Helen Barry

Helen Barry, born Elizabeth Short on 5 January 1840 in Lee, Kent — then a village, now a suburb of London — was an English actress who built a substantial career on both the West End and the New York stage. She was the daughter of Charles Henry Short and his wife Mary. At fifteen, she married Joseph Brandon, a Belgian, on 3 May 1855 at the Parish Church of Saint Luke, Charlton, Kent. A daughter, Esther E. Brandon, was born in Greenwich around the same period. Brandon petitioned for dissolution of the marriage on 2 June 1870, with the divorce finalized on 29 February 1876.

Barry came to the stage relatively late, making her first appearance at age 32 as Princess Fortinbrasse in Dion Boucicault and James Planché's Babil and Bijou at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1872. She also appeared at Covent Garden in This Evening at Seven before moving to the Royal Court Theatre, where she remained until 1873. In March of that year she created the role of Selene, the fairy queen, in The Happy Land, a Victorian burlesque written by W. S. Gilbert and Gilbert Arthur à Beckett. Later in 1873, she took the role of Margaret Hayes in Tom Taylor's Arkwright's Wife, first at the Theatre Royal in Leeds and then at the Globe Theatre in London when the production transferred.

Her career through the mid-1870s encompassed a wide range of genres and venues. She played Edith Dombey in Heart's Delight, an adaptation of Dombey and Son, and appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in 1874 as Armande in Boucicault's Led Astray. In 1875 she took the lead in Around the World in 80 Days at the Princess's Theatre, followed by the leading role in James Mortimer's Heartsease at the same venue. In 1876 she appeared in adaptations of two French plays at the Haymarket Theatre and the Standard Theatre, as well as in Tom Taylor's Lady Clancarty. The following year she performed in The Lady of Lyons and The School for Scandal. Among her notable roles of the decade were Lady Macbeth and Lady Teazle, both performed at the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh. In 1878 she took the breeches role of Abdallah in The Forty Thieves, a burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre.

On 1 September 1877, Barry married Alexander Rolls at the Parish Church of St Mark, Regent's Park, Middlesex. Rolls was a widower more than twenty years her senior, a Deputy Lieutenant of Monmouthshire who had served four terms as Mayor of Monmouth and held the rank of Major after purchasing a commission in the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. His residence was Croft-y-bwla, a house northwest of Monmouth designed by architect George Vaughan Maddox. The couple lived there together for a limited period; Rolls declared bankruptcy within two years of the marriage, and by 1881 he was recorded at Hanover Square, London, without Barry listed as residing with him. During this period she continued performing, appearing in The World at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1880 and as Mrs. Arabella Buster in Forbidden Fruits at the Adelphi Theatre the same year. Rolls died in London on 22 April 1882.

Within a year of Rolls's death, Barry married Harry George Bolam, a land agent and mining engineer. The couple relocated to New York, where Bolam died suddenly of pneumonia on 23 March 1883. Two months after his death, Barry made her Broadway debut, reprising the role of Margaret Hayes in Arkwright's Wife in 1883. Returning to London by 1886, she produced and acted in new work, including The Esmondes of Virginia at the Royalty Theatre. In 1888 she appeared at the Haymarket Theatre in A Woman of the World, an adaptation by B. C. Stephenson of Oscar Blumenthal's Der Probpfeil, performing alongside Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

Barry returned to New York in 1889 to appear in Love and Liberty at the Union Square Theatre. In 1891 she both starred in and produced A Night's Frolic, by Augustus Thomas, at the Park Theatre in New York City. The following year she brought a copyright infringement suit in New York State court against Rose Coghlan, alleging that Coghlan's play Dorothy's Dilemma had appropriated entire scenes from her production. She was also involved in separate legal proceedings in London that year, and was acting in America again by 1895. Barry died on 20 July 1904 in Norwalk, Connecticut. Her estate was submitted to probate in London on 24 April 1906.