Ida Adams

Ida Adams (c. 1888 – November 4, 1960), sometimes credited as Ida M. Adams, was an American actress and singer whose career was centered primarily in musical theatre. Born around 1888, she worked on the Broadway stage from the late 1900s into the early 1910s before relocating to London, where she performed in the West End from 1915 to 1917.

Adams made her third stage appearance on April 27, 1909, at the Knickerbocker Theatre on Broadway, playing Miss Glick in the musical The Candy Shop. Later that same year she toured in Three Twins, taking on the roles of Summer Girl and Boo Hoo Tee Hee Girl. In 1911 she played Désirée in the musical The Pink Lady at the New Amsterdam Theatre, subsequently continuing in the role on tour. The following year she appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld's musical A Winsome Widow at the Moulin Rouge in New York, where she was cast as Tony. Beginning in October 1912, Adams performed in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1912, which ran through January 1913. A costume drawing of Adams attributed to Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, who worked on the Ziegfeld Follies, is held in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

After her Broadway work, Adams moved to London, where she appeared at the London Hippodrome in 1915. The following year she performed in the revue Half-Past Eight at the Comedy Theatre, and then joined Charles B. Cochran's production of Houp La! at St Martin's Theatre in 1916. Cochran later recalled that Binnie Hale received her first professional opportunity in Houp La! as Adams's understudy, though Hale's debut was complicated by Adams's stipulation that no understudy could wear the costumes Adams had personally paid for. A cast member from the 1916 production recalled in a 1977 issue of The Listener that Adams was a spectacular presence whose jewellery was so valuable that bank staff were kept on duty each evening to secure it after performances.

On January 11, 1917, Adams recorded two songs from Houp La! for His Master's Voice at the Gramophone Company's studios in Hayes, Middlesex. The first recording was "Oh! How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo," performed with a female choir and the St Martin's Theatre Orchestra. The second was Paul Rubens's "Wonderful Girl, Wonderful Boy, Wonderful Time," recorded as a trio alongside Gertie Millar and Nat Ayer. Her last known theatrical appearance came in the play Inside the Lines at the Apollo Theatre, London, in 1917, in which she played Jane Gerson. Adams died on November 4, 1960, at the age of 72.