Miriam Battista

Miriam Caramella Josephine Battista (July 14, 1912 – December 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, and writer born in New York City to Raphael Battista and Cleonice "Clara" Rufolo, both Italian immigrants. She built a career that spanned silent film, Broadway theatre, Italian-language cinema, television, and print, beginning as a child performer and continuing into the mid-twentieth century.

Battista's stage career began in 1916 at the age of four, when she appeared in an uncredited role as one of a group of war orphans in A Kiss for Cinderella, a Broadway production starring Maude Adams. Small roles in additional Broadway productions followed in quick succession: Daddy Long Legs with Henry Miller in 1917, A Doll's House with Alla Nazimova in 1918, and Daddies with Jeanne Eagels in 1919. That same year she also appeared in The Red Dawn. Concurrent with her stage work, Battista entered silent films, taking an uncredited part in the 1916 Virginia Pearson vehicle Blazing Love, which earned her a featured photo and brief biography in the film magazine Moving Picture Stories under the heading "Little Stars." Her first credited film role came in 1918 in Nazimova's Eye for Eye, in which she played an Arab sheik's daughter. Director Frank Borzage subsequently cast her as the physically disabled Minnie Ginsberg in Humoresque (1920), the performance for which she became best known. Author Elinor Glyn was sufficiently impressed by the work to write a screenplay specifically for Battista, though it was never produced. Following Humoresque, Battista appeared in nine additional silent films, frequently in roles requiring her to cry on camera, a skill that became closely associated with her screen work. She also toured the vaudeville circuit during this period, performing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet alongside child actor Charles Eaton. Motion Picture Magazine devoted a December 1922 article to her, and her photograph appeared on the cover of the UK publication Picture Show in 1924. After her mother's death that same year, her film career slowed considerably.

Battista returned to prominence in 1931, taking leading roles in Italian-language films produced in New York, including Santa Lucia Luntana and Così è la vita, and resuming her Broadway career with an appearance in The Honor Code. Over the following years she accumulated a substantial list of Broadway credits. She had a singing role in the Ziegfeld musical Hot-Cha! with Bert Lahr in 1932, appeared opposite Humphrey Bogart in Our Wife in 1933, and enjoyed an extended run in the comedy No More Ladies in 1934. Additional Broadway productions during this decade included Saint Wench, Tapestry in Gray, and Summer Wives. While many of the productions she joined ran for only a limited number of performances, she maintained a steady professional presence through summer stock engagements and road company work, including a tour with The Women.

In 1934, Battista married dancer Paul Pierce; the marriage ended in divorce slightly more than a year later. In 1938 she eloped with writer Russell Maloney. The two collaborated on several projects, including an English translation of Die Fledermaus for the Philadelphia Opera Company in 1943 and a television talk show, The Maloneys, broadcast on the DuMont Television Network from 1947 to 1948. Together they also wrote the scenario and lyrics for the Broadway musical Sleepy Hollow, drawn from Washington Irving's legend, which cost $230,000 to produce and ran for twelve performances between June 3 and June 12, 1948, with Battista credited as playwright and librettist. Separately, her short story "No Sugar Please" was published in The New Yorker on April 20, 1940. She and Maloney had a daughter, Amelia, in 1945. Maloney died in September 1948, and three months later Battista married Lloyd Rosamond, a radio producer. In 1960 she and her daughter relocated with Rosamond to Los Angeles, where he died in 1964. Battista subsequently returned to New York City, where she died on December 22, 1980, at Jewish Memorial Hospital in Manhattan from complications of emphysema, at the age of 68.