Bits of Information from Maude Adams: An Intimate Portrait

1. Maude Adams mother was an actress in a Salt Lake City theater stock company.

2. Maude Adams mother was chosen to play children's parts when she was eight years old. She was billed as "Annie Adams". The year she started is debatable, one source giving the year 1856, one the year 1862, and a third the year 1865, although these could refer to her first appearance anywhere and then her first appearance in a newly-built theater.

3. The child Maude Adams apparently was quite a singer and at four years old sang the song "Somebody's Coming When The Dew Drops Fall.

4. Maude Adams wanted to be consulted about the business arrangements as young as the age of six.

5. Although young Maude Adams was afraid of horses, she later overcame that fear and would drive a horse-drawn carriage through the streets of Boston.

6. Maude Adams wrote about her younger days of acting:

"'Playing' began in earnest, and the delightful sense of importance that had been mine as a child actress was taken out of me. It seemed as if anyone could do better than I did. In every part I was worse than in the one before, and even my mother admitted that it would be a mercy if gestures could be dispensed with entirely. One day a little encouragement dropped from heaven. A part was given me that I felt sure I could do something with, and I hurried home to study it, thankful and happy. The next day when I began rehearsal I was told that the part had been given me by mistake, and the role for me was another of those 'walking ladies' who literally did nothing but walk on and walk off and 'exit with the others.'"

"It was a wandering gypsy life, but oddly enough with a sort of discipline. The manager of the company, an extraordinary woman, was a friend of long standing and she was to keep a watchful eye on the novice in that betwixt-and-between time."

"It was in this company, when I was about fifteen, that I made my first attempt as a leading lady, and was, of course, a complete failure. There was an exit speech which was to elicit a round of applause that would help me off the scene. but I never got that applause, and night after night I was compelled to walk off in complete silence, the members of the company looking away discreetly as I passed. They were dear people and very kindly."

7. She later goes on to write about how the people worked with her to try and help her improve her acting ability.

8. She writes about how she was nicknamed "Mrs. Midget," and then goes on to write:

"Everyone in the company could do wonderful things in the water, everyone but Mrs. Midget, who could drown without trying. She had measured the depth of many a pool from Kansas City to San Francisco."

(Which, if you are familiar with the anime series Ranma 1/2, would put her in Akane Tendo's class of swimmers, sort of along the lines of "get in the swimming pool and do your best interpretation of being a rock"-type of swimming.)

9. "I had very little confidence in myself as an actress."

One major interest of Maude Adams' was in stage lighting.

10. "I am always suspicious about so-called interviews with Miss Adams, because she did her best not to give any. Instinctively she ran away from reporters and was backed up by Mr. Frohman, who felt that for her, instead of the usual flow of publicity, there should be what he called 'the element of surprise.' "

Another reference to this trait is given on page 102:

"Miss Adams shunned publicity to carefully that, as Ruth Goddon relates, her trunks on tour bore no labels with her name or the play's, just red or yellow stickers meaning wanted in the theatre, or the hotel. She took a fancy to the printer's mark, used by Aldus Manutius in the sixteenth century, a dolphin twined around an anchor, and copied this for a label."

11. Of all the plays she was in, she seemed to like Chantecler the best, and then Peter Pan.

12. She never cared for opera.

13. Writing about the year 1910, the book states:

"Maude Adams is being unusually honored in Salt Lake City, according to a telegram received at the Frohman office last night. She was welcomed by the City Council as a guest of the city, and as 'the State's most illustrious daughter.' The telegram, coming from a representative of Mr. Frohman, reads:"

"Salt Lake City Council tonight presented Miss Maude Adams with an embossed copy of resolutions welcoming her to the city as an honored guest. The highest type of modest womanhood; idol of the American stage, and the State's most illustrious daughter. Tomorrow Miss Adams gives a special matinee of What Every Woman Knows for the Orphans Home. her welcome to the city of her birth eclipses everything witnessed her for enthusiasm."

14. Some material that Maude Adams had written for a talk reveal a lot about her thinking:

"Don't let anyone persuade you that anything we do in life less than our own best, is a worthy thing. You must never compromise with your life. We know when we are doing first-rate things. When we satisfy ourselves with second-rate things it is the beginning of a long, long death. We die from that minute."

"Go for first- rate things. Don't accept from yourself a second-rate sincerity, a second-rate sense of justice. Sometimes it seems that we are successful only because we have not tried hard enough for our best. If we don't compromise, we do the hard thing and we fail. We do the hand thing and we fail. We do the hard thing, and one day we succeed, and many things are made plain to us."

