Irma La Pierre

Irma La Pierre (November 10, 1881 – October 9, 1951) was an American actress who worked on the stage before World War I, appearing in productions in both New York and beyond. Born in Chicago, she was the daughter of Lotta La Pierre.

La Pierre entered the New York stage while still in her teens, beginning her career with Augustin Daly's company. Her non-Broadway stage work encompassed a wide range of productions, including London Assurance, The School for Scandal, The Geisha, Lili-Tse, Circus Girl, Wedded and Parted (1903), The Plainsman (1905), Way Down East (1906), When Old New York Was Dutch (1909), The Iron King (1910), Metz in Ireland (1910), Seven Days (1911), and The College Widow.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1901 to 1910 and included five productions. She appeared in The Bonnie Brier Bush in 1901, followed by Skipper & Co. and Wall Street in 1903. Later credits on Broadway included The Village Lawyer in 1908 and the revue Up and Down Broadway in 1910. Beyond the stage, La Pierre appeared in one silent film, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1913), which starred Minnie Maddern Fiske in the title role.

In 1913, La Pierre was the subject of a magazine feature in which physiognomist Annie Isabella Oppenheim analyzed her facial features and proportions for insights into her character. By 1914, she had married actor Franklin Hallett Thompson, whose father was Massachusetts politician Charles Perkins Thompson. The two were separated, though described as being on friendly terms, at the time of Thompson's death by suicide in 1938. Later in life, La Pierre managed a rooming house at 255 West 108th Street in New York City. She died in 1951 at the age of 69 in New York City, and some of her papers were subsequently donated to the New York Public Library.