Peg Entwistle

Millicent Lilian Entwistle, known professionally as Peg Entwistle, was born on 5 February 1908 in Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales, to Robert Symes Entwistle, an actor, and Emily Entwistle, née Stevenson. Her early years were spent in West Kensington, London, and records place her and her father in Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York City as early as 1913, a timeline corroborated by the Internet Broadway Database and The New York Times, which list Robert S. Entwistle in several 1913 productions. In December 1922, her father died after being struck by a hit-and-run motorist at Park Avenue and 72nd Street in New York City. Following his death, Entwistle and her two younger half-brothers were taken in by their uncle, who was the manager of Broadway actor Walter Hampden.

By 1925, Entwistle was living in Boston as a student of Henry Jewett's Repertory, the company now known as the Huntington Theatre, and had become one of the Henry Jewett Players. That same year, Walter Hampden gave her an uncredited walk-on role in his Broadway production of Hamlet, in which she carried the King's train and brought in the poison-cup. Also in 1925, at age seventeen, she played Hedvig in a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. Bette Davis attended a performance and later credited Entwistle as her inspiration to pursue acting, stating that after seeing Entwistle in that role she had known she would someday play Hedvig herself.

Recruited by the New York Theatre Guild, Entwistle made her first credited Broadway appearance in June 1926, playing Martha in The Man from Toronto at the Selwyn Theatre, a production that ran for twenty-eight performances. Between 1926 and 1932 she performed in ten Broadway productions as a Theatre Guild member, working alongside actors including George M. Cohan, William Gillette, Robert Cummings, Dorothy Gish, Hugh Sinclair, Henry Travers, and Laurette Taylor. Her Broadway credits during this period included The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, Little Women, Just to Remind You, Getting Married, and She Means Business. Her longest-running production was the 1927 play Tommy, in which she starred opposite Sidney Toler and which ran for 232 performances, becoming the role for which she was most widely remembered. Also in 1927, The Uninvited Guest closed after only seven performances, though New York Times critic J. Brooks Atkinson noted that Entwistle delivered a performance considerably better than the play warranted.

Between Broadway engagements, Entwistle toured with the Theatre Guild, changing roles weekly and earning coverage in publications including the Sunday edition of The New York Times in 1927 and the Oakland Tribune two years later. Though she was frequently cast as a comedian or ingénue, she expressed a preference for emotionally demanding roles. In a 1929 interview she described the challenge of building emotional conviction in a performance and stated that falling short of that standard felt like cheating herself. Her Broadway career concluded in early 1932 with J. M. Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire, which also starred Laurette Taylor. The production was cancelled after Taylor's alcoholism caused two missed evening performances and required ticket refunds, and the cast received only a week's salary rather than the percentage of box office gross that had been agreed upon before the show opened.

In April 1927, Entwistle married American actor Robert Keith at the chapel of the New York City Clerk's office. She was granted a divorce in May 1929, citing cruelty and claiming that Keith had not disclosed a prior marriage or the existence of his six-year-old son, Brian Keith, who later became an actor himself.

By May 1932, Entwistle was in Los Angeles, where she appeared in the Romney Brent play The Mad Hopes at the Belasco Theatre, a production starring Billie Burke that ran from 23 May to 4 June. Los Angeles Examiner theatre critic Florence Lawrence reviewed the production favorably, noting that Entwistle and Humphrey Bogart held first place among the supporting cast and that Entwistle presented a charming picture of youth in her role as Geneva Hope. Following the close of that production, Entwistle secured her first and only credited film role with Radio Pictures, later RKO. The film, Thirteen Women, starred Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne in a pre-Hays Code thriller produced by David O. Selznick and based on a novel by Tiffany Thayer. Entwistle played the supporting role of Hazel Cousins. The film premiered on 14 October 1932 at the Roxy Theatre in New York City and was released in Los Angeles on 11 November, receiving neither critical nor commercial success. In 2008, Variety cited Thirteen Women as one of the earliest female ensemble films.

On 16 September 1932, Entwistle died at the age of twenty-four after jumping from the letter H of the Hollywoodland sign in Hollywood, California. A hiker discovered her shoe, purse, and jacket below the sign two days later, along with a suicide note inside the purse. Her body was found in a ravine below the sign, and she was subsequently identified by her uncle, with whom she had been living in the Beachwood Canyon area. Thirteen Women was released posthumously, and Entwistle remains one of the most recognized figures associated with the Hollywood sign.