Florence Eldridge

Florence Eldridge, born Florence McKechnie on September 5, 1901, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American actress whose stage career spanned nearly four decades on Broadway, from 1918 to 1956. The daughter of Charles J. McKechnie, she received her early education at P.S. 85 and Girls' High School in Brooklyn before embarking on a professional acting career.

Eldridge entered Broadway at age 17, making her debut as a chorus member in Rock-a-Bye Baby at the Astor Theatre. During the 1920s she earned significant recognition in productions including The Cat and the Canary and Six Characters in Search of an Author. Her Broadway work across subsequent decades encompassed a wide range of dramatic material, including The Skin of Our Teeth, The Autumn Garden, An Enemy of the People, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and Years Ago. Her performance in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play in 1957.

Her personal life became closely intertwined with her professional one. On March 19, 1921, she married Howard Rumsey, who operated the Empire Theater, the Knickerbocker Players in Syracuse, and the Manhattan Players of Rochester; the ceremony took place at her aunt's home in Maplewood, New Jersey. In 1926, while serving as leading lady in the summer stock company at Elitch Theatre, she met actor Fredric March, who was the company's leading man that season. The two married in 1927 and remained together until March's death in 1975. They adopted two children, Penelope and Anthony, and shared a political outlook as liberal Democrats.

Eldridge appeared alongside March in seven films, among them Les Misérables (1935), in which she played Fantine, and Mary of Scotland (1936), where she portrayed Elizabeth Tudor. Her screen work began as early as 1923 with Six Cylinder Love and continued through Inherit the Wind (1960), in which she played Sarah Brady. Other film credits include The Story of Temple Drake (1933), Another Part of the Forest (1948), and Christopher Columbus (1949), where she took the role of Queen Isabella.

In 1965, Eldridge and March undertook a world tour organized under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, performing excerpts from plays on a bare stage for international audiences. Eldridge described the venture as an experiment to determine whether an acting couple working in that stripped-down format could connect with audiences around the world. Florence Eldridge died on August 1, 1988.