Maude Fulton

Maude Fulton (May 14, 1881 – November 9, 1950) was an American actress, playwright, stage director, theater manager, and screenwriter whose career spanned Broadway, vaudeville, silent film, and Hollywood. Born in El Dorado, Kansas, to newspaperman Titus Parker Fulton and Lulu Belle Couchman, she was raised in El Dorado and Lexington, Missouri. Before entering the theater, she worked as a stenographer, telegraph operator, and short story writer. Her first stage appearances came in amateur productions in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1904.

Fulton made her Broadway debut in 1906 as a cast member of Mam'zelle Champagne, a production notable for the fact that on its opening night, Harry K. Thaw murdered architect Stanford White over the affections of Evelyn Nesbit. Over the course of her Broadway career, which extended from 1906 to 1923, she acted or danced in seven productions. Among these was The Orchid in 1907, choreographed by William Rock, with whom she subsequently appeared in Funabashi in 1908 and The Candy Shop in 1909. Rock was also her partner in vaudeville.

Her most significant achievement as a playwright was The Brat, which opened in 1917 and ran for 136 performances. Fulton both wrote and starred in the production, which was produced by Oliver Morosco, co-starred John Findlay, and featured Lewis Stone and Edmund Lowe in supporting roles. The play proved durable as source material: it was adapted as a 1919 silent film starring Alla Nazimova, remade as a John Ford talkie in 1931, and adapted again in 1940 as The Girl From Avenue A, featuring Jane Withers, Elyse Knox, and Laura Hope Crews. Fulton returned to Broadway as both author and performer with The Humming Bird in 1923, a play that starred Fulton alongside Hilda Spong and was directed by and featured her then-husband Robert Ober.

Fulton and Ober were married from 1920 to 1926 and had no children. During the silent film era, Fulton contributed intertitles to numerous pictures, including Lady Windermere's Fan in 1925, which starred Ronald Colman, and Don Juan in 1926, which starred John Barrymore. She continued working as a screenwriter in Hollywood through the 1930s, accumulating writing credits on 21 films and acting credits on five.

Fulton died on November 9, 1950, in a hospital in San Fernando, California, at the age of 69. Her cremated remains are interred in the vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California.