Two Dudes Named Daniel Sully

This post concerns two gentlemen named Daniel Sully, both with theatrical connections, both born in Providence, Rhode Island within a few years of each other. I am going to make a rash speculation and guess that they were perhaps cousins? Hence we don’t include them in our post about significant people who randomly possess the same name. They appear to have been unrelated to the family of the famous portrait painter Thomas Sully, who also had theatrical connections.

Daniel Sully (1855-1910)

This Daniel Sully started out as a circus performer, and was at one time the son-in-law of the great clown George Fox, one of the biggest stars of the 19th century. By the 1880s, he had worked his way to the legit theatre and vaudeville. He came to fame in 1884 with a play called The Corner Grocery, which he personally adapted from the Lancashire dialect writings of Edwin Waugh. He toured with this play for years all over the country. Roger Imhof later starred in his own version. Other early plays Sully toured with in the late 19th century include The Millionaire, Daddy Nolan, The Matchmaker, and Conroy the Tailor. As an actor Sully was also known for playing the title character in Daniel J. Hart’s The Parish Priest, which played Haverly’s 14th Street Theatre in 1900. Shortly thereafter Sully became professionally associated with Irish-American playwright-actor Fitzgerald Murphy, starring in several of his plays from coast to coast. While many Irish people named Sullivan (e.g. actor Frank Sully) have had their names shortened to Sully as a nickname, Daniel was not one of these. Sully is an old Anglo name, but Irish characters do seem to have been one of this actor’s specialties. He was only 54 when he died at his farm in Woodstock, New York.

Daniel J. Sully (1861-1930)

This Daniel Sully was the father-in-law of Douglas Fairbanks! This is really his only theatrical connection, unless he really was the cousin of the gentleman we describe above, as we’ve guessed. Fairbanks was married to Anna Beth Sully from 1907 to 1919, and a bumpy ride that poor woman had. When they hitched, Fairbanks was trying to tread the straight and narrow on Wall Street. A dozen years later, he was a big movie star and angling to marry Mary Pickford. Anna Beth’s father was known as Dan the Cotton King, a much feared Wall Street speculator in cotton. His peak was in the years 1903 and 1904, at the very same time the other Daniel Sully was touring with Fitzgerald Murphy. By the end he lost his fortune, but he was a Titan in his time. For a while after his fall he ran a hotel in Watch Hill, where Fairbanks had a place, and shot the 1916 film American Aristocracy. Like the other Sully he was born in Providence. He was educated at Norwich Free Academy in Connecticut, and got his start in business in Hartford. He may have been attracted to cotton as a commodity because the region he came from was so heavily involved in the textiles industry. He spent his last years in Beverly Hills, presumably because his daughter and grandchildren were there.

For more on vaudeville consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on silent film and Fairbanks please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.