Blanche Ring

Blanche Ring (April 24, 1871 – January 13, 1961) was an American actress and singer whose career spanned Broadway theatre, vaudeville, and Hollywood motion pictures. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to James H. Ring and Wilhelmena F. Ring, she came from a family with four generations of theatrical ancestry. Her grandfather James H. Ring was a leading comedian with the Boston Museum company, and her great-great-grandfather Charles Fisher, who emigrated from England, traveled with theatrical caravans as far west as the Mississippi River. Fisher's wife, Josephine H. Shaw, was also an actress, as was Ring's grandmother Julie Fisher. Ring's father worked as a comedian for three decades. Her heritage was English, Irish, and Scottish.

Ring was one of six children, five daughters and one son, several of whom pursued careers in entertainment. Her sister Julie Ring became a stage actress and was the mother of film director A. Edward Sutherland, whose father was theatrical agent and former British actor Albert H. Sutherland. Julie's second marriage, on November 9, 1914, was to actor James Norval, with whom she frequently appeared on stage; she died in 1957. Another sister, Frances Ring, married stage and silent film actor Thomas Meighan in 1909. The siblings' younger brother, Cyril Ring, was a freelance actor, the first husband of actress Charlotte Greenwood, and later married Ziegfeld Follies performer Molly Green in 1923; the couple had two daughters.

Ring made her stage debut at age 16 in 1887, appearing in A Parisian Romance with Shakespearean actor Richard Mansfield's theatrical company. She subsequently performed with Nat Goodwin and Chauncey Olcott before making her Broadway debut in 1902 as Millie Canvass in the musical The Defender, in which she introduced the song "In the Good Old Summer Time," a work that became a widely recognized American standard. She followed that success with "The Belle of Avenue A," performed in Tommy Rot at Mrs. Osborn's Playhouse in New York City. In 1903 she performed "Bedelia" in the musical The Jersey Lily, and the song's sheet music sold more than three million copies. After a European tour that included London, Ring returned to the United States in 1904 and performed at three venues associated with vaudeville impresario F.F. Proctor: Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater, the Newark Theater, and the Fifth Avenue Theater.

In 1909 Ring introduced "I've Got Rings On My Fingers" in The Midnight Sons, and her Victor Records recording of the song appeared on Billboard's list of top hits that year, alongside her recordings of "Yip-I-Addy-I-Aye" and "The Billiken Man." In 1910 she introduced "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine" in a Broadway production and subsequently recorded it, making it one of her most successful songs. She portrayed the title role in the 1914 Broadway musical When Claudia Smiles, and her production of The Wall Street Girl marked the occasion of Will Rogers speaking his first lines on stage. During World War I, Ring gained popularity performing "They're All Out of Step But Jim." By 1918 she was billed as "America's Favorite Singing Comedienne," a distinction tied in part to her talent for mime and impersonation. In 1919 her impersonations were paired with those of actor Charles Winninger in the Passing Show of 1919 at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City.

Ring's Broadway career, which ran from 1902 to 1938, encompassed a wide range of productions. She starred in The Merry Widow, The Devil, and the revue The Gay White Way. She appeared as Mrs. Grace Draper in Strike Up the Band in 1930 and played Josie Huggins in the musical Right This Way in 1938. On the dramatic stage she appeared in Cradle Snatchers and as Mrs. Hawthorne in The Great Necker in 1928. Her final stage performance came in 1938 as Rose Bertin in Madame Capet, a production starring Eva Le Gallienne. She also appeared in De Luxe among other productions.

Ring's film work began in 1916 when she traveled to Hollywood to star in the silent film The Yankee Girl. She appeared in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and in the 1926 motion picture It's the Old Army Game, directed by her nephew Eddie Sutherland and starring W.C. Fields. In 1940 she appeared alongside other vaudeville performers in the Bing Crosby film If I Had My Way.

Ring was married five times, and all five marriages ended in divorce. Her first husband was Walter F. MacNichol, a theatrical manager, with whom she had one son, Gordon Eliot MacNichol. Her second husband, James Walker Jr., was from Somerville, Massachusetts, and worked for the railroad; the couple separated in 1898 and divorced in 1904. Her subsequent marriages were to Edward Wentworth and to her theatrical manager Frederick Edward McKay. Her fifth husband was actor Charles Winninger, whom she first met in 1908 and married in 1912; the couple appeared together in Broadway Whirl and separated in 1928, though their divorce was not finalized until 1951. Ring and Winninger at one time shared a home at 30 Oakland Beach Avenue in Rye, New York, where she remained until at least 1935. Prior to that residence she had maintained a country home in Mamaroneck, across from actress Ethel Barrymore, and another in Larchmont at 28 Oak Avenue. She was known for hosting house parties attended by figures including Douglas Fairbanks and Eddie Foy Sr.

Ring left New York in 1959 to live in Hollywood with her brother Cyril. In May 1960 she attended a reunion of former Ziegfeld Follies performers; she held honorary membership in the Ziegfeld Club, though she never worked directly for Florenz Ziegfeld. Ring died in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California, on January 13, 1961, at the age of 89, following a stroke she had suffered in 1958. She was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in California after a rosary recited at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Her great-niece is conductor Jane Ring Frank.