Carlotta Monterey

Carlotta Monterey, born Hazel Nielsen Tharsing on December 28, 1888, in San Francisco, California, was an American stage and film actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1915 to 1924. Her father, Christian Nielsen Tharsing, was a Danish immigrant fruit farmer, and her mother was Nellie Gotchett. Abandoned by her father at the age of four, Monterey was raised by an aunt.

Before establishing herself on the American stage, Monterey won the title of Miss California in a beauty contest, which led to her traveling to London to study acting under Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. She returned to the United States at the outset of World War I, at which point she adopted the stage name Carlotta Monterey and began pursuing a theatrical career. Her Broadway appearances included The Ruined Lady, The Red Falcon, Bavu, The Other Room, and Be Calm, Camilla, among other productions. She also appeared in films, including The Cost in 1920 and Soul-Fire in 1925.

A significant professional connection came in 1922 when Monterey acted in a production of Eugene O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape. Monterey had been married three times prior to her relationship with O'Neill: first to lawyer John Moffat in 1911, then to Malvin C. Chapman Jr. in 1916, with whom she had a daughter, Cynthia Jane Chapman, born in 1917, and subsequently to illustrator Ralph Barton, from whom she was divorced in 1926. She and O'Neill married in Paris in July 1929, making her his third and final wife.

Monterey remained devoted to O'Neill for the remainder of his life, dedicating herself to protecting his privacy. Following his death in 1953, she authorized the publication of his autobiographical play Long Day's Journey Into Night, despite O'Neill having instructed his publisher to withhold it for 25 years after his death. The play received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and became O'Neill's most widely recognized work. Monterey died on November 18, 1970, at the Valley Nursing Home in Westwood, New Jersey.