Cornelia Otis Skinner

Cornelia Otis Skinner was born on May 30, 1899, in Chicago, Illinois, the only child of actor Otis Skinner and actress Maud Durbin. She attended the Baldwin School, an all-girls institution, before enrolling at Bryn Mawr College from 1918 to 1919 and subsequently studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris. She died on July 9, 1979.

Skinner made her professional stage debut on September 20, 1921, playing Dona Sarasate in Tom Cushing's Blood and Sand at Broadway's Empire Theatre, appearing alongside her father. Her Broadway career spanned from 1921 to 1958 and encompassed work as a performer, composer, and book writer. Productions during that period included Edna His Wife, Mansion on the Hudson, The Loves of Charles II, and the musical Paris. In 1939, she starred in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida that toured cities including Cleveland before opening on Broadway. Her 1952 one-woman show Paris '90, with music and lyrics by Kay Swift, premiered at the Golden Theatre in New York City, where she portrayed thirteen different characters. Columbia Records produced an original cast recording of the show, with Goddard Lieberson serving as producer. Skinner's final Broadway credit came in 1958 with The Pleasure of His Company at the Longacre and Music Box Theatres, in which she played Katharine Dougherty alongside Cyril Richard and George Peppard.

Between 1926 and 1929, Skinner toured the United States in a one-woman performance of short character sketches she had written herself. Scholar G. Bruce Loganbill, in a 1961 study of her work, described these scripts as "monologue-dramas," characterizing them as extensions of the "linked monologues" associated with Ruth Draper, while noting that Skinner's pieces were structurally distinct in that they were full-length works based on the lives of historical figures. This format was identified as a unique contribution to the one-person show in America. In 1964, Skinner toured in The Irregular Verb to Love alongside Cyril Ritchard, James Coco, and Robert Drivas, with a stop at Denver's Elitch Theatre.

On radio, Skinner appeared on The Campbell Playhouse on May 26, 1939, in an episode titled "The Things We Have (An American Cavalcade)," playing five different roles opposite Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead in a production by Welles and John Houseman. Her film work included roles in The Uninvited (1943) with Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) with Ray Milland and Joan Collins, and The Swimmer (1968) with Burt Lancaster. She also appeared as herself in Stage Door Canteen (1943). On television, her acting credits included Max Liebman Presents: Dearest Enemy (1955, NBC), in which she played Mrs. Murray alongside Anne Jeffreys and Cyril Richard, The Alcoa Hour (1956, NBC), and The Farmer's Daughter (1962, NBC), in which she appeared with Peter Lawford and Lee Remick.

Alongside her stage and screen work, Skinner contributed humorous essays to publications including The New Yorker, which were compiled into several books, among them Nuts in May, Dithers and Jitters, Excuse It Please!, and The Ape in Me. She co-wrote Our Hearts Were Young and Gay with Emily Kimbrough, a memoir describing their European travels after college. The book was adapted as a film of the same name, with Gail Russell portraying Skinner, and later as a 1950 television series titled The Girls, in which Skinner was first portrayed by Bethel Leslie and subsequently by Gloria Stroock. Kimbrough and Skinner traveled to Hollywood to serve as consultants on the film adaptation. In later years, Skinner wrote Madame Sarah, a biography of Sarah Bernhardt, and Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, a history of the Belle Époque. She also authored Life with Lindsay and Crouse (1976), a biography of playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.

Skinner married Alden Sanford Blodget on October 5, 1928, in Warm Springs, Virginia. Their only child, a son named Otis Skinner Blodget, was born on August 28, 1930, and died on March 11, 2007, at the age of 76.