Truly Shattuck

Truly Shattuck (July 27, 1875 – December 6, 1954) was a soubrette who performed across vaudeville, music halls, and Broadway during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in San Miguel, San Luis Obispo County, California, in an adobe house adjacent to Mission San Miguel Arcángel, her birth name was recorded as Clarice Etrulia de Burchards, or Burcharde. Shattuck was the surname of her stepfather, while her mother was known as Jane Shattuck.

Her path to the stage was shaped in part by a violent episode in her family's history. In 1893, her mother Jane murdered Harry Poole, the daughter's boyfriend, after he declined to marry her following a night the couple spent together. Jane Shattuck was initially convicted of first-degree murder but was later released after a successful temporary insanity appeal. At the time of the killing, Shattuck was working as a chorus girl at the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco, and the national press coverage surrounding the case brought her name to wider public attention.

Shattuck made her first New York vaudeville appearance at Tony Pastor's theater in 1896. The following year she took on her first major role, playing Mephisto in Very Little Faust and Much Marguerite at Hammerstein's Olympia Theatre. She subsequently toured as a lead performer with several traveling burlesque and vaudeville companies. During the height of John Philip Sousa's popularity in the 1890s, she generated controversy by setting words to his marches and performing them at venues including Koster & Bial's in New York. She spent roughly the final year of the nineteenth century performing in Germany, appearing in Berlin and Dresden, before supporting Edna May in the 1900 London production of An American Beauty.

Shattuck transitioned from vaudeville to Broadway in 1904, when she played Celestine in the musical An English Daisy at the Casino Theatre. Later that same year she appeared in George M. Cohan's Little Johnny Jones at the Liberty Theatre. In 1906 she took the role of Mrs. Franklin-Jones-Berrymore in the musical farce The Governor's Son, staged at the Aerial Gardens, now known as the New Amsterdam Roof, and that same year created the role of Violette in A Parisian Model at the Broadway Theatre. In 1907 she played Adelaide Forster in George Broadhurst's play The Lady from Lane's at the Lyric Theatre and Casino Theatre, a production that also featured comedian Thomas A. Wise. Her Broadway career continued through 1910, when she appeared as Trixie Stole in Judy Forgot at the Broadway Theatre and as Alma in Alma, Where Do You Live? alongside Weber and Fields. She was also a frequent performer with Weber and Fields in productions such as Hip! Hip! Hooray!, in which she played Vera Shapeleigh at Weber's Theatre in November 1907. Her Broadway appearances spanned the years 1904 to 1910 and additionally included The Lady from the Sea and The Governor's Lady.

Shattuck was the first performer to sing Ernest R. Ball's 1906 song Love Me, and the World Is Mine. Beginning in 1907 she undertook an extensive European tour, performing at music halls in St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and London.

In 1910 Shattuck declared bankruptcy in a New York court, reporting nearly $2,800 in liabilities and no assets. Press accounts attributed her financial collapse to an extravagant lifestyle that included expensive automobiles, clothing, and a yacht. Her husband, Stephen A. Douglas, a salesman, stated that she had spent approximately half a million dollars over four years. The two had married in 1899 and, according to contemporary reports, spent little time together throughout their marriage. Douglas filed for divorce on grounds of desertion and was granted it in 1914.

On October 13, 1911, while performing at the Academy of Music in Baltimore in Alma, Where Do You Live?, Shattuck was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital with a brain abscess. She remained absent from the stage for nearly two years before returning to vaudeville in 1913, partnering with Thomas A. Wise. In 1919 she received favorable reviews performing alongside Emma O'Neil in the vaudeville skit Punctuating Life's Manuscript.

Shattuck moved into silent film work beginning in 1915, appearing in approximately sixteen films over the following twelve years. Her first known film role was Mrs. Van Ness in The Iron Strain, and her final screen appearance came in 1927 when she played Mrs. P. Belmont-Fox in Rubber Heels. Her partial filmography includes Peggy (1916), A Wise Fool (1921), The Speed Girl (1921), Beauty's Worth (1922), The Glory of Clementina (1922), The Hottentot (1922), Daughters of the Rich (1923), and Rubber Heels (1927). The 1920 United States Census recorded her as a house guest at the Los Angeles residence of journalist and political figure Rudolph K. Hynicka and his wife Dorothy.

It emerged during a 1930 investigation into cosmetic surgeon Dr. Henry J. Shireson — who lost his medical license after a patient required leg amputations following a procedure to correct bow-legs — that a decade earlier he had performed weight-loss surgeries on Shattuck, Sophie Tucker, and other celebrities of the period.

The later years of Shattuck's life were marked by financial hardship. She worked at various points as a waitress and as a seamstress, though she was unable to maintain either position for long. In September 1929, following several months without work, she was arrested in Chicago for attempting to shoplift a dress priced at $16.50. She pleaded guilty but was released after the department store dropped the charges. By 1930 it was reported that she had been appointed personal secretary to a Mrs. A. L. Erlanger. In 1935, Hollywood reporter Alan McElwain identified her among a group of formerly prominent performers then working as film bit players for $7.50 a day. Shattuck was among the more than two hundred mourners at Fatty Arbuckle's funeral in New York in July 1933. During the remainder of her life she made periodic returns to the stage and appeared in radio productions.

Shattuck died at the age of 79 following an extended illness at the Motion Picture Country Home on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills, California.