Barbara Barondess

Barbara Barondess (July 4, 1907 – May 31, 2000) was an American stage and film actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1926 to 1930. She was born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn, though her family relocated to Russia, where an uncle operated as a lumber magnate in Ukraine. By 1921, deteriorating conditions compelled the family to flee, escaping what Barondess described as anarchy and death. Their route took them through England, and they crossed to the United States traveling in steerage, with the family's jewels concealed in their clothing. Barondess was fourteen years old when they arrived at Ellis Island.

Her Broadway work encompassed both musical and dramatic productions. She appeared in the 1926 revue Gay Paree and subsequently took roles in the plays The Garden of Eden, Crime, and Topaze, with her stage activity concentrated in the years between 1926 and 1930.

Barondess married producer Irving Jacobs, and after four years of marriage she filed for divorce on October 24, 1933. She later wed actor Douglas MacLean, a union that lasted from 1938 to 1946. A subsequent marriage to attorney Nathaniel S. Ruvell ended in divorce on May 28, 1953, and later in the 1950s she married Leonard J. Knaster.

Following her acting career, Barondess worked as a dress designer, an interior decorator, and a broker of fine arts and antiques. Her interior design clientele included prominent figures in the motion picture industry, and in 1959 she designed a room for the 10th Annual National Home-Furnishings Show. In 1981 she founded the Barbara Barondess Theatre Lab Alliance, an organization dedicated to supporting performing arts professionals facing financial hardship, and she remained involved with it for seventeen years. She also authored a memoir, One Life Is Not Enough, published by Communications Creativity in 1990. Barondess died of cardiac arrest in New York City on May 31, 2000.