Melville Collins

Melville Stanley Collins (December 4, 1878 – April 1, 1924) was an American actor, baritone, composer, and pianist who worked in musical theatre and vaudeville. Born in Middletown, Ohio, to Stanford and Elizabeth Collins, he began his stage career as a baritone with The Bostonians before transitioning to Broadway at the turn of the twentieth century.

Collins made his Broadway debut in 1900 playing Louis XI in the original cast of The Princess Chic, an operetta with music by Julian Edwards and a book by Kirke La Shelle. The production played at the Lafayette Square Opera House in Washington, D.C., the Columbia Theatre in Boston, and Broadway's Casino Theatre. The following year he appeared as a principal actor in a Cincinnati revival of William Gill and Richard Golden's play Old Jed Prouty at the Walnut Theatre, with Golden in the title role. Collins reunited with Golden for the 1902–1903 national tour of Reginald de Koven's Foxy Quiller, in which he played the sailor Ned Royster. That tour included stops at the Victoria Theatre in Victoria, British Columbia, the Myers Opera House in Janesville, Wisconsin, the Faurot Opera House in Lima, Ohio, the Broadway Theater in Denver, the Grand Opera House in St. Louis, and the Great Northern Theatre in Chicago.

Collins next starred as Wakeful M. Jones in the 1903–1904 tour of Alfred G. Wathall and George Ade's The Sultan of Sulu, with engagements at Wallack's Theatre and the Harlem Opera House in 1903 and Chicago's Studebaker Theater in 1904. During that tour, he co-authored a book on stage calisthenics with fellow cast member Walter Lawrence, published by Macmillan Publishers in October 1903.

In 1905 Collins returned to Broadway in Gustav Kerker and Harry B. Smith's The Sambo Girl, portraying the romantic lead Raphael Rubens opposite Eva Tanguay, who played the title character in her first leading role in a professional production. Collins also contributed the song "I'm for You" to the show. The production marked the beginning of a lasting professional relationship between Collins and Tanguay. After The Sambo Girl concluded its Broadway run, Collins toured with a vaudeville adaptation of the show, during which he became Tanguay's manager following her dismissal of Frank Norcross. Together they developed a marketing and star-branding strategy that Tanguay employed throughout her career. Collins later served only periodically as her manager but remained her accompanist in vaudeville for many years.

Collins also contributed to Tanguay's career as a composer. Working with playwright Mark Swan, he wrote the music for A Good Fellow, a musical created as a starring vehicle for Tanguay, with Swan providing the book and lyrics. The show premiered at the Alvin Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1906. Collins additionally composed the 1907 hit song "Get Happy" for Tanguay and wrote the 1913 popular song "I'd Like to Give You Something that You've Never Had Before."

According to journalist Wes Eichenwald, a recognized authority on Tanguay, the actress was deeply in love with Collins, though he never reciprocated her feelings. In 1914 Collins married Lillian M. Skelding, Tanguay's niece. He died on April 1, 1924, in Brooklyn at the age of 45. When Tanguay died in 1947, an urn containing Collins's ashes was placed inside her casket, and the two were buried together.