Adele Ritchie

Adele Ritchie (December 21, 1874 – April 24, 1930) was an American prima donna of comic opera and a star of Edwardian musical comedies and vaudeville whose Broadway career extended from 1894 to 1928. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Quaker parents of French descent and, by age three, the stepdaughter of Jacob Benclift Pultz, founder of the J.B. Pultz Company. Her early education took place at Villa Maria Academy, a Catholic preparatory school for girls in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Ritchie's stage career began on June 5, 1893, when she made her first appearance as a singer in a production of the French comedy The Isle of Champagne at Miner's Fifth Avenue Theatre. With the assistance of composer Reginald De Koven, she secured a role that fall at the Park Theatre in Philadelphia in his comic opera The Algerians, initially in a minor capacity. Her performance of "Song of the Rose" drew strong audience response when the production moved to New York's Garden Theatre and later Daly's Theatre, and when prima donna Marie Tempest departed the production at year's end, Ritchie was selected as her replacement. On July 14, 1894, she appeared as a vocalist with the Sousa Band at a summer concert at Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, alongside German tenor Conrad Behrens. That September she opened at Abbey's Theatre as Princess Mirane in The Devil's Deputy, an operetta adapted from the French by J. Cheever Goodwin with music by Edward Jakobowski, though she was replaced the following week by Amanda Fabris. In January 1895 she was engaged at the American Theatre as Madge Brainerd in Harrison Grey Fiske's political drama The District Attorney, and that summer she played Little Willie in the burlesque Trilby at the Garrick Theatre, New York.

During the 1896–97 season Ritchie toured in the De Koven and Harry B. Smith comic opera The Mandarin in the role of Ting-ling, and in 1897 she appeared at London's Shaftesbury Theatre as Cleopatra in Victor Herbert and Harry B. Smith's comic opera The Wizard of the Nile; or, The Egyptian Beauty. By January 1898 she was reported to be in Paris studying under Italian tenor Giovanni Sbriglia. She made her vaudeville debut in early April 1898 at Koster and Bial's Music Hall, performing in an operetta by Alexandre Derolles entitled Au Bain alongside tenor Don Giovanni Perugini, the husband of Lillian Russell. That November she assumed the role of Dorothy Stanley in Augustin Daly's production of the Edwardian musical comedy A Runaway Girl at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, performing songs including "Oh Listen to the Band" and "I Love You, My Love, I Do" through February 1899. Among leading actresses tracked by gross receipts over the 1898–99 season, Ritchie ranked eighth out of twelve.

On Christmas Day 1899 she played Beatrice Jerome in the R. A. Barnet musical comedy Three Little Lambs at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Subsequent Broadway appearances included The Casino Girl at the Casino Theatre in 1900; The Toreador as Dora Selby at the Knickerbocker Theatre from January through May 1902; A Chinese Honeymoon as Mrs. Pineapple at the Casino Theatre from June 1902 through April 1903; Fantana, with music by John Raymond Hubbell, as Fanny Everett at the Lyric Theatre from January through September 1905; The Social Whirl as Violet Dare at the Casino Theatre from April through September 1906; Fascinating Flora as Flora Duval at the Casino Theatre from May through September 1907; and All for the Ladies as Nancy Panturel at the Lyric Theatre from December 1912 through April 1913. She also appeared in the Broadway production of Florodora and in Little Italy, among other productions. Following All for the Ladies, Ritchie returned to vaudeville, where she was billed as the Dresden China Prima Donna in acts that frequently featured songs associated with her earlier career.

In her personal life, Ritchie married British-born comedian and playwright Joseph W. Herbert on October 21, 1895, while he was touring with Lillian Russell. At the height of her career she maintained a country home with a horse barn in Westchester County and a residence at 67 West Fifty-Seventh Street in New York. She was awarded first prize as the most graceful and elegantly dressed rider at the 1896 Long Branch Bicycle Pageant, and her Yorkshire Terrier, Little Dot, won the American Kennel Club Yorkshire Terrier class at the seventh annual Wissahickon Kennel Dog Show in 1908. By June 1910, however, her financial circumstances had deteriorated significantly, and she filed for bankruptcy with debts exceeding $16,000 against assets of less than $300.

In December 1908, Ritchie arranged the release of Alice Crowninshield Rogers, the former wife of Boston millionaire Thomas Pierce, from involuntary confinement at a Connecticut mental institution. The two women subsequently took up residence together at Ritchie's farm near Pelham, New York. Rogers was confined again at Bellevue Hospital in June 1910 following a disturbance at the Casino Theatre, an episode later characterized by a physician as "alcoholic hysteria." In August 1910, both women were arrested near a Pelham train station after Ritchie allegedly interfered with police officers attempting to issue Rogers a minor traffic citation; all charges except the traffic violation were ultimately dropped.

On June 12, 1913, Ritchie married Charles Nelson Bell, a New York wine importer and son of a prominent banker, at Stamford, Connecticut. The marriage was troubled from its outset by allegations of bigamy from Bell's former wife, his father's disapproval of Ritchie, shared credit difficulties, and a dispute over an automobile. During this period Ritchie reportedly slapped a process server on the steps of a New York City courthouse and faced the threat of jail for missing court appearances. She subsequently married stage and film actor Guy Bates Post in Toronto on February 2, 1916; they separated after nearly three years and divorced in 1929.

Toward the end of the 1920s Ritchie became director of the Community Players, an amateur theatre group in Laguna Beach, California, where she formed a friendship with Doris Miller, a set designer at the Laguna Beach Playhouse who was approximately twenty-three years her junior and the former wife of Chicago dentist Dr. Clinton Foster Palmer. Ritchie was eventually replaced as the group's director following conflicts with members of the company, and her relationship with Miller became strained after Miller received a social invitation that Ritchie did not. The two were observed arguing on the afternoon of April 24, 1930, and that evening their bodies were discovered in Miller's bungalow apartment by a friend returning a lost dog. Miller had been shot in the back and Ritchie in the mouth. Evidence at the scene indicated that Ritchie had attempted to stop the flow of blood from Miller's wound before the shooting that ended her own life. Adele Ritchie died on April 24, 1930, in Laguna Beach, California.