Florence Reed

Florence Reed (January 10, 1883 – November 21, 1967) was an American actress whose career on stage and screen spanned more than five decades. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to comedy actor Roland Lewis Reed and his wife, Johanna (née Sommer) Reed, she came from a family with deep theatrical roots. Her grandfather, John "Pop" Reed, served for many years as a stagehand at the old Walnut Street Theatre and donated his skull for use in future stage productions of Hamlet. Following her father's death in 1901, Reed and her mother relocated to New York City to pursue a career in the theater.

Reed made her first stage appearance at Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York in 1904, performing a monologue written by George M. Cohan. She remained associated with that theater for several years, developing her skills while also touring the country with May Irwin in The Widow Jones. During this period she played Ophelia opposite E. H. Sothern's Hamlet. Her Broadway career, which ran from 1901 to 1958, encompassed a wide range of productions, among them The Yellow Ticket, in which she appeared alongside John Barrymore in 1914, The Shanghai Gesture, The Lullaby, The Wanderer, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Family Reunion, King Richard II, and Medea. In 1943 she originated the role of the Fortune Teller in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, a role she returned to in a 1955 Broadway revival of the same production. Reed is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Her film work began in the silent era around 1915, when she was already an established stage star. Her first motion picture, The Dancing Girl, was produced by Adolph Zukor's Famous Players studio and built around her talents. She subsequently made films for several other production companies, including Popular Plays and Players, Astra, Arrow, Tribune, and Pathé, completing a total of fifteen silent pictures. The last of these was The Black Panther's Cub in 1921. After a thirteen-year absence from film, Reed returned to the screen in the 1934 sound production of Great Expectations, in which she portrayed Miss Havisham. In that adaptation, the character was reimagined as an eccentric rather than a fully deranged woman, did not wear her wedding veil continuously, and died peacefully rather than from burns sustained in a fire. Reed made two additional films following Great Expectations but continued to favor the stage over motion pictures.

In the 1950s, Reed extended her work into early television, appearing on programs including The Philco Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre, and The United States Steel Hour. In her personal life, she was married to actor Malcolm Williams from February 1908 until his death in 1937, and the two frequently appeared together in stage productions. They had no children. Reed died on November 21, 1967, and was interred alongside actress Blanche Yurka in the Actors Fund of America section of Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.