Jane Cowl

Jane Cowl, born Jane Bailey on December 14, 1883, in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American stage actress, film actress, and playwright whose Broadway career spanned from 1903 to 1947. The daughter of Charles Bailey and Grace Avery, she was educated at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York City, and later took courses at Columbia University.

Cowl made her Broadway debut in Sweet Kitty Bellairs in 1903. Her first leading role came in 1909, when she played Fanny Perry in Leo Ditrichstein's Is Matrimony a Failure?, a production mounted by David Belasco. The following year she appeared in The Gamblers (1910), which marked her first major success on stage, and she continued building her reputation through Within the Law (1912) and Common Clay (1915). She became particularly recognized for her Shakespearean work, taking on the roles of Juliet, Cleopatra, and Viola on Broadway. Her portrayal of Juliet in 1923 ran for more than 1,000 consecutive performances, a record in Broadway history. Critic George Jean Nathan described her as "by all odds the most charming" Juliet he had seen, and her emotionally affecting performances earned her the description of having a "voice with a tear." Biographer Charles Higham noted her "marvelous bovine eyes and exquisite genteel catch in the voice."

In 1930, Cowl appeared alongside a young Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway production of Benn W. Levy's Art and Mrs. Bottle. Four years later, she originated the role of Lael Wyngate in S.N. Behrman's Rain from Heaven, opposite actor John Halliday. Critic Gilbert Gabriel praised the scenes between Cowl and Halliday as "models of aristocratic parlando." She also starred in Noël Coward's Easy Virtue, and her later Broadway credits included The Jealous Moon and Old Acquaintance.

Beyond performing, Cowl was a playwright who collaborated frequently with Jane Murfin, the two often writing under the joint pseudonym Allan Langdon Martin. Their collaborative works include Lilac Time (1917), At Daybreak (1917), Information Please (1918), Smilin' Through (1919), and The Jealous Moon (1928).

Cowl also worked in film, starring in two silent pictures, The Garden of Lies (1915) and The Spreading Dawn (1917), before stepping away from the medium for nearly three decades. She returned to film in the 1940s in a series of supporting roles, with her final screen appearance in Payment on Demand (1951), alongside Bette Davis.

On June 18, 1906, Cowl married Adolph Edward Klauber, the drama critic of The New York Times, at her father's apartment on Riverside Drive in New York City. Klauber, a former actor and son of a prominent Louisville photographer, left the Times in 1918 to work as a theatrical producer and manager. The couple separated in 1930 as his health declined, and Klauber died in Louisville in 1933. They had no children. Actress Jane Russell was named in Cowl's honor.

A biography titled Jane Cowl: Her Precious and Momentary Glory, written by Richard Abe King, who had previously worked with Cowl, was published in 2004. Cowl died of cancer in Santa Monica, California, on June 22, 1950, at the age of 66. Following cremation, her ashes were interred at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.