May Buckley

May Buckley, born Marie Uhl on December 15, 1875, in San Francisco, California, was an American actress whose stage career extended from childhood through the late 1930s. Her mother, Marie Featherston Uhl, died during childbirth, and her father, Ernest Uhl, came from a theatrical family. The actor and playwright Dion Boucicault, a friend of her father, gave her the stage name May Buckley when she was still a child performer. Her Broadway appearances spanned nearly four decades, from 1898 to 1937, and she also performed on the London stage.

Buckley accumulated an extensive list of Broadway credits across her career. Her earlier roles included Hearts are Trumps and Caleb West, both in 1900, followed by The Price of Peace in 1901, A Japanese Nightingale in 1903, and The Shepherd King in 1904. She continued with The Galloper in 1906, The Right of Way in 1907, and Cameo Kirby during the 1909–1910 season. That same period saw her appear in Where There's a Will and The Little Damozel, both in 1910. She starred in The Unwritten Law in 1913, appeared in Pigs during the 1924–1925 season, and took a role in These Days in 1928. Her final Broadway credit was Tell Me Pretty Maiden, which ran in 1937–1938. She also appeared in the production Catherine.

In addition to her stage work, Buckley appeared in more than twenty short silent films in 1912 and 1913. Her film credits include Paid in His Own Coin, The Poor Relation, In Dis-a-Countree, Betty and the Doctor, Mother Love, His Wife's Mother, Rice and Old Shoes, The Sacrifice, A Complicated Campaign, Won by Waiting, The Railroad Engineer, Darby and Joan, The Honeymooners, A Modern Portia, The Runaways, What the Driver Saw, The Back Window, The Derelict's Return, Until We Three Meet Again, The Man in the Street, The Toils of Deception, and Miss Arabian Nights.

During World War I, Buckley was among the organizers of the Stage Women's War Relief Association, through which she helped coordinate benefits to raise funds for a home for disabled soldiers. In the 1920s and 1930s she was active in the Catholic Actors' Guild.

Buckley's personal life attracted considerable public attention. Her first marriage, to Frank Baruch — also known as Frank Clayton or Frank Cormier — took place in 1894 and ended in divorce in 1897. In 1899, while under contract to manager Charles Frohman, she married millionaire Wilmot H. Garlick; the couple separated the following year. Around 1901, a man identified as Robert Hayden Moulton, who claimed to be her husband, shot at her in a New York hotel dining room and wounded one of her companions. In 1908, she married fellow actor Charles Walter Martin-Sabine, also known as Charles W. S. Martin, in Denver, where she was appearing at the Elitch Theatre at the time. The theatre's owner, Mary Elitch Long, later described the ceremony in her biography, noting that it took place on the porch of her bungalow. That marriage ended in divorce in 1910. In 1912, an actress using the stage name Camille Personi filed a lawsuit against Buckley for alienation of affections involving actor John Halliday, who had been Buckley's co-star.

According to the 2001 publication Silent Film Necrology, Buckley died in or around 1941, though no additional sources have confirmed a precise date of death.