John C. Rice

John C. Rice, born John C. Hilberg on April 7, 1857, in Beaverkill, New York, was an American stage actor and vaudevillian whose Broadway career spanned from 1895 to 1903. Beaverkill was a small community in Sullivan County, northwest of the town of Rockland. His parents, John Marcus Hilberg and Frances Hilberg, née Grant, were farmers and first-generation Americans of Swedish descent. At seventeen, Rice left home to pursue a career in the theater, adopting the stage name John C. Rice at that time.

Rice entered the profession as a contortionist in vaudeville before transitioning into comic acting. While working in Philadelphia, he encountered actor George W. Munroe, and the two appeared together as supporting players in Over the Garden Wall, a production staged by the George S. Knight theatre company. The play premiered at the Chestnut Street Opera House on September 1, 1884, subsequently toured, and reached Broadway's Union Square Theatre in January 1885, later transferring to the Fifth Avenue Theatre the following March. Munroe distinguished himself in the production through his comic portrayal of an Irish woman named Bridget, a character that would anchor the pair's subsequent collaboration.

Following the close of Over the Garden Wall, Rice and Munroe formed a lasting performance partnership. Playwright Scott Marble wrote My Aunt Bridget, a new play built around Munroe's Bridget character, which debuted in Kansas City, Missouri in 1886. Rice and Munroe spent the remainder of the decade touring the United States in vaudeville with that work. In January 1891, a second Bridget play, Aunt Bridget's Baby, premiered at Boston's Park Theatre, with actor Andrew Mack joining the team. The Munroe and Rice vaudeville partnership continued through 1898, a span of twelve years.

In 1890, Rice married actress Sally Cohen, and on November 27 of that year their daughter Gladys Rice was born. Gladys later pursued a career on stage and on record as a soprano. After the Munroe and Rice partnership concluded, Rice and his wife performed together in the sketch comedy "Our Honeymoon" at Keith's Theatre in Boston in 1898, subsequently working as the comedy duo Rice and Cohen in vaudeville theatres for more than fifteen years. In 1907 they performed the skit "A Bachelor's Wife" at Chase's in Washington, D.C., and their final performances together took place at Broadway's Colonial Theatre in April 1915, two months before Rice's death.

Rice is credited with performing the first onscreen kiss, alongside actress May Irwin, in the 1896 Thomas Edison film company production The Kiss. The forty-seven-second film was a recreation of a scene from the Broadway play The Widow Jones, in which both Irwin and Rice had appeared. Rice's Broadway credits included The Widow Jones in 1895, Courted Into Court in 1897, Are You a Mason? in 1901, and Vivian's Papas in 1903.

John C. Rice died of Bright's disease on June 5, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.