Kay Laurell

Kay Laurell, born Ruth Leslie on June 28, 1890, in Erie, Pennsylvania, was an American stage actress, silent film performer, and model whose Broadway career spanned from 1914 to 1925. She died on January 31, 1927, in London at the age of 36.

Laurell left Erie at sixteen to pursue a career in New York City, initially working as a telephone operator before securing employment as an artists' model. In that capacity she posed for illustrators and painters including Howard Chandler Christy and William Glackens. It was during this period that she adopted the name Kay Laurell in place of her birth name. Her path to the stage opened in 1914 when Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., observed her performing in a tableau at the annual Illustrators' Ball and offered her a place in his Follies.

She made her stage debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1914. The following year, her appearance in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915 drew considerable attention when she portrayed a semi-nude Aphrodite in the production's opening scene, a sequence designed by Joseph Urban that incorporated a pool surrounded by greenery and two golden elephants with raised trunks from which water flowed. Laurell rose from the water as the centerpiece of the tableau. According to Doris Eaton Travis's 2003 autobiography The Days We Danced, Laurell was the first performer to volunteer for the semi-nude pose after Ziegfeld solicited a volunteer, and she became known for what Travis described as "naked-above-the-waist poses." At the time, performers were legally permitted to appear nude onstage provided they remained motionless, a loophole that encouraged producers and designers to devise increasingly elaborate presentations of nudity.

In May 1916, Laurell married Winfield Sheehan, who had previously served as secretary to Rhinelander Waldo, in London, and she retired from the stage shortly afterward. In July 1917 she filed for legal separation from Sheehan, citing cruelty, though the two never formally divorced. Sheehan later became general manager and vice president at 20th Century Fox. Following the separation, Laurell returned to the Follies in June 1918, again featured in the opening scene, this time posing as "The Spirit of the Allies" atop a lighted, spinning globe depicting Europe in flames. Social historian Allen Churchill later described the patriotic tableau, designed by Ben Ali Haggin, as featuring actors frozen in battle poses alongside Follies girls costumed as Red Cross nurses, with Laurell dominating the scene. The 1918 production ran until the Armistice with Germany in November of that year.

In 1919, Laurell made her film debut in The Brand, opposite Russell Simpson, and later that year appeared in a supporting role in The Valley of the Giants, starring Wallace Reid. She received favorable notices for her screen performances but completed only one additional film, Lonely Heart, in 1921. Her stage work during this period included joining the production of Ladies Night in 1922, after which she headlined the vaudeville circuit with stock companies in Yonkers and Washington. In December 1924 she joined the cast of Quarantine, a play that ran for 151 performances at Henry Miller's Theatre through April 1925. She then co-starred in Nocturne, which opened at the Punch and Judy Theatre in New York City on February 16, 1925, and closed after three performances.

Following the conclusion of her Broadway work, Laurell moved to Europe, where she performed with a French stock company in Paris before relocating to London. During this period her career declined and her work ceased to be covered in theater trade publications. While separated from Sheehan, she had entered into a relationship with Joseph Whiteside Boyle, a businessman and son of Klondike Joe Boyle, with whom she planned to marry once both had obtained divorces. In 1926 she became pregnant with Boyle's child.

Laurell died in London on January 31, 1927. Her death was initially reported as resulting from pneumonia, but in 1930 it was disclosed that she had died during childbirth. Her son, Joseph K. Boyle, survived. She was cremated and her ashes were buried in London. Before her death, Laurell had drawn up a will leaving her estate, valued at $100,000, to Joseph Whiteside Boyle, whom she named executor, unaware that her son could legally inherit her assets. One month before her death, however, England's Legitimacy Act 1926 had been passed, granting her son inheritance rights, and a comparable law in New York similarly allowed him to inherit her property and bank accounts there. Laurell's brother, Raleigh J. Leslie, initially sought a letter of administration naming Joseph K. as next of kin but withdrew the effort after learning that Boyle had been caring for the child since birth and had no intention of claiming the estate. One month after Laurell's death, her mother, Mrs. A. A. Leslie, died in Erie, Pennsylvania, having never been informed of her daughter's death. The Erie home and assets Mrs. Leslie left to Laurell subsequently passed to Laurell's son, who died in 1996.