Nella Bergen

Nella Bergen (December 2, 1873 – April 24, 1919) was an American actress and singer born Ellen G. Reardon in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, John Edward Reardon, served as a police captain in Brooklyn, and all four of her grandparents were immigrants from Ireland. She trained her voice under Polish-born opera singer Adelina Murio-Celli d'Elpeux and worked as a church soloist before entering professional performance. Her stage name derived from her first husband, Connecticut manufacturer James Dunn Bergen, whom she married in 1892 and divorced in 1899.

Bergen launched her professional career as a soloist with bandmaster Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore and went on to perform primarily in operettas, musicals, and comedies on Broadway and in London. Her Broadway appearances spanned from 1889 to 1910 and included roles in The Charlatan (1898–1899), Baroness Fiddlesticks (1904), Wang (1904), The Free Lance (1906–1907), The Talk of New York (1907), and He Came from Milwaukee (1910). She also toured with theatrical productions in London in 1899, appearing in The Mystical Miss, El Capitan, and The Charlatan.

Beyond the stage, Bergen held one film credit, the 1899 silent short The Summer Girl, and her image was used to promote sheet music for popular songs. In 1909 she performed at an outdoor wintertime show at a hospital for tuberculosis patients. That same year she spoke to The New York Times in support of establishing a care home for the pets of theatre workers, whose irregular schedules and fluctuating incomes she argued made consistent pet care difficult.

In 1899, following her divorce from Bergen, she married actor DeWolf Hopper. Their marriage lasted until 1913, making it the longest of Hopper's six marriages, which also included unions with Edna Wallace Hopper and Hedda Hopper. Bergen died of pneumonia on April 24, 1919, at her home in Freeport, New York, at the age of 45.