Jobyna Howland

Jobyna Howland (March 31, 1880 – June 7, 1936) was an American actress whose career spanned Broadway, silent film, and sound pictures across nearly four decades. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, she was the daughter of Joby Howland, a Civil War veteran who enlisted at age eleven, and his wife Mary C. Bunting. Her given name was a feminine form of her father's. Her brother was character actor Olin Howland.

Howland spent time in Denver, Colorado before pursuing professional stage work. Her earliest documented performance came in December 1897, when she appeared in A Milk White Flag at the Tacoma Theater in Tacoma, Washington. She subsequently performed in San Francisco, where she joined a touring company led by Clay Clement. After attracting the attention of a photographer named Thors, whose images of her were published in the Illustrated American, she came to the notice of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. Within weeks of arriving in New York, she had begun modeling professionally and became one of Gibson's Gibson Girl subjects.

Her New York stage debut came in 1899 under the management of Daniel Frohman, with her first Broadway role being Queen Flavia in Rupert of Hentzau. Over the course of her Broadway career, which extended from 1899 to 1936, she appeared in productions including The Gold Diggers, the musical Kid Boots, the play The Texas Nightingale, and Stepping Out. Throughout her theatrical work she frequently played supporting figures such as the other woman, a best friend, or a distant cousin. Her final Broadway appearance was as Amy Bellaire in O Evening Star in 1936.

Howland also pursued a film career, relocating to a bungalow in Beverly Hills. She appeared in several silent pictures, among them Her Only Way (1918) and The Way of a Woman (1919), though that medium proved less suited to her. With the arrival of sound, her direct and distinct voice translated well to screen, and she took on the kind of authoritative supporting roles she had developed on stage. Her sound film credits include Honey (1930), The Cuckoos (1930), Dixiana (1930), Hook, Line and Sinker (1930), Big City Blues (1932), Once in a Lifetime (1932), Topaze (1933), and The Story of Temple Drake (1933), among others. Her appearances in the comedies of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey became some of her most recognized screen work.

In her personal life, Howland married Arthur Stringer in 1903. The marriage ended in 1914, and she had no children. On June 7, 1936, she was found dead on the kitchen floor of her home at the age of 56, with police attributing her death to heart disease. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.