Rosamond Pinchot was an American socialite

Socialite

A socialite is a person who participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable upper-class events....

, stage and film actress.

Early life and career

Pinchot was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the daughter of Amos Pinchot

Amos Pinchot

Amos Richards Eno Pinchot was an American reformist. He never held public office but managed to exert considerable influence in reformist circles and did much to keep progressive ideas alive in the 1920s....

, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party

Progressive Party (United States, 1912)

The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party. It was formed after a split in the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt....

 and the niece of Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...

. Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer was an American socialite, painter, former wife of Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer and intimate friend of United States president John F. Kennedy, who was often noted for her desirable physique and social skills...

 was her half sister, and her cousin was Edie Sedgwick

Edie Sedgwick

Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...

.

At the age of nineteen, Pinchot was discovered by Max Reinhardt

Max Reinhardt

----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

 while traveling on an ocean liner with her mother. Reinhardt cast her as a nun who runs away from a convent in the Broadway production of Karl Vollmoller

Karl Vollmöller

Karl Gustav Vollmöller, usually written Vollmoeller was a German playwright and screenwriter.He is most famous for two works, the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 German film Der Blaue Engel , which made a star of Marlene Dietrich, and the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime Das Mirakel ,...

's The Miracle

The Miracle (play)

The Miracle was a 1911 play written by Karl Vollmöller and directed by Max Reinhardt, from which three movie versions were later adapted. The play first appeared as a spectacle-pantomime in Germany in 1911....

. Pinchot's appearance in the play caused a sensation and led to her receiving considerable attention from the press. He later cast her in productions of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

and Franz Werfel

Franz Werfel

Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...

's The Eternal Road

The Eternal Road

The Eternal Road is an opera-oratorio with spoken dialogue in four acts by Kurt Weill with a libretto , by Austrian novelist and playwright Franz Werfel and translated into English by Ludwig Lewisohn.The Eternal Road premiered at the Manhattan Opera House on January 7, 1937, given a lavish and...

. She made her only film appearance in the 1935 adaptation of The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers (1935 film)

The Three Musketeers is the first English-language talking picture version of Alexandre Dumas, père's novel of the same name. It stars Walter Abel, Ian Keith, Margot Grahame, and Paul Lukas.-Plot:...

, as Queen Anne.

Personal life and death

Pinchot married William "Big Bill" Gaston (who was previously married to Kay Francis

Kay Francis

Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...

), the grandson of William Gaston

William Gaston

William J. Gaston was a jurist and United States Representative from North Carolina. Gaston was born in New Bern, North Carolina, the son of Dr. Alexander Gaston and Margaret Gaston. He entered Georgetown College in Washington, D.C., at the age of thirteen, becoming its first student...

, on January 26, 1928. The couple had two children.

On January 24, 1938, Pinchot committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning

Carbon monoxide poisoning

Carbon monoxide poisoning occurs after enough inhalation of carbon monoxide . Carbon monoxide is a toxic gas, but, being colorless, odorless, tasteless, and initially non-irritating, it is very difficult for people to detect...

 in the garage of her family's home in Old Brookville, New York

Old Brookville, New York

The Village of Old Brookville is a village located within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York. As of the United States 2010 Census, the village population was 2,134.The village is part of the North Shore School District.-Geography:...

.

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