May Collins

May Collins (May 26, 1903 – May 6, 1955) was an American actress who worked across stage, silent film, and early television, with a Broadway career spanning from 1919 to 1943. Born to Benjamin Collins and Lillie Smith, she grew up primarily in New York City. A formative childhood experience came at age four, when she attended a performance of Peter Pan and waited at the stage door afterward to see the production's star, Maude Adams, who lifted the young Collins into her arms.

Collins began her professional training as a member of Mrs. August Belmont's dramatic society in New York City, where she earned multiple prizes for acting. Her early stage work included a role in The Betrothal, after which she joined the company of producer William A. Brady and performed in melodramas written by Owen Davis. She also appeared alongside Grace George in She Would and She Did, one of her credited Broadway productions.

Her Broadway credits encompassed a range of productions, including The Outrageous Mrs. Palmer, House Afire, and Clubs Are Trumps. Her most prominent stage role came in October 1939, when she originated the part of Elizabeth Edwards in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. The play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that same year. Collins later returned to the role in 1945 for the first television adaptation of the production.

In silent films, Collins received top billing in several pictures, among them All's Fair in Love and The Shark Master, both from 1921, and Red Hot Romance and Little Eva Ascends, released in 1922, with her work in the medium placing her among the early performers in modern romantic comedy films. She also spent two years in Australia starring in The Trial of Mary Dugan, and appeared in the stage production Kiss and Tell alongside Kirk Douglas and Joan Caulfield.

In her personal life, Collins was briefly engaged to Charlie Chaplin in 1921 before the engagement ended. She married Edmund Thomas on August 8, 1930, and the couple had two sons, one of whom died from polio in 1939. Later in life she was an active supporter of the March of Dimes.