Laura Joyce Bell

Laura Joyce Bell (born Laura Maskell, 6 May 1854, London; died 30 May 1904, New York City) was an English-American actress and contralto singer whose career spanned concert halls and theatres on both sides of the Atlantic, with a particular concentration in comic opera and light musical comedy. Her Broadway appearances extended from 1887 to 1903 and included credits in Mr. Pickwick, The Begum, and Bellman.

Bell was the daughter of James Henry Maskell (1824–1897), a theatrical agent and merchant, and Maria Dalton Dauncey, a dramatic elocutionist and voice teacher who coached her daughter in acting. Bell studied music at the London Academy of Music under Francesco Schira. Her earliest documented stage appearance came in 1870, when she performed as an amateur at the Royal Strand Theatre, playing Gertrude in James Planché's Loan of a Lover. During the years leading up to 1883, she appeared under the name Laura Joyce in London productions including the comic opera Mina, Cupid 'Mid the Roses, and The Ring and the Keeper by John Pratt Wooler. She also participated in a British touring sketch called Happy Hours of Fanciful Fun by Frank Green and Alfred Lee, followed by a season at the Theatre Royal, Manchester and an engagement with Dion Boucicault as a soubrette singer at Covent Garden. At Christmas 1871 she played Oberon in the prologue to The Children in the Wood at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the following year she toured with Howard Paul.

Her agent, Richard D'Oyly Carte, sent her to New York in 1872 to perform at Niblo's Garden, where she earned favorable notices in the spectacular extravaganza Leo and Lotos, as Lisette in the pantomime Azreal, and as Mary in The Beats of New York. In January 1874, she married James Valentine Taylor (1843–1882), a Boston architect and theatre manager whom she had met when he managed Niblo's Theatre. The marriage produced two sons, Valentine and Herbert, but ended in divorce in June 1878 after Bell accused her husband of physical abuse and habitual drunkenness. Her son Valentine Taylor (7 November 1874 – 3 May 1943) became a Harvard-educated lawyer who served as assistant New York Attorney General, law secretary to several New York appellate judges, and counsel to governors William Sulzer and Martin H. Glynn.

Bell's American career gained significant momentum when she took the title role in Evangeline at the old Boston Globe Theatre in 1875, a success she reprised the following season at the Boston Museum and later in Philadelphia. At Christmas 1875 she starred as Prince Amabel in Turko the Terrible at the Boston Globe, and she subsequently appeared in concert with the Berger Family and Jules Levy. She then played Polly Eccles in Caste and appeared in Our Boys with the New England Comedy Company. John T. Ford engaged her for a six-month East Coast touring season in which she took on roles including Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, Lady Wagstaff in The Pink Dominos, Miss Zulu in Forbidden Fruit, Lydia Languish in The Rivals, and a role in Camille. In November 1878 she played Germaine in Les Cloches de Corneville.

Her association with Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire deepened through the late 1870s and early 1880s. In 1879 she played Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore with the Grand English Opera Company at Haverly's Lyceum Theatre in New York, and in early 1880 the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company engaged her to play Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance in Chicago. She also took on the title role in Fatinitza, Lady Allcash in Fra Diavolo, Lange in La fille de Madame Angot, and a role in the American musical The First Lifeguards in Brighton. Later in 1880 she joined the company at Daly's Broadway Theatre, where over the course of more than a year she appeared as Hebe Josselyn in the Edgar Fawcett musical comedy Our First Families; in the title role of Zanina, drawn from Nisida by Richard Genée; as Silena in Needles and Pins; as Gabrielle Prince in Quits; as Georgette in Royal Youth; as Merope Mallow in Cinderella at School, a long-running musical comedy by Woolson Morse; and as Leonora in Fawcett's comedy Americans Abroad.

From June 1882, Bell was engaged at the Bijou Opera House, where she played Lady Jane in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience alongside Digby Bell, who appeared as Archibald Grosvenor. In October of that year she played Lady Sangazure in The Sorcerer, a production in which Lillian Russell took the role of Aline. In January 1883 she sang Mrs. Cowslip in the Solomon and Stephens opera Virginia at the Bijou. She married Digby Bell in March 1883, shortly after he had received a divorce from Lillian Brooks. Because Brooks had accused the couple of infidelity — a charge both denied and one that was never proven — the divorce decree barred the two from marrying in New York, and they wed instead in Pennsylvania, subsequently using a precedent involving a divorced New York judge to have the marriage recognized in New York State. The couple had a daughter, Mrs. Harry C. Schlichting.

Bell and her husband became closely identified with the McCaull Comic Opera Company, with whom they toured extensively in works by Offenbach, Gilbert and Sullivan, and other composers. In 1883 she appeared at the Casino Theatre as Manola in an English adaptation of Offenbach's La princesse de Trébizonde, and that November, with Rice's Opera Bouffe Company at the Bijou, she played Diana and then Juno in Max Freeman's adaptation of Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers. Other roles during this period included Bathilde in Olivette, Donna Scolastica in Heart and Hand, and Lady Clare in Nell Gwynne. From October 1884 she was engaged at the Casino as Palmatica in a revival of Carl Millöcker's The Beggar Student. In March 1885 she played Ruth opposite her husband's Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance at the Casino. In the spring of 1886 the couple toured with McCaull's company in an English-language version of Millöcker's The Black Hussars, and later that year they toured in Don Caesar and in The Crowing Hen, drawn from Edmond Audran's Le Serment d'Amour.

Also in 1886, Bell played Lady Prue opposite her husband's Matt o' the Mill in McCaull's presentation of Audran's Indiana at the Star Theatre, and appeared as Tronda in an English adaptation of Von Suppé's The Bellman, one of her verified Broadway credits. In April 1890 she played Katisha to her husband's Ko-Ko in a Broadway Theatre revival of The Mikado, and in April 1897 she appeared as the strong-willed mother-in-law of Digby Bell's Dr. Willow in Thomas's play The Hoosier Doctor. In 1903, Bell and her husband appeared together in the long run of Mr. Pickwick — drawn from Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers — at the Herald Square Theatre, a production that also starred De Wolf Hopper, and subsequently at the Grand Opera House. Bell played Mrs. Bardell while her husband took the role of Sam Weller.

Bell died of heart disease on 30 May 1904 at the couple's residence on Lexington Avenue, New York City, at the age of fifty. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her husband Digby Bell and her mother, Maria Maskell, both died in 1917.