John B. Mason

John Hill Belcher Mason (October 28, 1858 – January 12, 1919) was an American stage actor whose career on Broadway spanned from 1885 to 1918. Born in Orange, New Jersey, he was the son of Daniel Gregory Mason, a publisher, and Susan W. (née Belcher) Mason. His grandfather was Dr. Lowell Mason, an educator and composer of Christian music, and his cousin was composer and music critic Daniel Gregory Mason. Through his mother, Mason descended from Jonathan Belcher, a colonial governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and his American lineage extended back to Robert Mason, an Englishman who settled in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1630.

Mason received his early education at private schools in the United States and at the Frankfort Gymnasium abroad before enrolling at Columbia University in 1876. He made his professional stage debut two years later at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, where his first season brought him into contact with prominent actors of the era including Lawrence Barrett, Mary Anderson, Lotta Crabtree, James K. Emmet, J. C. Williamson, Mme. Janauschek, Fanny Davenport, and Frank C. Bangs. The following year he began a twelve-year association with the Boston Museum, working alongside William Warren, Dion Boucicault, Lester Wallack, and other leading figures of the American stage. During this period he appeared in every original Gilbert and Sullivan opera production mounted in America and originated leading roles in Hands Across the Sea, The English Rose, and Bronson Howard's Civil War drama Shenandoah, in which he played Kerchival West.

Following the death of his mother in 1890, Mason traveled to London, where he achieved success at the St. James Theatre playing Simeon Strong in C. Haddon Chambers' play The Idler. It was during this London engagement that he met Marion Manola, a star of comic opera born in New York and raised in Orange, New Jersey, who was then appearing as Maid Marian in a musical production of Robin Hood. The two married on May 1, 1891, in London. Mason subsequently returned to the United States to form the Mason-Manola Company, touring with a revival of the comic opera L'Ami Fritz, in which he starred alongside Manola for three seasons. The company's financial difficulties, combined with a mental breakdown Manola suffered in 1894 and the deterioration of her health, contributed to the collapse of the marriage, which ended in divorce before the close of the decade. Mason also married actress Katherine Grey not long after his divorce from Manola, though that union likewise ended in divorce in 1905. Manola died in 1914 at New Rochelle, New York, following a failed gallstone operation. Her daughter Adelaide Mould, from a previous marriage, became the wife of novelist and playwright Rupert Hughes.

After a brief period in vaudeville, Mason returned to the legitimate stage, reviving his role in The Idler and later appearing at the Garrick Theatre as Col. Moberly in Augustus Thomas's Alabama. In 1898 he created the character Horatio Drake in Hall Caine's play The Christian at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York. His most celebrated performance came in 1907, when he played Jack Brookfield in Augustus Thomas's The Witching Hour, a production that ran for 970 performances. Thomas drew a comparison between Mason and the French actor Lucien Guitry, stating that Mason possessed everything Guitry had, with the additional ability to wear a dress suit and conduct himself in a salon with the grace of a nobleman. In his later years Mason performed in companies headed by Elsie De Wolfe, Daniel Frohman, and Minnie Maddern Fiske, among others.

Among his Broadway credits, Mason starred in None Are So Blind and Mary and John, and also appeared in The Big Chance, On With the Dance, and Bosom Friends. His personal life brought occasional legal difficulties: in 1902 he spent time in the Ludlow Street Jail after Manola persuaded a judge that he had failed to meet his alimony obligations, and a decade earlier he and his brother Lowell had briefly been held following a dispute over an unpaid bill with a former business partner.

In addition to his stage work, Mason appeared in several films, including Jim the Penman (1915), The Fatal Card (1915), The Reapers (1916), The Libertine (1916), and Moral Suicide (1918). He fell ill during a premiere performance of The Woman in Room 12 in Providence, Rhode Island, and died on January 12, 1919, at a sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut. His death was attributed to complications from Bright's disease.