Marta Abba

Marta Abba (June 25, 1900 – June 24, 1988) was an Italian actress born in Milan, best known for her close artistic association with playwright Luigi Pirandello and for her Broadway appearance in 1936. Her sister, Cele Abba, was also an actress.

Abba began her formal training at fourteen when she attempted to enroll at Milan's Accademia dei Filodrammatici, though she was required to wait a year due to her age. She completed three years of study there before dramatist Sabatino Lopez cast her, launching her professional career with the acting company led by Enrico Reinach in Milan. In 1925, she met Pirandello, who was fifty-eight at the time to her twenty-five, and the two formed a creative partnership that lasted until his death in 1936. Their extensive correspondence reveals that Abba not only inspired Pirandello's work but also bolstered his confidence as a writer. She appeared in numerous productions at the Rome Arts Theater and went on to found her own theatrical company in 1930, which staged works by Pirandello alongside those of George Bernard Shaw, Gabriele d'Annunzio, and Carlo Goldoni, under directors including Max Reinhardt and Guido Salvini. Among the Pirandello plays in which she performed were The New Colony, As You Desire Me, Finding Oneself, The Wives' Friend, Diana and Tuda, and You Don't Know How.

Abba made her Broadway debut on October 15, 1936, at the Plymouth Theatre in Tovarich, playing the role of Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. The production ran through approximately August 1937. That same year she made her screen debut in Loyalty of Love, a film directed by Guido Brignone, though it had been produced in 1934. She had previously appeared on screen in The Haller Case, directed by Alessandro Blasetti, in 1933.

In January 1938, Abba married Severance Allen Millikin, a wealthy Cleveland polo player, and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. During those years she performed summer stock at Cain Park Theatre in Cleveland Heights, appearing in Sardou's Divorçons from August 21 to 24, 1941, and in Pirandello's Right You Are (If You Say You Are) from July 22 to 25, 1942. For Divorçons, she insisted on commissioning a new translation and required restaurateur Frank Monoco to appear onstage as a maitre d'hotel and carve a whole fowl during an actual dinner service. When rain forced the final performance of Divorçons to be relocated, Abba used her own limousine to transport props and costumes to Severance Hall, where the production was staged against drapes. The scenic design for that production was created by industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost, and the four performances drew a total paid attendance of 11,183. For Right You Are, Abba took on the lead role of the ageing Lady Frola, a larger part than the one she had played in the original Italian production, and assumed directorial responsibilities herself. This production marked the only occasion on which she performed a Pirandello play in the United States. Abba also expressed interest in establishing an acting school on the grounds of the Severance Estate, though divorce proceedings in 1952 ended those plans and she returned to Italy.

In her later years Abba suffered from paresis and used a wheelchair. She published an Italian-language autobiography, La mia vita di attrice, and her correspondence with Pirandello has been translated into English. She died in Milan on June 24, 1988, one day before her eighty-eighth birthday, from a cerebral haemorrhage.