Bessie Barriscale

Bessie Barriscale, born Elizabeth Mary Barriscale on June 9, 1884, was an American actress whose career spanned stage and silent film. Her birthplace is a matter of conflicting records: later censuses and her obituary identify New York City as her origin, while one source places her birth in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the 1900 United States Census lists England as her birthplace, with May 1886 as her birth date. Her father, Samuel Barriscale, was an England-born man of Irish parentage who worked as an elevated railroad car conductor in 1900, and her mother, Jenevieve Spaulding, was from Ireland. The eldest of five children, Barriscale had a younger brother, Charles, who also pursued a stage career. A significant influence on both siblings was their paternal aunt, Anna Barriscale Taliaferro, who founded the first casting agency for theatrical children and whose daughters Mabel and Edith Taliaferro were themselves actresses.

Barriscale's earliest documented stage work came in 1896, when she toured in Shore Acres alongside James A. Herne, performing under the name Lizzie Barriscale. She played Mary Berry in that production, while her younger cousin Edith Taliaferro played Millie Berry. A profile published in Chicago in May 1897 described her as nearly eleven years old and noted that she had begun performing as a comic opera cherub with a soprano voice capable of reproducing the prima donna's songs. By December 1899 she was counted among the best-known young performers on the American stage. Her first credited performance under the name Bessie Barriscale came in a 1901 stock company staging of The Widow Bedott, in which she was singled out as the sole actress to receive praise. In spring 1902 she served as ingenue for the Proctor Stock Company at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, where she met actor Sumner Gard while performing the one-act comedy The Rift Within Love's Cloud by F. Clifford Smith. The two married in Manhattan on April 30, 1902, though Barriscale did not inform her parents until January 1, 1903. After a period of touring together with Proctor, she joined a separate tour of In Old Kentucky during summer 1902, a production that continued for two years. That engagement was followed by two years playing Lovey Mary in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. She subsequently spent a year in Belasco's Rose of the Rancho before becoming leading woman with the Belasco Stock Company in Los Angeles. Additional stage work during this period included portraying Luna in The Bird of Paradise, written by Richard Walton Tully, and taking the lead in We Are Seven.

Barriscale filed for divorce in Chicago in 1906, citing her husband's failure to write during their separations. On October 17, 1906, she married actor Howard C. Hickman in Manhattan. Her Broadway career, which extended from 1906 to 1921, included appearances in Cape Cod Folks, We Are Seven, The Skirt, and What Would You Do?. The Skirt opened in Washington, D.C., before traveling to Philadelphia and Boston and ultimately appearing in New York City.

She transitioned to film in 1913, making her screen debut in the Lasky Picture Company's Rose of the Rancho. Barriscale subsequently worked for New York Motion Picture Company and Triangle Film Corporation, among other studios. On May 1, 1917, she announced the formation of the Bessie Barriscale Feature Company, which planned to produce six to eight features annually, with Paralta Plays designated as the distributor and James Young among three directors hired for the venture. In 1918, she was contracted by J.L. Frothingham of B.B. Features and the Roberson Cole Company to complete sixteen films by January 21, 1921, at a total production cost exceeding one million dollars. Her managers insured her life for half a million dollars during this period. For the 1919 film The Woman Michael Married, adapted from a novel by Annette Kellermann and directed by Henry Kolker, Barriscale hired a swimming and diving instructor and trained in Venice, California. A ninety-foot pool was constructed at Brunton Studios for the production. That same year she traveled on a world tour with Hickman and their young son, accompanied by a cameraman with the intention of producing motion pictures along the way.

In March 1928, Barriscale returned to the stage in Women Go On Forever, which opened at the Hollywood Music Box. She played a housewife character and noted at the time that she had spent several years working at home in Santa Monica, California, and had recently learned to cook. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry, located at 6652 Hollywood Boulevard. Barriscale died on June 30, 1965, in Kentfield, California, and is interred beside her husband, Howard C. Hickman, at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael, California.