Chris Enss's Blog - Posts Tagged "jeanne-eagels"
The Screen Siren
Enter to win a copy of the book Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.
As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.
“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.” Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.
As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.
“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.” Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
The Screen Siren
Enter to win a copy of the book
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.
As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.
“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.”
Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the
Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
visit www.chrisenss.com for more information
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.
As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.
“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.”
Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the
Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
visit www.chrisenss.com for more information
The Forlorn Leading Lady
Enter to win a copy of
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jeanne Eagels, the Forlorn Leading Lady
Triumph and tragedy, alternating strangely throughout her life converged on the night on October 3, 1929, when Jeanne Eagels, beautiful and famous actress, suddenly collapsed and died. At a time when her health seemed much improved and she was planning a comeback to the Broadway that had barred her for eighteen months, the black curtain descended noiselessly and swiftly.
It brought to an end the drama of a woman who had made a sensational rise to the heights of theatrical stardom, a woman men clamored for and loved, perhaps too well. Romance, broken hearts, success and defeat, adulation and repudiation - a pageant of experiences and emotions - had paraded through her life. And in the end Jeanne Eagels was the same woman she had been years before - a proud, tempestuous spirit seeking bewilderingly for some distant horizon of happiness.
On her last day alive it probably did not seem to her that death was in the wings. If so, it made no difference. For that night she dressed in her most elaborate and beautiful clothes. She was planning to join a Broadway party. Broadway! The street which soon, she thought, would once more echo to her name and where incandescents would spell it out in glittering letters.
But hardly had she dressed when she suddenly fell faint. The night before she had taken an overdose of a solution of a sleep-producing drug called chloral hydrate. She was rushed from her Park Avenue home to a private sanitarium. They brought her into a room for an examination. She sat on the bed a moment, and then wearily took off her coat. It revealed her in all her glory. Jewels shone magnificently. Diamonds and pearls sparkled on her fingers, about her neck and on her wrist.
She signed. There was only a nurse to see this last act. She sank on the bed in convulsions. A little later she was lifeless. And then Broadway and the whole world learned with astonishment of her sudden passing.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels career and the events that led to her untimely death read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information.
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jeanne Eagels, the Forlorn Leading Lady
Triumph and tragedy, alternating strangely throughout her life converged on the night on October 3, 1929, when Jeanne Eagels, beautiful and famous actress, suddenly collapsed and died. At a time when her health seemed much improved and she was planning a comeback to the Broadway that had barred her for eighteen months, the black curtain descended noiselessly and swiftly.
It brought to an end the drama of a woman who had made a sensational rise to the heights of theatrical stardom, a woman men clamored for and loved, perhaps too well. Romance, broken hearts, success and defeat, adulation and repudiation - a pageant of experiences and emotions - had paraded through her life. And in the end Jeanne Eagels was the same woman she had been years before - a proud, tempestuous spirit seeking bewilderingly for some distant horizon of happiness.
On her last day alive it probably did not seem to her that death was in the wings. If so, it made no difference. For that night she dressed in her most elaborate and beautiful clothes. She was planning to join a Broadway party. Broadway! The street which soon, she thought, would once more echo to her name and where incandescents would spell it out in glittering letters.
But hardly had she dressed when she suddenly fell faint. The night before she had taken an overdose of a solution of a sleep-producing drug called chloral hydrate. She was rushed from her Park Avenue home to a private sanitarium. They brought her into a room for an examination. She sat on the bed a moment, and then wearily took off her coat. It revealed her in all her glory. Jewels shone magnificently. Diamonds and pearls sparkled on her fingers, about her neck and on her wrist.
She signed. There was only a nurse to see this last act. She sank on the bed in convulsions. A little later she was lifeless. And then Broadway and the whole world learned with astonishment of her sudden passing.
To learn more about Jeanne Eagels career and the events that led to her untimely death read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information.
