Amy Busby

Amy Busby (January 19, 1872 – July 13, 1957) was an American stage actress born in Rochester, New York, the daughter of Thomas Mark Busby and Eliza Ann Bennett Busby. She traveled to New York City as a teenager to pursue a career in the theater. Early in her career she was a protégée of actress Helen Barry, and she was subsequently engaged by Stuart Robson and William H. Crane for their respective companies.

Busby performed in a wide range of productions over the course of her stage career, including London Assurance, Victor Durand, The Pembertons, The Henrietta, She Stoops to Conquer, Is Marriage a Failure?, The American Minister, On Probation, Brother John, For Money, and The Senator. Her Broadway appearances spanned 1894 to 1896 and included The Fatal Card, Secret Service, Arms and the Man, Madame X, and The Law of the Land. In the late 1880s, Between the Acts cigarettes featured her likeness on one of a series of colored lithograph collector cards issued between 1880 and 1892.

Busby had a notable presence in theatrical circles beyond her own performances. Theatrical producer William Berkeley Enos adopted the professional name Busby Berkeley in her honor, as she had been a friend of his parents. In 1897, Sam Insull met his future wife, actress Gladys Wallis, at a dinner party hosted by Busby and Eugene H. Lewis.

Her personal life included four marriages. In 1892 she married English actor Aubrey Boucicault; the marriage ended in divorce the following year. She wed lawyer Eugene Howard Lewis in 1897, and the couple had three daughters — Amy, Rosamund, and Eugenia — before Lewis died in 1907. In 1908 she married mining engineer Theodore Olynthna Douglas, with whom she had two daughters, Theodora and Ruth; Douglas died in 1920. Her fourth marriage, in 1923, was to a man named John James Roy, from whom she had separated by 1938. She had also been rumored at one point to be engaged to actor William Gillette, though no marriage took place. In her later years Busby was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. She died on July 13, 1957, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, at the age of 85.