Martha Sleeper

Martha Sleeper (June 24, 1910 – March 25, 1983) was an American actress whose career spanned silent film, sound film, and Broadway stage work, as well as a later career as a fashion designer. Born in Illinois, she spent her early years on a sheep ranch in Wyoming. Her father, William B. Sleeper, held an official position with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville circuit in New York City, and her uncle, John J. Murdock, served as head of KAO and exercised considerable influence over her early professional opportunities. Her mother was Minnie Akass. William Sleeper relocated to Los Angeles in 1923 due to ill health and died of heart disease on September 1, 1925, while Sleeper, then fifteen, was traveling in New York City with her mother and sister.

As a child, Sleeper trained in dance for five years under Russian ballet master Louis H. Chalif at his New York studio, with her first public performances taking place at Carnegie Hall during his class exhibitions. Her interest in film acting emerged at age thirteen, and her parents, acquainted with Cecil B. DeMille, brought her to him hoping he would discourage the ambition. Instead, DeMille recognized her enthusiasm and talent and advised her to pursue work in comedy shorts, which he regarded as foundational training for dramatic work. Aware of the physical comedy style at the Mack Sennett studio, Sleeper opted for the Hal Roach studio, where she signed a contract in 1924 at the age of fourteen.

Her screen career had begun the previous year with The Mailman (1923), an independent production in which she appeared at age twelve. After working in comedies at the Christie studio, she joined the Hal Roach studio for the Our Gang series, though she quickly outgrew that role. From 1925 to 1927 she appeared in comedy shorts opposite the studio's leading male performers, developing a reputation as an inventive comedienne with a highly expressive face. Notable among these shorts were the Charley Chase film The Rat's Knuckles, in which she played a waitress registering bewilderment as a customer poured soda onto his sandwich, and the Max Davidson short Pass the Gravy, in which she imitated a chicken convinced she had laid an egg. Many of these early films were directed by Leo McCarey. In 1927, Sleeper was named one of thirteen WAMPAS Baby Stars, a designation given by exhibitors to actresses considered promising candidates for feature film careers.

Later that year she departed the Roach studio and signed with FBO, where she was paired with Bryant Washburn as a comedy team, starring in six silent features between 1928 and 1929. With the transition to sound, she signed with MGM and entered their training program. From 1930 to 1936 she took on supporting roles in melodramas, frequently cast as a well-bred, somewhat haughty society woman who loses the male lead to the film's protagonist. Dissatisfied with the range of parts available to her, she began performing in local stage productions, earning strong notices for her portrayal of Eliza Doolittle in a 1932 production of Pygmalion. After completing work in several low-budget Monogram melodramas, she and her husband, actor Hardie Albright, left Hollywood for New York in 1936.

Her first Broadway appearance had come earlier, in Good Men and True in 1934, and her stage career in New York extended from 1929 to 1946. Her Broadway credits include The Cream in the Well, The Land Is Bright, The Perfect Marriage, The Rugged Path, and Christopher Blake, among other productions. In The Rugged Path she played Spencer Tracy's wife. During the summer of 1944 she served as leading lady at Elitch Theatre, appearing alongside Raymond Burr, with her debut there in Frederick Lonsdale's Another Love Story. In 1945, as a favor to her former Roach director Leo McCarey, she took the role of Patsy's mother in The Bells of St. Mary's, which proved to be her final screen appearance.

Alongside her stage work, Sleeper built a parallel business career beginning in the late 1930s. What had begun as a personal hobby — designing whimsical costume jewelry for herself — attracted the attention of other women who sought to acquire the pieces. She arranged for a manufacturer to produce her designs, and the jewelry entered department stores across the country, generating substantial income alongside her theatrical earnings. Many pieces were made using Bakelite and are now regarded as valuable collectibles.

In 1949, while on an extended Caribbean cruise with her second husband, Sleeper stopped in Puerto Rico and decided to remain. She and her husband established permanent residence in San Juan, and by 1950 she had launched a new venture designing women's clothing and resort wear. She sold her designs through a boutique she opened in a three-hundred-year-old building in Old San Juan, received awards and commissions from large corporations, and operated the business until her retirement in 1969. That same year she married her third husband and relocated to Beaufort, South Carolina, where she lived until her death. Sleeper died of a heart attack on March 25, 1983, at the age of seventy-two. She was survived by her third husband, Colonel Howard C. Stelling, and had no children.