Edna Wallace Hopper

Edna Wallace Hopper (January 17, 1872 – December 14, 1959) was an American actress and singer born in San Francisco, California, to Josephine and Waller Wallace, whose full name at birth was Edna Margaret Augusta Wallace. Her father worked as the head night usher at the California Theater. She had one sibling. Hopper later claimed that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed her birth records. She trained for the stage in New York and built her early reputation as a soubrette in light operas before becoming a fixture of Broadway productions spanning from 1894 to 1927.

In 1893, Hopper married actor DeWolf Hopper, and the two performed together in several comic operas, among them John Philip Sousa's El Capitan. Their pairing created a notable visual contrast: DeWolf stood between six feet five and six feet six inches tall, while Hopper stood under five feet and weighed less than one hundred pounds. The marriage ended in divorce in 1898. Among her most celebrated stage roles was Lady Holyrood in the musical Florodora, which had originally premiered in London. Although she was not a member of the famous Florodora Sextette, she shared in the intense public attention the production generated, with male admirers regularly crowding the stage door after performances. She also appeared in the musical The Matinee Girl and the production About Town, among other Broadway credits.

In 1907, Hopper starred in George M. Cohan's Fifty Miles from Boston, and the following year she married Wall Street broker Albert Albert Oldfield Brown. Her stage activity slowed during the 1910s before resuming in the 1920s. She also transitioned into work in silent films during this period and became known by the nickname the "eternal flapper." By 1923 she had separated from her second husband and relocated from New York to Los Angeles.

Hopper was among the earliest stage performers to undergo a facelift, and she had the procedure filmed. She subsequently conducted personal appearance tours for eight years, screening the film and sharing beauty advice with audiences. Her public profile extended into commerce through Edna Wallace Hopper Cosmetics, a line of personal care products sold by American Home Products. She also became a stock trader and served as the first woman — and, during her tenure, the only woman — on the thirty-six-member board of L. F. Rothschild & Co.

In 1953, Hopper reprised the same role with which she had launched her acting career in 1893, performing it at the final event held at the Empire Theater in Manhattan before the building was demolished. That same year, the June 8 issue of Life Magazine featured an article on Hopper, recognizing her as a prominent stage actress and singer of the turn of the twentieth century. She died on December 14, 1959, in New York City and was buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.