Fay Templeton

Fay Templeton (December 25, 1865 – October 3, 1939) was an American actress, singer, songwriter, and comedian born in Little Rock, Arkansas, where her parents, John J. Templeton and Alice Van Asse, were performing with the Templeton Opera Company. Her father was a Southern theatre manager, comedian, and author; her mother starred alongside him. Raised in a theatrical household, Templeton was introduced to the stage at age three, dressed as Cupid and singing between the acts of her father's productions. By age five she had spoken lines, and at eight she played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, making her New York debut at the Grand Opera House. At fifteen she joined a light opera company performing a juvenile version of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, and also appeared in The Mascot and Billee Taylor.

Templeton's formal Broadway debut came on October 7, 1885, in a revival of Evangeline, which ran for 201 performances and showcased her abilities as both a comedian and mimic. The following year she starred in the London premiere of Monte Cristo Jr. After touring in melodramas and musical farces, she took the title role in Hendrik Hudson, which opened at the 14th Street Theater on August 18, 1890. The production was a trouser role — a then-popular operetta convention in which an actress appeared in male clothing — and though Templeton won praise for singing "The Same Old Thing," the show ran only 16 performances. By 1890 she had formed her own opera company, and in 1895 she appeared in another trouser role in E.E. Rice's Excelsior, Jr. at Oscar Hammerstein's Olympic Theater.

In 1896, the comic duo Joe Weber and Lew Fields established their Broadway Music Hall and assembled a stock company of headliners that included Templeton. Her comedic versatility, long dark hair, and throaty singing voice made her a consistent audience favorite. During the 1900 Weber and Fields production Fiddle Dee Dee, Templeton gave the first performance of John Stromberg's "Ma Blushin' Rosie, Ma Posie Sweet," a number that became the hit of the show and was later recorded by multiple artists including Al Jolson. In 1901 she premiered "I'm a Respectable Working Girl" in a new Music Hall production, with music by Stromberg and lyrics by Edgar Smith. In 1903, as part of the musical The Runaways, she introduced "The Woodchuck Song," written for her by Robert Hobart Davis. During her years with Weber and Fields, Templeton frequently performed alongside burlesque and vaudeville performer Peter F. Dailey, who died in 1908 in Chicago shortly after a performance.

George M. Cohan cast Templeton in the lead role of Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway, which debuted on January 1, 1906, at the New Amsterdam Theatre and ran for 90 performances before closing on March 17. In that production she introduced the songs "So Long Mary" and "Mary Is a Grand Old Name." Following her August 1906 marriage to Pittsburgh industrialist William Patterson, Templeton announced her retirement, but she returned to reprise her role when the show reopened in November. In 1911, Weber and Fields organized a Jubilee reunion touring company featuring their former Music Hall performers; Templeton was among the first to volunteer, and the tour lasted five months, breaking records for touring companies. She announced retirement again in 1913, continuing nonetheless to perform in vaudeville with material drawn from her earlier shows.

In 1925, Templeton appeared in an old-timers' show at the Palace Theater alongside Weber and Fields, after which she again declared her intention to retire. She returned to the stage in 1926 to play Mrs. Cripps, known as Buttercup, in a revival of H.M.S. Pinafore. When her husband died suddenly in 1932, leaving his estate unsettled and Templeton without independent financial support, she returned to performing once more. Her most significant late-career appearance came in the 1933–1934 production of Roberta, the Jerome Kern musical, in which she played Aunt Minnie, a dress shop owner in Paris. The show introduced "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and featured "Yesterdays," a number written for Templeton that has since become a jazz standard. Bob Hope made his American stage debut in the same production, which ran nine months. Templeton also appeared in the 1933 film Broadway to Hollywood, her only full-length motion picture, and had previously appeared in at least three short films between 1904 and 1907. Among her other Broadway credits were Trial by Jury, Lifting the Lid, and Hokey-Pokey.

Templeton's personal life included a marriage in May 1883 to blackface minstrel performer William H. West, conducted by elopement in Nashville, Tennessee. West filed for divorce in December 1886 in Chicago, citing desertion. Beginning in 1887, Templeton maintained a long-term relationship with Howell Osborn, the son of a wealthy New York City broker; the two lived in England and traveled the continent for several years until Osborn's death in May 1895, at which point he left Templeton $100,000. She later married William Patterson in 1906. For a period she also dated Sam Shubert of the Shubert family of theatre owners, until his death in a railroad accident. Though many of Templeton's songwriting efforts were performed on radio and recorded on phonograph, no recordings of her voice are known to survive. She died on October 3, 1939, having performed on Broadway from 1885 through 1933.