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
, Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
, Elsa Maxwell
Elsa Maxwell
Elsa Maxwell was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day....
, Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
, Mae Murray
Mae Murray
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen"....
and Pola Negri
Pola Negri
Pola Negri was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles from the 1910s through the 1940s during the Golden Era of Hollywood film. She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became a great American star. She...
and their husbands, the soi-disant Princes David and Serge Mdivani
Mdivani
Mdivani is the name of a family of nobility, originating from the nation of Georgia. The best known bearers of this name were the children of Zakhari and Elizabeth Mdivani. The five siblings fled to Paris after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and became known as the "Marrying Mdivanis", as they...
, Jerome Kern
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...
, Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
, and P.G. Wodehouse, the latter four being collaborators of her second husband Guy Bolton
Guy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
. During her years in Paris in the 1920s, she also studied painting with Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
. Her letters to family at home indicated the lessons came in return for her singing to him.
A 1926 letter written from France by F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
noted that "Nobody was in Antibes
Antibes
Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
that summer ...except me, Zelda
Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald , born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper"...
, the Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
s, the Murphys, Mistinguett
Mistinguett
Mistinguett was a French actress and singer, whose birth name was Jeanne Bourgeois. She was at one time the best-paid female entertainer in the world...
, Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram (director)
Rex Ingram was an Irish film director, producer, writer and actor. Legendary director Erich von Stroheim once called him "the world's greatest director."-Early life:...
, Dos Passos, Alice Terry
Alice Terry
Alice Terry was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era, appearing in thirty-nine films between 1916 and 1933.-Career:...
, the MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.-Early years:...
es, Charlie Brackett
Charles Brackett
Charles William Brackett was an American novelist, screenwriter, and film producer.-Biography:Born on November 26, 1892 in Saratoga Springs, New York, Charles William Brackett was the son of New York State Senator, lawyer, and banker Edgar Truman Brackett...
, Maud Kahn (daughter of philanthropist Otto Kahn; wife of Major-General Sir John Marriott
John Charles Oakes Marriott
Major-General Sir John Charles Oakes Marriott, KCVO, CB, DSO and Bar, MC was a British Army officer during World War I and World War II.-Military career:Marriott was commissioned into the Northamptonshire Regiment in 1914....
), Esther Murphy (sister of Gerald; wife of John Strachey), Marguerite Namara, E. Oppenheimer
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edward Phillips Oppenheim , was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers.-Life:...
(sic), Mannes the violinist
David Mannes
David Mannes was an American violinist, conductor, and educator.Mannes studied in Berlin with Karol Haliř and was a violinist in the New York Symphony Orchestra from 1891 and its concertmaster from 1898 to 1912. In 1912 he helped found the Colored Music Settlement School and in 1916, with his...
, Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
, Max
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
and Crystal Eastman
Crystal Eastman
Crystal Catherine Eastman was a lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She is best remembered as a leader in the fight for women's right to vote, as a co-editor of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, and as a co-founder of the Women's International League...
, ex-premier Orlando
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was an Italian diplomat and political figure. He was born in Palermo, Sicily. His father, a landed gentleman, delayed venturing out to register his son's birth for fear of Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1,000 patriots who had just stormed into Sicily on the first leg of their march...
, Etienne de Beaumont ... Just the right place to rough it, an escape from the world."
Filmography
Stolen MomentsStolen Moments (1920 film)
Stolen Moments is a silent movie starring Rudolph Valentino and Marguerite Namara. It was released in December 1920, just a few months before Valentino was elevated to stardom by his performance in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse...
, a 1920 silent picture in which she starred with Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
, was one of her few film projects, and it included a small part for her infant daughter Peggy as well. In 1932, she starred in the first musical film version of Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, a British Film Company picture given the unfortunate name of Gipsy Blood (sometimes billed as Gypsy Blood but usually referred to by Namara as "The Bloody Gypsy"). Her co-star was British actor Lester Matthews
Lester Matthews
Lester Matthews was an English actor born in Nottingham, England, UK. In his career, he made more than 180 appearances in film and on television. He was on occasion erroneously credited as Lester Mathews and especially in later years was sometimes known as Les Matthews. He died on the 6 June 1975...
. Exteriors were filmed in Ronda
Ronda
Ronda is a city in Spanish province of Málaga. It is located about West from the city of Málaga, within the autonomous community of Andalusia. Its population is approximately 35,000 inhabitants.-History:...
, Spain, but the troupe recorded the music in London with the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
. Later films in which Namara played small parts included Thirty Day Princess (1934) with Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
and Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney was an American actress who rose to prominence in the 1930s appearing in numerous crime dramas.-Early life:...
, and Peter Ibbetson
Peter Ibbetson
Peter Ibbetson is an American black-and-white drama film released in 1935 and directed by Henry Hathaway.The picture is based on a novel by George du Maurier, first published in 1891. In 1917, du Maurier's story was adapted into a very successful Broadway play starring John Barrymore, Lionel...
(1935) with Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
and Ann Harding
Ann Harding
Ann Harding was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress.-Early years:Born Dorothy Walton Gatley at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to George G. Gatley and Elizabeth "Bessie" Crabb. The daughter of a career army officer, she traveled often during her early life...
.
