Ruth Draper

Ruth Draper (December 2, 1884 – December 30, 1956) was an American actress, dramatist, and diseuse born in New York City, where she remained rooted throughout her life and career. The youngest child of Dr. William Henry Draper and Ruth Dana Draper, she grew up in a household of considerable means, with her father, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, employing several servants to support the family. Her mother was the daughter of Charles Anderson Dana, editor and publisher of The New York Sun, who had married Dr. Draper in 1878 following the death of his first wife, Lucy. Among Draper's notable relatives were her nephew Paul Draper, a dancer and actor with whom she shared Broadway billing, her nephew Raimund Sanders Draper, a World War II pilot, and her second cousin Paul Phipps, a society architect and the father of British performer Joyce Grenfell. Draper made her social debut as a debutante in 1902 and was active in the Junior League of the City of New York.

Her path toward performance was shaped in part by Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a family friend whose influence inspired her to pursue acting. Draper made her Broadway debut in 1916 in A Lady's Name, written by Cyril Harcourt, and by 1921 had established herself as a monologist specializing in character-driven monodramas. Her Broadway career extended four decades, from 1916 to 1956, and included appearances in Ruth Draper and Paul Draper and Ruth Draper. Unlike the solo performers of the lyceum and Chautauqua traditions who drew on published literature, Draper built her performances around original characters of her own creation, working with minimal staging — a chair, a shawl, and an occasional table — while performing in approximately half a dozen languages across the United States and Europe.

Her best-known pieces included The Italian Lesson, Three Women and Mr. Clifford, Doctors and Diets, and A Church in Italy. Theatre figures including Bernard Shaw, Thornton Wilder, John Gielgud, Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, Laurence Olivier, and Uta Hagen were among those who expressed admiration for her work, as were writers Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, and Agatha Christie. Christie drew on Draper as inspiration for two fictional characters: Carlotta Adams in the 1933 novel Lord Edgware Dies and Aspasia Glen in the short story "The Dead Harlequin." Draper also gave a command performance at Windsor Castle following an invitation from King George V and Queen Mary, and on April 29, 1953, she had lunch with C. S. Lewis the day after he attended her performance at the New Theatre in Oxford.

Her personal life included a significant connection to Italy through her relationship with Lauro De Bosis, a young Italian poet and writer who died in 1931 after flying over Rome and dropping thousands of leaflets denouncing Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party. In her later years, Draper spent increasing time at a summer home in Islesboro, Maine, which she had purchased from her family.

In 1951, King George VI awarded Draper honorary membership in the Order of the British Empire at the rank of Commander. In 2019, the Library of Congress selected her "Complete Recorded Monologues, Ruth Draper (1954–1956)" for preservation in the National Recording Registry, citing the recordings as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. A short biography of Draper appears among the portraits collected by Anglo-Italian writer Iris Origo in her 1984 book A Need to Testify. Draper died on December 30, 1956, of an apparent heart attack, hours after completing a Broadway performance at the Playhouse Theatre.