Josephine Brandell

Josephine Mary Brandell, born Janetta Kleinberg in Austria in September 1887, was an American musical actress and soprano who performed on Broadway between 1909 and 1912 and is also known as a survivor of the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania in 1915. Following her 1945 marriage to Beresford Cecil Bingham, 8th Earl Annesley, she became Josephine, Countess of Annesley. She died on 27 June 1977.

According to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census and the 1905 New York State Census, Brandell was born into a Jewish family as the daughter of Fishel "Phillip" Kleinberg, born 1848, and Yetta née Goldstein, born 1857, who lived until 1953. Her siblings were Samuel Lasker Kleinberg, Sadie Zehring Kleinberg, and William Kleinberg. Her father, a tailor, immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City in 1895, with the rest of the family following in 1897 and 1898. In later passport and citizenship applications, Brandell claimed to be a British citizen born on 26 November 1891 or 1892 in Bucharest, Romania, the daughter of one Phillip Brandell. In 1907, at the age of 19, she married dentist and naturalized American citizen Dr. Bernard Black Brandeis, born 1879, also from Romania, which conferred American citizenship upon her. The marriage ended in divorce in September 1910, after which she adopted the surname Brandell, possibly to avoid antisemitic persecution, and resumed her pursuit of a stage career.

As a soprano, Brandell's early work included a touring production of the comic opera Nightbirds by Johann Strauss, in which she performed alongside Fritzi Scheff across Europe and America, receiving favorable press notices. Her Broadway career began in 1909 with an appearance in The Beauty Spot at the Herald Square Theatre. That same year she took on the role of Maline in the musical The Belle of Brittany at Daly's Theatre, a run that extended into 1910. She next appeared in the musical Tillie's Nightmare at the Herald Square Theatre from 1910 to 1911, and in 1912 she played Sidi in The Merry Countess at the Casino Theatre.

In 1913 Brandell traveled to London to study music and pursue operatic and musical engagements, living there intermittently over the following six years. That year she took her first leading role in the revue Come Over Here at the London Opera House, and her career expanded to include engagements in both England and on Broadway in the years that followed.

On 1 May 1915, following a Broadway engagement that spring, Brandell boarded the RMS Lusitania in New York, bound for London. She was accompanied by Mrs. Mabel Crichton, the wife of a friend. Aware of the submarine threat in British waters, Brandell was deeply anxious throughout the voyage. Among her tablemates were Max Schwarcz and Francis Bertram Jenkins; Jenkins noted to her the shortage of lifebelts on board, which deepened her unease. So distressed was she that she asked Crichton for permission to sleep in her cabin, and Crichton spent much of the night attempting to calm her. On 7 May 1915 the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank. In her written deposition to the authorities, Brandell described having just finished collecting donations for the ship's musicians and sitting down to lunch with Crichton, Jenkins, and Schwarcz when the explosion occurred. She recounted that art dealer E. Gorer of Bond Street placed a lifebelt on her and urged her to be brave before returning to assist others, and that Schwarcz helped her into a lifeboat where Crichton was already seated before going to help other women. The lifeboat capsized upon hitting the water, throwing all its occupants into the sea. Brandell described clinging first to an oar and then to a floating deck chair until she was pulled from the water, nearly dead, by assistant purser Mr. Harkness. Mabel Crichton did not survive the sinking. Brandell reported that she did not observe any guns, ammunition, or Canadian troops on board, and that she was in the water for only approximately five minutes after the ship was struck. She never fully recovered from the experience, suffering nightmares for the remainder of her life.

Upon returning to the United States, Brandell filed a compensation claim with the U.S. State Department. On 19 May 1920 she married British stockbroker John Ormiston Lawson-Johnson, born 1877, and relinquished her American citizenship as a consequence. On 19 March 1925 the Mixed Claims Commission rejected her compensation claim on the grounds that she was no longer an American citizen, notwithstanding that she had held that citizenship at the time of the sinking. The trauma of the Lusitania disaster impeded her ability to concentrate and to inhabit roles, and she appeared only sporadically in smaller parts thereafter, her earlier promising career having been effectively curtailed. In 1945 she married Beresford Cecil Bingham, 8th Earl Annesley, becoming Josephine, Countess of Annesley.