Mabel Taliaferro

Mabel Taliaferro, born Maybelle Evelyn Taliaferro on May 21, 1887, in Manhattan, New York City, was an American stage and silent-screen actress whose Broadway career spanned more than five decades, from 1899 to 1951. Known professionally as "the Sweetheart of American Movies," she was raised in Richmond, Virginia, and came from a family with deep roots in American theatrical life. Her father's lineage traced back to one of Virginia's early colonial families, the Taliaferros, whose ancestry included a northern Italian immigrant to England in the sixteenth century. Her sister Edith Taliaferro was also a film and stage actress, and her cousin was actress Bessie Barriscale.

Taliaferro began performing on stage at the age of two, appearing alongside Chauncey Olcott. She subsequently worked with James A. Hearne and with Sol Smith Russell in A Poor Relation. Her Broadway career formally commenced in 1899, when she earned distinction playing little Esther in Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto. The following year she appeared as the elf-child in W.B. Yeats's Gaelic fantasy The Land of Heart's Desire. In 1902 and 1903 she was seen in An American Invasion with John E. Dodson and Miss Annie Irish, and the year after that she supported Louis Mann in The Consul. Her most sustained early success came when she was cast as Lovey Mary in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a role she performed continuously for two and a half years. In 1905 she supported Arnold Daly in You Never Can Tell, and she later toured in The Bishop's Carriage before a brief stint in vaudeville and a tour of Australia with William Collier's company.

In 1906, Taliaferro married Frederic Thompson, the creator of Luna Park at Coney Island and the New York Hippodrome, who also served as her manager. Under his management she starred in the Broadway production Polly of the Circus in 1907, the same year she was injured in a car crash. Thompson announced that her first name would be changed to Nell for billing purposes, and her first production under that name was Springtime in 1909. Public opposition to the change was significant, and by 1910 she was once again billed as Mabel. She also married and later divorced actor Thomas Jay Carrigan, with whom she co-starred in the 1911 film Cinderella, produced by Selig Studios. On January 11, 1920, she married army officer Josephus P. O'Brien in Darien, Connecticut; they divorced in Reno, Nevada, on June 3, 1929. She subsequently married Robert Ober, who died in 1950. Taliaferro had one child.

Her film career began in 1911 with The Three of Us at Selig Studios and continued through 1921, encompassing numerous silent pictures. She returned to the screen in 1940 for My Love Came Back. On the stage, her later Broadway credits included the musical The Pied Piper, the musical Miss Springtime, George Washington Slept Here in 1941, and Bloomer Girl, which opened in 1944 and represented her final Broadway success. Her last Broadway appearance came in Springtime Folly in 1951. Beyond the stage and screen, Taliaferro was an advocate for women's suffrage; in February 1914 she participated in a suffrage gathering that drew 1,500 people to honor the work of Anna Howard Shaw. She also appeared on television, co-starring with Glenn Langan in "The Floor of Heaven" on Studio One on November 20, 1950. Taliaferro died in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 24, 1979, at the age of 91.