Rita Jolivet

Rita Jolivet, born Marguerite Lucile Jolivet on 25 September 1884 in Castleton, Richmond County, New York, was a British actress who worked in both theatre and silent film during the early twentieth century. She died on 2 March 1971 in Nice, France. In private life she was known as the Countess Marguerita de Cippico. Her father, Charles Eugene Jolivet (1840–1920), was originally from Carmansville, New York, and owned extensive vineyards in France. Her mother, Pauline Hélène Vaillant (1857–1957), was French-born and had been a concert musician before retiring from the stage following her marriage in 1879. Jolivet had a sister, Inez Henriette, and a brother, Alfred Eugene. Her great-great-grandmother was the only member of her family to escape the guillotine during the French Revolution, and her grandmother Vaillant was among the beautés de Cour at the court of Napoleon III. Jolivet was the great-grandaunt of Canadian actor Finn Wolfhard, whose mother was the granddaughter of Jolivet's brother Alfred.

Jolivet moved in prominent social circles in London and maintained a close friendship with the family of Lord Lowther, the British ambassador to Turkey. Her sister Inez performed as a violinist at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and received decorations from both King Edward VII and Czar Nicholas II.

Jolivet began her stage career in youth, making her London debut in Much Ado About Nothing. She subsequently played Juliet under producer William Poel, whose company performed Shakespeare in university towns throughout Britain. She studied under Mademoiselle Thenaud, a former leading actress of the Comédie-Française who had also served as a personal palm reader to Queen Victoria. In 1910, Jolivet appeared as the leading lady in George Alexander's production The Eccentric Lord Comberdene in London.

Her Broadway career spanned 1911 to 1915 and encompassed five productions. In 1911 she played Marsinah in the first American stage production of Kismet, produced by Harrison Grey Fiske, with Otis Skinner in the principal role of Hajj the beggar. The production was staged at the Knickerbocker Theatre in March 1912. In January 1914, Jolivet appeared in Percy MacKaye's A Thousand Years Ago at the Shubert Theatre. Her remaining Broadway credits included Mrs. Boltay's Daughters, What It Means to a Woman, and Where Ignorance Is Bliss. During this period she was being groomed for stardom by theatrical producer Charles Frohman.

On 7 May 1915, Jolivet was aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 19 kilometres off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. She was standing on the bridge with Frohman when the liner went down. His final words to her quoted his favourite play, Peter Pan: "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life." Jolivet secured a life preserver from her stateroom and survived when rescue boats arrived from Ireland, among them the S.S. Westborough, which was disguised as a Greek steamer named Katrina. Frohman perished in the sinking, and his death effectively brought Jolivet's theatrical career to a halt. Her brother-in-law, George L. Vernon, also drowned in the disaster; he had been traveling to join his wife, Jolivet's sister Inez, who was residing in Europe at the time. Inez subsequently suffered severe depression and died by suicide on 28 July 1915 at the Sumner Apartments, 31 West 11th Street, New York City. Jolivet later testified in Federal District Court during proceedings in which the Cunard Steamship Company sought a limitation of liabilities arising from the sinking. In November 1919, her younger brother Alfred married Beatrice Witherbee, a fellow Lusitania survivor whose mother and three-year-old son had perished in the disaster.

Jolivet's film career began in Italy with the Ambrosia Company, where she made several productions including Fata Morgana (1914), Zvani (1915), L'Onore di Morire (1915), La Mano di Fatma (1915), and Cuore ed arte (1915). She subsequently affiliated with Famous Players–Lasky in America, with The Unafraid (1914) serving as her first Hollywood film. In 1917 she appeared alongside Vincent Serrano in One Law for Both, directed by Ivan Abramson, a drama depicting the methods of revolutionaries that is now presumed lost. She and her then-husband Count Giuseppe de Cippico donated the proceeds from Lest We Forget (1918) to relief efforts connected with World War I. During a single week in May 1918, Jolivet sold more than five million dollars in Liberty Bonds in Baltimore, Maryland, and was reported to have sold more Liberty Bonds across the United States than Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Charlie Chaplin, and Mary Pickford combined. Lest We Forget was screened in Washington, D.C., where Jolivet addressed audiences before three of its showings, recounting her personal experiences since August 1914. In the film she portrayed Rita Heriot, a Paris soprano rescued from the Lusitania sinking. She returned to Italy to make Teodora (1921), in which she played the Empress Theodora in a production based on a work by French dramatist Victorien Sardou; the film was first shown in American cinemas in 1922. Her subsequent screen work included The Bride's Confession (1921), Roger la Honte (1922), Messalina (1924), Phi-Phi (1926), and Le Marchand de bonheur (1926), after which she retired from film.

Jolivet married three times. Her first marriage, to Alfred Charles Stern, took place on 14 November 1908 but ended quickly. On 27 January 1916 she married Italian nobleman Count Giuseppe de Cippico at Kew Gardens, Surrey; that marriage also ended in divorce, and the couple had no children together. Her third husband was James Bryce Allan, a Scottish cousin of Sir Hugh Montagu Allan of Ravenscrag, Montreal, to whom she had been introduced by Lady Allan, herself a Lusitania survivor. Bryce Allan was the son of Captain Bryce Allan of Ballikinrain Castle, Stirlingshire, and a grandson of James Allan of Glasgow. He was also a nephew of Sir John Stewart-Clark and Sir Thomas Dixon, 2nd Baronet. The couple married at the Church of Scotland in Paris on 26 April 1928, with the reception held at Ballikinrain Castle, a 4,000-acre estate that employed fifty servants. After World War II the couple traveled extensively and sold Ballikinrain, relocating to a smaller castle in Scotland.