Cecilia Loftus

Cecilia Loftus, born Marie Cecilia Loftus Brown on 22 October 1876 in Glasgow, Scotland, was a Scottish actress, vaudevillian, music hall performer, and Broadway contributor whose stage career extended from the late nineteenth century through 1941. Her father, Ben Brown, performed with the variety act Brown, Newland & Le Clerc, and her mother, Marie Loftus, was eighteen at the time of Cecilia's birth and went on to become a celebrated burlesque star billed as "The Sarah Bernhardt of the Halls." Loftus received her education at the Convent of the Holy Child in Blackpool, England, an institution that relocated in 1890 to Layton Hill Convent and is now known as St. Mary's Catholic College.

At seventeen, Loftus made her debut at the Oxford Music Hall in London in July 1893, followed by an appearance at the Palace Theatre of Varieties. Her early work centered on impersonations of well-known performers of the day, including Yvette Guilbert, and she spent one season at the Gaiety Theatre in musical comedy. By 1894 she had crossed the Atlantic to appear in vaudeville at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City, and she subsequently toured with both the Ada Rehan Company and the Augustin Daly Company, performing in cities including Washington, DC, St. Louis, and Chicago under the billing "Miss Cecile." Her first appearance at Koster & Bial's took place on 21 January 1895. Among the roles she played before that year were Winnie in The Last Word and Audrey in Love's Labour's Lost. She became an internationally recognized figure in vaudeville alongside performers such as Vesta Tilley and Harry Lauder.

Loftus transitioned into the legitimate theatre with an appearance in The Children of the King at the Royal Court Theatre in 1898. Returning to the United States the following year for a vaudeville tour, she was seen by Sir Henry Irving in 1901 at the Knickerbocker Theatre, who engaged her to take on roles that Dame Ellen Terry could no longer perform. She subsequently toured with Irving, though the financial returns were smaller than those she had earned on the music hall circuit. In 1905 she took on the role of Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, and later that same year she played Peter Pan in the second British production of J.M. Barrie's play. The following year she toured with The Diamond Express, and in 1912 she appeared at the Royal Variety Performance at the Palace Theatre. In 1914, she played Desdemona in Othello at the Lyric Theatre in New York.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1900 to 1941 and encompassed a wide range of productions. She appeared in The Man of Forty in 1900, and in 1901 took part in If I Were King, written by her then-husband Justin Huntly McCarthy. In 1903 she appeared in Hamlet alongside E.H. Sothern, and in 1906 she performed in the Victor Herbert operetta Dream City. Later Broadway credits included Venus in 1927 with Tyrone Power, Sr., Three-Cornered Moon in 1933 with Ruth Gordon, Clare Boothe Luce's Abide With Me in 1935, and Little Dark Horse in 1941. She also appeared in the productions Cecilia Loftus and There's Always a Breeze. In addition to performing, Loftus contributed as a book writer to Broadway productions, and under the name Cissie Loftus she wrote lyrics and music for songs in several shows, among them The Belle of Bridgeport in 1900 and The Lancers in 1907, in which she also starred.

Loftus additionally pursued a film career from the 1910s through the 1940s. Her screen roles included Clorinda Widairs in A Lady of Quality in 1913, Mrs. Sinclair in Young Sinners in 1931, Grandmother Lovell in The Old Maid in 1939, and Granny Tyl in The Blue Bird in 1940.

Her personal life was marked by difficulty. At seventeen she eloped with Irish writer Justin Huntly McCarthy, who was twice her age, and the two were married in Edinburgh on 29 August 1894. That marriage ended in divorce. In 1908 she married American physician Alonzo Higbee Waterman. By 1914 both her health and the marriage had deteriorated significantly, and an acrimonious divorce followed in 1920. The premature birth of their son, Peter, combined with ongoing health problems, contributed to her increasing dependence on alcohol and painkillers. In November 1922 she was arrested for possession of morphine and atropine; fellow actress Eva Moore posted bail of £100, and Loftus was placed on probation for twelve months at the Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court. In 1923 she departed Britain permanently and sailed to New York City to resume her Broadway career and pursue work in Hollywood.

Loftus died of a heart attack and the effects of alcoholism at the Lincoln Hotel in New York City on 12 July 1943, at the age of sixty-six. Her mother had died only three years before her. She is buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York, in a plot provided by the Actors' Fund.