Martha Hedman

Martha Hedman (August 12, 1883 – June 20, 1974) was a Swedish-American stage actress and writer whose Broadway career spanned from 1912 to 1942. Born in Östersund, Jämtland County, Sweden, to Johan Hedman and Ingrid Kempe, she received her theatrical training under Siri von Essen, the wife of playwright and novelist August Strindberg. Her sister was London actress Marguerite Leslie (1884–1958).

Hedman made her stage debut in February 1905 in Helsinki, Finland, in a production based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Over the following six years she performed in Sweden, Finland, and Germany in works by William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Ludwig Fulda. In 1912, theatrical producer Charles Frohman brought her to the United States, where she shared the stage with John Drew and appeared in several of Frohman's productions. That same year marked the beginning of her Broadway career, which would include credits such as For Valor, Persons Unknown, and The Woman Who Laughed.

In 1915, Hedman appeared in The Trap, produced by Arthur Hammerstein, and took a role in the film The Cub, directed by Maurice Tourneur. Among her most prominent stage work during this period was the 1915–1916 comedy The Boomerang, produced by David Belasco. In 1921 she participated in a large Shakespearean pageant on Broadway alongside several other leading actresses of the era. She retired from the theater in 1922 but returned in 1942 to appear in the comedy The First Crocus.

During the earliest phase of her career, Hedman had toured with German-born actor Emile von der Osten (1848–1905), with whom she had a daughter, Ella Alfrida, born August 30, 1904, in Stockholm, Sweden. Ella Alfrida died on January 17, 2000, in Georgetown, South Carolina. Hedman later married Henry Arthur House, and the two collaborated on the play What's the Big Idea in 1926, which appeared on Broadway under the title The Big Idea.

Beyond her stage work, Hedman pursued a career as a writer. She published the book Uncle, Aunt and Jezabel through Charles Scribner's Sons in New York in 1949, and followed it with Mathias and Mathilda, published by Chapman and Hall in 1951 under the name Martha Hedman House. Hedman died in Florida on June 20, 1974.