Biography from Notable American Woman, the Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary (1980)
Maude Adams, one of the most popular actresses of her generation, was born Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the youngest and only surviving child of James Henry Kiskadden, a businessman of Scottish descent, and Asenath Ann (Adams) Kiskadden, an actress; their twin sons had died shortly after birth. Annie Adams, as her mother was known professionally, was a Mormon whose parents had joined Brigham Young on his way to Utah in 1847. She became a member of Young's theatrical stock company and later, until her retirement in 1897, appeared on stage with her daughter. The Kiskaddens moved to Virginia City in 1874, and a year later moved to San Francisco. There, billed as "La Petite Maude,"
Maude Adams became a salaried juvenile on Oct. 17, 1877, in a production of Fritz, a popular melodrama. She continued to play similar roles--frequently listed as "Little Maude"--in stock companies, until, at ten, she grew too tall for children's parts. While her parents remained in San Francisco, Maude was sent to school at the Collegiate Institute in Salt Lake City, where she lived with her grandmother.
Upon her father's sudden death on Sept. 22, 1883, having already resolved to become a great actress, she left school to join the traveling stock company to which her mother then belonged. Maude Adams experienced a long and difficult theatrical apprenticeship before reaching New York in August 1888, where she first appeared as the maid in The Paymaster. The same year she played in E. H. Sothern's company and two years later in Charles Frohman's stock company, most notably as Nell in an 1891 production of Lost Paradise. In October 1892 Frohman, correctly appraising her talent, made Maude Adams leading lady to John Drew. Then, as later, she took infinite pains in studying her parts. After her initial success in The Masked Ball as Suzanne Blondet, she appeared with Drew for four seasons in a succession of light comedies. They last appeared together in Rosemary.
Frohman had been urging Scottish playwright James Barrie to dramatize his novel The Little Minister, but the author was stymied. Attending a performance of Rosemary in 1896, Barrie saw Adams and hurried to the producer, exclaiming, "Behold my Babbie!" A year later, Adams, now head of her own company, made a dazzling success as Babbie; thus began a relationship between actress and playwright that continued until Barrie's death in 1937. Other glorious roles, all written by Barrie, followed: Quality Street (1901), Peter Pan (1905), What Every Woman Knows (1908), The Legend of Leonora (1914), and A Kiss for Cinderella (1916). Adams once said that whenever she acted, she was aware of one unseen spectator--Barrie.
Maude Adams's affinity for James Barrie's art was based on a mutual gift of humor and pathos--and on a perception of fantasy as a vehicle of spiritual truth. "So much of Barrie's life is second nature to me that I have to remind myself that other people do not know it so well," she wrote her biographer. The affinity was never so obvious as in Peter Pan. In the summer of 1905, Adams spent a month in the Catskills preparing for the monumental role. She designed a costume different from the one used in the London production; it quickly became vogue and the round collar and peaked hat were copied by young and old. As the child who would not grow up, Maude Adams captivated audiences with her demure charm and grace, and with her voice, with its blend of laughter and tears.
Peter Pan was the pinnacle of her career; she performed the role more than 1,500 times. Adams also appeared in the works of other playwrights, most notably in Rostand's L'Aiglon (1900) and Chantecler (1911)--at which, during the opening performance, she received twenty-two curtain calls. Not immune to failure, she was miscast in The Squire of Dames (1896), and was not up to the breadth of range needed for tragedy. Adams herself admitted that she "was very bad as Juliet" in an 1899 production of Romeo and Juliet, but greatly valued her one appearance in Schiller's Joan of Arc, performed in the Harvard University stadium in June 1909.
Peter Pan and Chantecler remained, however, her most unforgettable achievements. In November 1918, while on tour in A Kiss for Cinderella, she fell dangerously ill with influenza. Only after thirteen years did she act again, playing Portia to Otis Skinner's Shylock in a national tour of The Merchant of Venice. Early in 1934, Adams participated in a radio series of six plays. Then, playing Maria in Twelfth Night, she toured summer theaters, making her final stage appearance on September 8 at the Dennis Playhouse on Cape Cod.
After this her only contact with the public was a cross-country lecture tour in January 1939. At forty-nine, Maude Adams began another life in the theater, first as a lighting designer. "As all my life had been in the theater, it was natural to turn to something akin, not too remote from my former profession," she explained (Robbins, Maude Adams, pp. 203-4). In 1921, after receiving an honorary A.M. from Union College, Adams moved to Schenectady, N.Y., and went to work with General Electric. There she conducted lighting experiments, displaying a competence which astonished the experts with whom she collaborated. After two years she developed an incandescent bulb widely used in color film, but failed to secure the patent. Advised to sue, Adams refused, not wishing such notoriety.
In the mid-1920s, at the request of the editors of Ladies' Home Journal, Maude Adams wrote an account of her life. Written in the third person, "The One I Knew Least of All" appeared in seven installments between March 1926 and May 1927. She turned next to teaching, accepting in 1937 an invitation to become a professor of drama at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. There Maude Adams gave the same devotion to her teaching that she had given to her acting. She directed plays as diverse as Everyman and Chantecler, and compiled an unpublished textbook, "The First Steps in Speaking Verse," which she used to teach choral reading. Her teaching became intermittent after 1946, and four years later she retired.
In the face of immense popularity Maude Adams sought seclusion, and having experienced it during the summer of 1901 in a convent in France, she found a like refuge at the Cenacle Convent in New York City, where she often withdrew in strict secrecy from 1915 onward. In 1922 she gave to the Cenacle her large estate at Ronkonkoma, Long Island; she donated a second estate, at Onteora in the Catskills, in 1949. She had purchased both estates in 1900 and continued to divide her time between them until her death from a heart attack in 1953 in Tannersville, N.Y. As she had requested, she was buried in the private cemetery of the Cenacle at Ronkonkoma.
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