Clara Morris: Passion’s Daughter

No one is quite certain of the birth date of Clara Morris, although IBDB informs us with great assurance that it was March 17, 1848, so we go with that — with the caveat that others tell us the true date may have been any day at all between 1846 and 1849. Morris was considered one of the finest actors of her day, but even I had never heard of her until the late Mari Lyn Henry brought her to my attention.

Morris’s true last name was La Montagne and she was born in Toronto. When her father proved a bigamist, her mother moved with young Clara to Cleveland, and chose the surname Morrison, which Clara later shortened for professional reasons. The mother kept them afloat as domestic. They lived in a boarding house, where young Clara entertained roomers with little performances, which led to her getting a place in the ballet at the Cleveland Academy of Music. She began getting roles with stock companies, and occasional opportunities to act with the likes of Joseph Jefferson and both Edwin and John Wilkes Booth.

In 1870, Augustin Daly hired her for his company at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York. A sudden vacancy brought her the lead in a play called Man and Wife. She made such an impression in the part that there were five curtain calls on opening night. This was followed by such things as Bronson Howard’sSaratoga (1871) with Fanny Davenport, and a starring role in Boucicault’sJezebel (1871). She is said to have caused a “sensation” in the French play  L’Article 47 (1872).

In 1873, Morris moved over to A.M. Palmer’s company at the Union Square Theatre. Sarah Bernhardt saw her as the title character in Camille there in 1874 and declared “She is not acting; she is suffering!” Bernhardt was referring to Morris’s celebrated technique which appeared to be along the lines of what we would now call “Method Acting“. I am going to quote from Mari-Lyn’s unpublished manuscript The Total Actor now:

…Critics said that she acted with her nerves, shed real tears, and felt every part she was playing. However, she was known to use so much energy that she experienced chills, fever, and periods of total collapse and disease, suffering untold physical, and mental torture…William Winter wrote about her in his Shadows of the Stage (1893): “Her conquest was through the emotions…Her best moments were those of frenzy, as when love struggles in the heart with knowledge that it’s in vain…but in the wildest moments she displayed an artist’s control of herself and her resources”…

Other plays Morris appeared in included The New Leah (1875), a version of East Lynne called Miss Multon (1876) which was said to be her most popular stage role, an 1877 adaptation of Jane Eyre, and The New Magdalen (1882), which Oscar Wilde saw, and which prompted him to declare her “the greatest actress I ever saw…a veritable genius”.

Morris toured throughout the U.S. for years and made one last appearance on Broadway in Two Flags in 1904 with James O’Neill and a young Clara Blandick. At her peak, Morris was the highest paid female actress in the country, and an even greater box office draw than Lillie Langtry. In her last professional years, she confined her appearances to big time vaudeville, where the salaries were even greater.

In the end though that famous nervous tension took a toll on her health and she developed a bad back and trouble with her eyes. She took to writing books and articles to replace her acting career. She wrote about a dozen books, most of them reminiscences about her stage years, or fictionalizations thereupon. One of them, A Pasteboard Crowd (1902) was adapted into a silent film in 1922. (Don’t trust her IMDB entry, btw. Somebody seems to have merged her page with that of a younger Clara Morris, for she is listed as playing chorines and dress shop mannequins at a time she was in her ’70s).

Some sources described her as being penniless and blind in her last years. It could be true, although it also sounds suspiciously similar to the last act of that other highly strung French Canadian stage star Eva Tanguay. Morris passed away in late 1925 — just about a century ago.

The handle we bestowed upon her in the title of this post comes from a poem written in Morris’s honor by Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908). There is also a 2009 birography about the actress by Barbara Wallace Grossman called A Spectacle of Suffering: Clara Morris on the American Stage. I read Professor Grossman’s excellent Fanny Brice biography and loved it, so I’m sure it’s worth checking out.

For more on vaudeville and early stage history,please check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.