Martha-Bryan Allen was an American actress who was active on the Broadway stage for a brief period during the 1920s.

Early life

Martha-Bryan Allen was born on April 30, 1903, to Bryan H. and Rebecca D. Allen of Louisville, Kentucky. Her father was the treasurer of a local electric company that most likely participated in the merger that formed the Louisville Gas and Electric Company in 1913. Allen’s younger sister, Elizabeth D. Allen, born the day after Christmas, 1904, also pursued an acting career and eventually became the first wife of film star Robert Montgomery

Robert Montgomery (actor)

Robert Montgomery was an American actor and director.- Early life :Montgomery was born Henry Montgomery, Jr. in Beacon, New York, then known as "Fishkill Landing", the son of Mary Weed and Henry Montgomery, Sr. His early childhood was one of privilege, since his father was president of the New...

 and the mother of actress Elizabeth Montgomery

Elizabeth Montgomery

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery was an American film and television actress whose career spanned five decades. She is perhaps best remembered for her roles as Samantha Stephens in Bewitched, as Ellen Harrod in A Case of Rape and as Lizzie Borden in The Legend of Lizzie Borden.-Early life:Born in Los...

.

Stage career

Allen attended classes at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts in New York City before her Broadway debut on January 9, 1922, playing Angelica in Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...

’s He Who Gets Slapped. Two months later she played the envoy’s daughter in George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

’s Back to Methuselah, and following year, Essie, in another Shaw production, The Devil’s Disciple. She would go on to appear in Gypsy Jim, as Lucy Bake, O, Nightingale, as Appolonia Lee, and The Carolinian, as Myrtle Carey. In 1925 Allen was chosen to play the lead in Aloma of the South Seas, but was replaced by Vivienne Osbourne shortly before the play’s New York premier. By the year's end she had returned to the stage, playing the circus entertainer Dora in a successful run of René Fauchois’ The Monkey Talks.

Later life

After her marriage to Lewis Arthur Cushman Jr.in 1926, Allen apparently chose to retired from the stage. L. Arthur Cushman (1898–1963) was the founder of the American Bakeries Company that's beginnings were Cushman Bakeries, a company originally established by his father . Martha-Bryan Allen died on July 29, 1985, at her residence in Paterson, New Jersey. She was survived by her daughter and preceded in death by her husband and a son.