Maude Fealy

Maude Fealy, born Maude Mary Hawk on March 4, 1883, in Memphis, Tennessee, was an American actress whose work spanned stage, silent film, and sound-era cinema across a career of several decades. She was the daughter of actress Margaret Fealey and James Hawk. Fealy died on November 10, 1971, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 88, and was interred at the Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Fealy's stage career began in 1896 at the Elitch Theatre, where she performed children's roles, making her first appearance during the week of July 19 in Henry Churchill de Mille's The Lost Paradise. Her Broadway debut came in 1900 in Quo Vadis, a production she shared with her mother. Her subsequent Broadway appearances between 1900 and 1909 included That Man and I, Hearts Courageous, Divorce, and El Cardenal. From 1901 to 1902, she toured England alongside William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes, and between 1902 and 1905 she toured regularly with Sir Henry Irving's company in the United Kingdom. By 1907, Fealy had become the featured star of touring productions across the United States.

In 1905, Cecil B. DeMille joined the Elitch Theatre as a stock player, and Fealy appeared as the featured actress in several productions alongside him. That professional association endured for decades; DeMille later cast Fealy in his 1956 film The Ten Commandments, in which she received a credited role as a Slave Woman and Hebrew at Crag and Corridor. During the summers of 1912 and 1913, Fealy organized and starred with the Fealy-Durkin Company, which performed at the Casino Theatre at Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver, after which the company began touring the western United States.

Fealy's film career began in 1911 with Thanhouser Studios, and she appeared in 18 additional silent films through 1917. Her silent film credits include King Rene's Daughter (1913), Moths (1913), Frou Frou (1914), Pamela Congreve (1914), The Woman Pays (1914, for which she also wrote the scenario), Bondwomen (1915), The Immortal Flame (1916), and The American Consul (1917). After 1917, she was absent from film for fourteen years before returning in Laugh and Get Rich (1931). From the late 1930s onward, she appeared in a series of films including The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939), Gaslight (1944), and A Double Life (1947), most in uncredited supporting roles.

Fealy also worked as a playwright. She co-wrote The Red Cap with Grant Stewart, a New York playwright and performer; the play ran at the National Theatre in Chicago in August 1928. Among her other writing credits were At Midnight, and The Promise, co-written with Chicago playwright Alice Gerstenberg. Throughout her career, Fealy taught acting in multiple cities under various school names, including the Maude Fealy Studio of Speech, the Fealy School of Stage and Screen Acting, and the Fealy School of Dramatic Expression, with teaching activity documented in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Burbank, California; and Denver, Colorado. By the 1930s she was based in Los Angeles, where she became involved in the Federal Theatre Project.

Fealy married three times. On July 15, 1907, she secretly wed Louis Hugo Sherwin, a Denver drama critic and son of opera singer Amy Sherwin; the couple separated and divorced in Denver in 1909. She subsequently married actor and silent film director James Peter Durkin, who worked with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company; that marriage ended in divorce for non-support in 1917. Her third marriage, to John Edward Cort, ended in annulment in 1923. Fealy had no children from any of her marriages.