Marion Manola

Marion Manola (1865 – October 6, 1914) was a soprano, comic opera singer, and stage actress born Marion Stephens in Oswego, New York, who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. There she participated in amateur opera productions and, at seventeen, married Henry C. Mould, a local businessman. The couple had a daughter, Adelaide, shortly after their marriage.

Following business difficulties, the Moulds relocated to Europe, where Manola studied voice in Paris under Mathilde Marchesi for nine months. The family subsequently settled in England and joined Lingard and Van Biene's comic opera company, where Mould performed under the stage name Carl Irving and his wife adopted the professional name Marion Manola. The two appeared together in Falka to favorable notices. Manola was offered a five-year contract with the company but declined it, returning to the United States with Mould in 1887. The couple joined the Casino Theatre in New York, where Manola's early American performances drew poor reviews; she offered her resignation and was surprised when the company accepted it. She then joined the McCaull Opera Company, appearing as Cérise in Erminie. That same year she starred as Countess Ulla in Franz von Suppé's comic opera Bellman, one of several Broadway productions in which she appeared between 1886 and 1889. Her other Broadway credits during this period include In Clover, The Begum, Jacquette, and The Black Hussar.

Mould retired from acting in 1888 to enter the iron industry. In April 1889, Manola filed for legal separation from him, seeking custody of Adelaide on grounds of non-support. During the summer of 1889, she appeared in the opera Clover to considerable acclaim; the Pittsburgh Dispatch described her as the best comic opera prima donna in America. At a time when working women typically earned between four and ten dollars per week, Manola commanded a salary of four hundred dollars per week.

In 1890, Manola contracted to appear with the De Wolf Hopper Opera Bouffe Company while still under obligation to McCaull. When she claimed illness to exit the McCaull contract early, McCaull obtained an injunction preventing her from performing with any other company until the contract expired. On June 14, 1890, during a performance of the comic opera Castle in the Sky, a photographer surreptitiously took her picture while she was costumed in tights. Manola left the stage in protest as the audience reacted to the incident. She explained her objection by citing her ten-year-old daughter, stating she did not want Adelaide to encounter photographs of her mother in such costumes displayed in shop windows. The company manager, Benjamin Stevens, who had arranged the photograph for its publicity value, argued there was no meaningful distinction between performing in tights and being photographed in them. In Manola v. Stevens, Manola was granted an interim injunction restraining Stevens and the company from using the image. The case was cited in Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis's 1890 Harvard Law Review article "The Right to Privacy" as an early assertion that a performer held a property right in her own professional image.

Also in 1890, Manola became publicly involved with actor John B. Mason, known as "Handsome Jack." In July of that year, the two took a two-week vacation aboard Mason's yacht, though Manola had been granted only two days' leave, resulting in her discharge from the De Wolf Hopper Company. In October 1890, both Manola and Mason broke their performance contracts and were reported seen together in Philadelphia. They sailed to Europe in November 1890. In 1891, Manola played the lead in Maid Marian, an opera by Reginald De Koven and Harry B. Smith, though the production was not successful in England. The decree nisi for Manola's divorce from Mould was issued in April 1891, and she and Mason married at a registrar's office in London on May 1, 1891. The final divorce decree from Mould was issued on October 23, 1891.

In 1892, Manola appeared in William Young's comedy If I Were You, moving away from strictly lyric performance, though critics felt the musical numbers added to the production impeded its dramatic flow. By 1893, she had formed her own company, which produced Friend Fritz starring both Manola and Mason; the production was not financially successful. On July 14, 1894, the pair were arrested on related charges and released on bail; that same evening, during a performance of The Mikado, Manola experienced difficulty remembering her lines. They were acquitted on August 8, 1894, but Manola's health continued to deteriorate. Shortly afterward, men attempted to repossess furniture Mason had mortgaged for a five-hundred-dollar loan. In August 1894, Manola was taken to the Keeley Institute in North Conway, New Hampshire, where she was described as having near total memory loss. The New York Times reported that during the preceding year she had used champagne and morphine injections daily. Press speculation attributed her condition to morphine and opium use, a claim Mason's brother denied, attributing her state instead to the distress caused by their legal troubles.

By late 1895, both Manola and Mason had moved into vaudeville work. They agreed to an amicable separation in June 1897. Manola made subsequent attempts at reconciliation that Mason rejected, and at one point she announced she had filed for divorce in Michigan. Mason eventually left New York for an undisclosed location at the urging of friends. Manola died on October 6, 1914.