Beatrice Cameron

Beatrice Cameron, born Susan Hegeman in Troy, New York in 1868, was an American stage actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1887 to 1897. The daughter of William H. and Esther Byram Hegeman, she became one of the prominent stage performers of the late nineteenth century and served as the leading lady for the company of actor Richard Mansfield, whom she married on September 15, 1892.

Cameron's introduction to the stage came through an unplanned circumstance at the Madison Square Theatre on Broadway, where she was present as a spectator during a rehearsal of The Midnight Marriage with Cora Urquhart Brown-Potter. When a cast member in a minor role fell ill, Cameron volunteered to assume the part, mastering both the lines and the dance steps by the following evening. After performing with the company of Robert B. Mantell, she joined Mansfield's company in 1886, making her debut with them in the comedy Prince Karl.

Her first Broadway credit with Mansfield's company came in 1887, when she took the role of Agnes Carew in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a part she would go on to reprise in London and numerous other cities. While in London, she also appeared in Lesbia and Richard III. Upon returning to the United States, Cameron achieved a significant theatrical distinction in December 1889, becoming the first actress to portray Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House on Broadway, when the production opened at Palmer's Theatre. She went on to perform in 13 additional plays with Mansfield's company, including Napoleon Bonaparte and The Devil's Disciple.

In February 1895, while the company was traveling to a performance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Cameron and a maid were injured when an out-of-control passenger coach collided with their private rail car. Both women sustained only minor injuries, though the evening's performance was cancelled. Cameron continued performing with Mansfield's touring company following their 1892 marriage, and the couple's only child, George Gibbs Mansfield, was born on August 8, 1898.

Cameron officially retired from acting on February 12, 1898, following a performance at the Grand Opera House in Chicago. She made one post-retirement appearance, however, playing Raina in George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man at the Garden Theatre on January 8, 1900. Richard Mansfield died on August 30, 1907. Their son, who later adopted his father's first name when he pursued acting, enlisted in the army when the United States entered World War I and died of meningitis on April 3, 1918, while training with the Signal Corps in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1920, Cameron traveled to Urfa, Turkey, to conduct relief work for victims of the Armenian genocide, working within American humanitarian compounds that housed Armenian orphans and came under siege. During this period she came under Turkish fire. She subsequently carried out relief work with refugees in Jerusalem, where she recited Shakespeare to those who were suffering, and later participated in relief efforts in Syria and Czechoslovakia. She also supported women's suffrage and was active in the League of Women Voters.

Cameron donated her late husband's costumes to the Smithsonian Institution and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and contributed to Episcopal churches, including the Church of the Transfiguration in New York, in his memory. In 1925 she organized the Richard Mansfield Players, and in 1932 she staged a revival of Arms and the Man as a tribute to him. She resided in their home in New London, Connecticut until her death from coronary thrombosis on July 12, 1940.