Lillian Lee

Lillian Lee was a stage actress whose career in New York City began in the early 1880s and extended through Broadway appearances from 1901 to 1923. Her work spanned decades of American theatrical life, from touring productions and outdoor performances to landmark Broadway venues and early musical revues.

Lee began performing as a child, taking on the role of Meenie in Rip Van Winkle with a touring company led by Joseph Jefferson while the troupe was in Baltimore, Maryland. Her first significant adult role came during the 1884 season, when she stepped in to replace an ailing Rosa Rand in a play. The following year, she was part of Edward Kidder's company, which staged seven productions on the road, including Niagara, scheduled to reach New York City at the start of 1886. Her fellow cast members in that production included Mattie Ferguson, Rose Eytinge, and Harry Dalton. In October 1886, Lee served as the primary female player opposite W. J. Scanlan in Frederick Marsden's The Irish Minstrel, staged at Poole's Theatre on 8th Street near Broadway. In July 1888, she appeared in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream performed outdoors in Manchester, Massachusetts, with electric light effects during evening performances.

Lee's Broadway career opened with Lover's Lane in 1901, in which she played Mrs. Jennings, a production dealing with rural life at the Manhattan Theatre on 102 West 33rd Street. In the late summer of 1904, she appeared as Mrs. Eichorn in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch at the Savoy Theatre on 112 West 34th Street. The production was an adaptation of both Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch and Lovey Mary, written by Anne Crawford Flexner, and marked the New York City debut of the play at a theatre whose stage had recently been expanded.

In April 1907, Lee was among the supporting players in Dream City and The Magic Knight, staged by Joe Weber at Shubert Park in Brooklyn, alongside Lillian Blauvelt, Cecilia Loftus, and William Hodge. That same year, she appeared in the original Ziegfeld Follies of 1907, billed as a satirical musical review at the Jardin de Paris, a venue situated atop the New York Theatre and Criterion Theatre. The production featured twenty musical numbers, numerous vaudeville acts, and a chorus drawn largely from Anna Held singers. Emma Carus and Grace Larue were also featured performers.

During the summer of 1908, Lee took part in The Deluge, a large-scale outdoor spectacle at Coney Island. The production, which had held dress rehearsals as early as May 1906 before an invited audience of 1,000, depicted the construction of Noah's Ark, a simulation of the flood, and a representation of the millennium. In October 1912, Lee played Dollbabia in The Lady of the Slipper, a three-act musical fantasy written by Anne Caldwell and Lawrence McCarthy and presented at the Globe Theatre, now known as the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. She and Queenie Vassar portrayed the two wicked stepsisters of Cinderella in the production.

Lee appeared in the musical Irene and the musical Fifty-Fifty, Ltd. among her other Broadway credits. Her final Broadway appearance came in April 1923 in Cinders at the Dresden Theatre, located atop the New Amsterdam Theatre. Written by Edward Clark with music by Rudolf Friml, Cinders was the first production staged on the New Amsterdam Roof following the end of the Midnight Frolics, which had ceased when Prohibition took effect in 1920. That same year, Lee appeared in the silent film No Mother to Guide Her, playing the role of Donald Walling's Sister.