Margaret Anglin

Margaret Anglin, born Mary Margaret Warren Anglin on April 3, 1876, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, was a Broadway actress, director, and producer whose career on the New York stage spanned from 1889 to 1936. She was the youngest of nine children born to Timothy Warren Anglin, a newspaper editor and politician who was serving as Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada at the time of her birth, and his second wife, Ellen MacTavish. Her older brother, Francis Alexander Anglin, served as Chief Justice of Canada from 1924 to 1933.

Anglin received her education at Loretto Abbey in Toronto and at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Montreal before enrolling at the Empire School of Dramatic Acting in New York, where she studied under Nelson Wheatcroft and graduated in 1894. Her abilities attracted the attention of theatre impresario Charles Frohman, who facilitated her professional stage debut that same year in the Bronson Howard production of Shenandoah, in which she played the role of Madeline West. She subsequently performed with the Sothern Company, where she took on the role of Lady Ursula. In 1896, following an injury sustained while riding that kept her off the stage for several months, she became leading lady with James O'Neill, touring with him across the United States and Canada and playing Ophelia opposite him that year.

Her Broadway debut came in 1898 in Lord Chumley. That same year she gained considerable attention on tour portraying Roxane in Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Richard Mansfield. In 1899 she became leading lady with Charles Frohman in California and also performed with the Empire Theatre Company in New York. Her Broadway credits further included The Great Divide, Brother Officers, and Mrs. Dane's Defense. By December 1905, her reputation had grown sufficiently that, following a benefit matinee for Jewish sufferers in Russia, Sarah Bernhardt invited Anglin to perform with her in Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande.

After a grand tour in Australia, Anglin returned to the United States in the summer of 1909 at the age of 33 and began pursuing an intensive study of Greek drama. Her first appearance in a Greek tragedy was as Antigone in a single performance at the Hearst Greek Theatre at the University of California, Berkeley, an invitation extended by William Dallam Armes. For that production, Anglin took on the responsibilities of directing, staging, selecting a chorus, arranging the action, choosing costumes, and supervising electricians, actors, musicians, and stagehands, leaving only publicity and advertising to her husband, who served as her business manager. From 1910 to 1928, she produced under her own management the Greek tragedies Antigone, Electra, Iphigenia in Aulis, and Medea at venues including the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Opera House. Her productions employed modern realistic makeup in place of masks, cast women in female roles, used modern music, and were staged at night with artificial light rather than daylight, while retaining the classical tradition of minimal scenery. In 1914, she acted in and produced The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night in repertory at Broadway's Hudson Theatre.

Anglin became a United States citizen in 1911 through her marriage to fellow actor Howard Hull, with whom she had three children. In 1929, after Hull had gone without a Broadway casting for two decades, she insisted that producers give him a role in her productions. When producers refused, she walked out and did not return to the New York stage until 1936, which marked her final Broadway appearance. She also starred in the original version of the radio program Orphans of Divorce when it aired as a once-weekly nighttime serial. Throughout her career she declined to appear in motion pictures. Anglin returned to live in Toronto in 1953 and died there on January 7, 1958. She was buried in the Anglin family plot at Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery in Toronto.