Virginia Earle: 150 If She’s a Day

Vaudeville and musical comedy star Virginia Earle (1873-1937) was born 150 years ago today.

The daughter of Irish immigrants who themselves had dabbled in performance, Earle’s childhood was spent in Cincinnati and Chicago. She was 14 when she began performing in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with the Home Juvenile Opera Company. This led to tours in the late 1880s’ and early ’90s with the Pike Opera Company, Hallen and Hart, and Edward E. Rice, taking her as far as Australia.

After this, Earle she enjoyed a decade of solid work on Broadway and in London for such producers as Augustin Daly, George Edwardes, The Shuberts, and Klaw and Erlanger, appearing in the shows The Merry World (1895), Leonardo (1895), The Lady Slavey (1896, with Marie Dressler), In Gay New York (1896), The Circus Girl (1897), A Runaway Girl (1898), The Casino Girl (1900), The Belle of Bohemia (1900), The Girl From Up There (1901), The New Yorkers (1901), The Supper Club (1901), Flora Dora (1902), Sergeant Kitty (1903-04), In Newport (1904, with Fay Templeton), and Lifting the Lid (1905).

Following several years in vaudeville she returned to the musical comedy stage in Lew Fields’The Jolly Bachelors (1910) with Nora Bayes and Emma Carus, followed by The Wedding Trip (1911) and The Geisha (1913). After several more years in vaudeville she returned to legit with the Fairbanks Twins in Two Little Girls in Blue (1921). From 1894 to 1897 she was married to fellow vaudevillian Frank Lawton.

For more on vaudeville,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,