Eva Le Gallienne

Eva Le Gallienne (January 11, 1899 – June 3, 1991) was a British-American actress, producer, director, translator, and author whose Broadway career spanned from 1916 to 1982. Born in London to Richard Le Gallienne, an English poet of French descent, and Julie Nørregaard, a Danish journalist, she spent much of her early childhood moving between Paris, London, and Copenhagen after her parents separated in 1903. During her time in Paris, she attended performances by Sarah Bernhardt, an experience she credited with inspiring her commitment to the theater.

Le Gallienne made her stage debut at 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna. She studied briefly at Tree's Academy, now the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before leaving to perform in a West End production called The Laughter of Fools. At 16, she and her mother sailed for New York City, where she began auditioning for Broadway productions. After early small roles and a period of touring and summer stock work, she returned to New York to star in Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago in 1920. The following year, she achieved full Broadway recognition playing Julie in Ferenc Molnár's Liliom for the Theatre Guild, and consolidated her star status in 1923 as Princess Alexandra in Molnár's The Swan. She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1927.

In 1926, Le Gallienne left Broadway to found the Civic Repertory Theatre, leasing a space on West Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Her goal was to present high-quality plays at affordable prices, and she served simultaneously as the company's director, producer, and lead actress. Backed financially by heiress Alice DeLamar and other donors, she ran the nonprofit theater for seven years, from 1926 to 1934, during which time the company produced 37 plays. The Civic Rep's acting company included Burgess Meredith, John Garfield, Norman Lloyd, J. Edward Bromberg, Josephine Hutchinson, Alla Nazimova, and Joseph Schildkraut, among others. The theater disbanded in 1934 as the economic pressures of the Great Depression eroded subscriptions and financial support.

Among the productions Le Gallienne staged at the Civic Rep was Alice in Wonderland, which she adapted for the stage together with Florida Friebus in 1932. The production was subsequently revived on Broadway in 1947 and again in 1982, making it one of her most enduring credits. She also starred as Peter Pan in a Civic Rep production that opened on November 6, 1928, in which flying effects were designed so that the title character flew out over the heads of the audience. The production ran 129 performances. In late 1929, Le Gallienne appeared on the cover of Time magazine. During the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered her the directorship of the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration, which she declined.

In the late 1930s, Le Gallienne entered into a relationship with theater director Margaret Webster. She, Webster, and producer Cheryl Crawford co-founded the American Repertory Theater, which operated from 1946 to 1948. Her Broadway credits across her long career also included The Cherry Orchard, The Women Have Their Way, To Grandmother's House We Go, and A Royal Family. Her performance in To Grandmother's House We Go earned her both a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Play, both in 1981, recognitions that came more than six decades after her Broadway debut.

Le Gallienne's work as a book writer extended her contributions beyond performance, and her stage adaptation of Alice in Wonderland remained a defining achievement across multiple decades of her career. Her founding of the Civic Repertory Theatre established a model of accessible, nonprofit, classical repertory theater that anticipated the Off-Broadway and regional theater movements that developed later in the twentieth century.