"Don't be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success. We are successful because we have not tried hard enough for our best; so that we were in danger of failing to fail. Be afraid of that long, long death which means compromise with your best, and remember that any advice that lends you away from your best is second rate."

"Life is so fresh, life is every day so new if we are fighting, only for the best. Sometimes I think the only real satisfaction in life is failure, failure in your endeavor to do your best."

15. The incredible generous nature of Maude Adams is shown in an event that occurred during a run of Peter Pan in New York. Apparently Dayton, Ohio, in 1913, suffered a horrible flood resulting in over four hundred people dying. Maude Adams sent all the night's receipts from a performance of the play to the city, with the understanding that it would be done without anyone else finding out, only her manager, herself and the Governor of Ohio at that time, James M. Cox.

Later, though, when Maude Adams came to Dayton and the local paper The Daily News ran an "open letter to the public" on its front page in a great square. The letter went:

"Dear Miss Adams:"

"Two years ago, almost to this very day, you were away out west. The wreckage from the floods were about the feet of the people of Dayton. You learned of our disaster. We did not know that you had any especial interest in us here in Dayton, but you send hundreds of dollars to us."

"The people of Dayton, until this very minute, never knew you sent it. In your audience this evening will probably be some who ate the bread you purchased, or slept warmly beneath a blanket you provided. Certainly there will be little children playing about the door of the theatre whose very lives you saved."

An extremely touching letter, even with the lack of geographical knowledge of the paper (unless New York had been temporarily moved west of Ohio and I wasn't informed of that fact.)

16. The year of 1915 proved to be a bad one for Maude Adams. Charles Frohman died during the sinking of the Lusitania, and her stage manager also died during the same year.

17. She also "did her part" for the war effort in World War I. On the 24th of October, 1917, she prepared a flyer for distribution in the theater in support of Liberty Bond Day. On December 14th of that year she gave a performance for 1500 convalescent soldiers. Women in her touring group knitted socks for the army.

18. In 1918 there was a great influence epidemic and she became "dangerously ill" in Nashville, Tennessee.

19. She received her first Honorary Degree from Union College in Schenectady in 1921.

20. More information on her reclusive nature is on page 214:

"Never did Miss Adams go out or indulge in a party, except the night in New Orleans when she had a big dinner for all of us in the company as a farewell gesture to my wife, who was headed away from the rest of us down the Mississippi to Cuba...The stage was her life...She never forgot her limitations. Love-making was not for her, and she would relate with much amusement incidents of her complete failure as Juliet..."

21. "...meeting people fatigued her, partly because of her genuine shyness, even among her friends."

22. "If anyone recognized her in a shop or on the street, she really suffered, even if the stranger did not come up to speak to her, as happened annoyingly often.... Her great loyalty was to her audiences."

23. "When at home she lived simply, except that with her sensitive good taste she loved to have beautiful things around her; Irish linen; thin porcelain on the dining table; good rugs...The good things she liked included good food."

24. Apparently she had very strong ideas as to what foods went well together and she prepared an elaborate chart showing what food was to go with what other food.

25. "She was always a perfectionist, outside of her work as well as on the stage; no detail was so small it could be neglected."

26. She played golf, but not very seriously.

27. She was fond of driving, behind a horse or in an automobile.

28. "Indoors Maude was never at a loss for occupation, so long as books were at her elbow."

29. "She was not content merely to read, she would with endless patience copy extracts; closely written pages of notes on philosophy, ethics, history, memoirs. Even definitions of words; advice on how to concentrate, how to judge."

30. The University of Wisconsin presented her with an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

31. She was almost in a moving picture. In 1930 she spent five months in Hollywood working over a play to be called The Joyous Adventures of Clementine, but it never materialized into a movie.

32. In 1937 she was asked by President Wood of Stephens College, a Junior College for girls at Columbia, Missouri, to join the faculty staff and start a school of acting. She accepted.

33. Another close call with being in a movie happened in 1938 when Selznick studios had her do a screen test for The Young in heart, and the results of the tests came out extremely well but she didn't think the part was for her. Various other movies and plays were suggested but none came to fruition.

34. At the college she produced a wide range of plays, including: The Romancers, Julius Caesar, The Blunderer, Alice in Wonderland, The Pretentious Young Ladies, She Stoops to Conquer, Patience, Everyman, Iphigenia in Tauris, Mr. Pim Passes By, Op' l' Me Thumb and lots of others.

35. Louise Boynton died in 1951.


Material about the book, itself

The Salisbury Times, April 30, 1956

Berkshire Eagle, May 19, 1956