Suzanne Bennett

Suzanne Bennett (1893–1974), also known as Lady Hubert Wilkins, was an Australian-born actress who built a notable stage career on Broadway during the 1920s. Born Susannah Catherine Evans in Walhalla, Victoria, a goldfields town, she was the daughter of John Evans, a miner, and Alice Louisa Whitlow. She grew up alongside four siblings: sisters Mabel and Edith, and brothers John and Arthur.

Bennett began her theatrical work in Australia, starting in the chorus of the Rigo Grand Opera Company before moving on to productions mounted by Hugh D. McIntosh. She took the surname Bennett from her 1915 marriage to Private Oscar Bennett, a twenty-year-old soldier, at which time she was residing in St. Kilda, Victoria. Oscar Bennett returned to Australia in 1919 after surviving the war, but the marriage proved unhappy and ended in divorce in early 1922. By 1923, Bennett had relocated to New York City in pursuit of stage work, and within a year she was appearing in Broadway productions.

Her Broadway career spanned 1924 to 1928. She made her Broadway debut in Innocent Eyes, a musical revue that ran from May 20 to August 30, 1924. The following year she played Mimi in the play The Rat, which ran from February 10 through May 1925, and appeared as an ensemble member in Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1925, a musical revue that ran from July 6 through December 27, 1925. In early 1926 she portrayed May in the play Port O' London, and later that year performed in the revue Nic Nax of 1926, which ran for a brief engagement in August. The 1927 season brought her a role in the musical revue Merry-Go-Round, which ran from May 31 through September 24, 1927. She played Ernestine Fox in the play What Do We Know?, which opened December 23, 1927, and in the summer of 1928 she appeared as Katherine in the comedy The Cyclone Lover, followed by the role of Cora Chase in the play Guns, which ran from August 6 through September 1928.

On June 20, 1928, during a New York City reception honoring explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins following his celebrated flight over the Arctic Sea, Bennett met Wilkins. The couple married in Cleveland, Ohio, and their union was noted in the September 9, 1929 issue of Time magazine. After the marriage, Bennett was known as Lady Hubert Wilkins. The couple had no children during their twenty-nine years together.

The two lived in New York City, and in the 1950s purchased a converted farm of approximately 100 acres in the Endless Mountains region of Rush Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where they spent their summers. Bennett was also a portrait artist who produced numerous paintings throughout her life. Following a stroke in 1972 that left her blind, she was cared for by Winston Ross, Sir Hubert's former personal secretary, and his wife Marley Ross, and she relocated to Southern California. Bennett died in Orange County, California in December 1974. Her ashes were scattered at the North Pole on May 4, 1975, from the U.S. Navy submarine USS Bluefish, mirroring the 1959 scattering of Sir Hubert's ashes from USS Skate at the same location.