Later career
In the early 1930s, her singing voice strained from overwork, she appeared in the London cast of the Ivor NovelloIvor Novello
David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...
play, Party which opened in London on 23 May 1932. With the onset of the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, she returned to Hollywood and began teaching voice, counting the actors Ramón Novarro
Ramón Novarro
Ramón Novarro was a Mexican leading man actor in Hollywood in the early 20th century. He was the next male "Sex Symbol" after the death of Rudolph Valentino...
and Frances Drake
Frances Drake (actor)
Frances Drake was an American actress, is best known for playing Eponine in Les Misérables .-Life and career:Born in New York City, her parents moved to Canada when she was four...
among her pupils. Subsequent theatrical performances on Broadway and on tour included supporting parts in Enter Madame, Night of Love, Claudia
Claudia
-Ancient Romans:* Claudia , a legendary Vestal Virgin* Claudia Augusta , infant daughter of Nero by his second wife* Claudia Capitolina, a princess of Commagene originally from Roman Egypt...
, and Lo and Behold. During the 1940s/50s, her voice mellowed to that of a mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
and she enjoyed modest success on the concert recital circuit, singing occasionally on radio. On tour, many of her costumes were designed by her friend and patroness, heiress Natalie Hays Hammond
Natalie Hays Hammond
Natalie Hays Hammond was the daughter and heiress of millionaire adventurer and philanthropist John Hays Hammond and was, in her own right, a painter, Broadway set and costume designer, author, and patron of the arts....
, daughter of the real adventurer who discovered King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party...
.
Marriages
She was married three times: from 1910-1916 to her manager Frederick H. Toye (1887–1930), with whom she had a son, Frederick Namara Toye (1913–2005); from 1917-1926 to the playwright Guy BoltonGuy Bolton
Guy Reginald Bolton was a British-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the U.S., he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred working in collaboration with others, principally the English writers P. G...
(1884–1979), with whom she had a daughter, Marguerite Pamela "Peggy" Bolton (1916–2003) (the names Peggy and Pamela were chosen to honor the baby's godfather P.G. Wodehouse, whose first name was Pelham); and from 1937 until her death, to landscape architect Georg Hoy (1899–1983).
Later life
In the 1940s and 50s, she divided her time between New York City and Europe. In the early 1960s, she and her third husband retired to a secluded ranch house on several acres in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
's Carmel Valley
Carmel Valley
The Carmel Valley AVA is an American Viticultural Area in Monterey County, California, east of Carmel-by-the-Sea. The AVA is home to a number of wineries and vineyards, as well as the town of Carmel Valley Village...
, where she painted prolifically and recorded her last album in 1968, the year she turned 80. She died on November 5, 1974, in Marbella
Marbella
Marbella is a town in Andalusia, Spain. It is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, in the province of Málaga, beneath the La Concha mountain. In 2000 the city had 98,823 inhabitants, in 2004, 116,234, in 2010 approximately 135,000....
, Spain, two weeks shy of her 86th birthday. In addition to her two children, she was survived by two grandchildren, Elizabeth Namara Toye Williams and Frederick D. Toye, and by five great-grandchildren, Laurel Baker Tew, Robert Baker, Victoria Toye, Frederick E.O. Toye
Fred Toye
Frederick E.O. Toye is an American television director and producer. He has directed several episodes of the ABC series, Alias, as well as for the FOX science fiction series Fringe...
, and Christopher Baker.
Sources
- The private papers and archives of Marguerite Namara in her family's possession
- "Beautiful Society Bud Has Rare Ability as Composer", Los Angeles Examiner, 1907
- Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern: The Men Who Made Musical Comedy, by Lee Davis, New York: James H. Heineman, Inc., 1993 ISBN 0-87008-145-4
- Bring On The Girls, by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953
- Forsaken Altars: An Autobiography, by Marguerite D'Alvarez, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
- Here Lies Leonard Sillman—Straightened Out at Last, by Leonard Sillman, New York: Citadel Press, 1962
- "Los Angeles Music: Frederick H. Toye", by Belford Forrest, Society Magazine, December 27, 1913, 23-25
- "Madame Namara Makes Comeback In Concert Here", Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1940
- "Makes Operatic Debut In Genoa", The Cleveland News, 1908
- Melba, by John Hetherington, New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1967
- Metropolitan Opera Annals, by William H. Seltsam, New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1957
- "Multifaceted Star Namara Marks 80th Birthday With New Recording", by John Woolfenden, Monterey Peninsula Herald, August 13, 1968
- "Music in the Home", The Cleveland News, 1923
- The Musician's International Director and Biographical Record, New York: Shaw Publishing Company, 1950
- My Life, An Autobiography, by Isadora Duncan, Garden City Publishers, 1927
- "Namara Returns to Recital Stage", New York Times, January 25, 1940
- "Opera Honors Won By Local Girl", by Archie Bell, The Cleveland News, 1923
- "Postlude", by Ray C.B. Brown, The Washington Post, January 17, 1940
- Rudolph Valentino, The Man Behind the Myth, by Robert Oberfirst, New York: Citadel Press, 1962
- "She Too Longs For The Day When She Can Retire On A Farm", by Virginia Tracy, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 19, 1954
- Who's Who in the East, Chicago: Marquis Press, 1957
External links
- Filmography New York Times
- Marguerite Namara toyenet.com
- Giverny News: Monet et la Musique Article about Namara and Claude Monet, in French