Virginia Earle

Virginia Earle (born Virginia Earl, August 6, 1873, Cincinnati, Ohio; died September 21, 1937, Englewood, New Jersey) was an American stage actress whose career spanned light opera, Edwardian musical comedy, and vaudeville during the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. She appeared on Broadway from 1898 to 1910, with credits including Florodora, Sergeant Kitty, In Newport, Lifting the Lid, and The Jolly Bachelors.

Earle was the daughter of Irish immigrants Sara and Nathan Wheeler Earl. Her father later worked as a machinist after the family relocated to Chicago. Both parents were said to have done theater work, and her younger brother, Wheeler Earl, performed on stage for a number of years before becoming a salesman for the Hupp Motor Company. Earle made her stage debut in 1887, at the age of fourteen, playing Nanki-Poo in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado with the Home Juvenile Opera Company. During her time with that company she also took principal roles in The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and Patience.

She subsequently joined the Pike Opera Company on a tour of the American West, which brought her to San Francisco, where she was engaged by Frederick Hallen and Joseph Hart's vaudeville company. After two seasons with Hallen and Hart, she became associated with producer Edward E. Rice and in 1891 traveled to Australia with a troupe that included actor George Fortescue, his wife and daughter, and actresses Lillian Karl and Agnes Pearl.

In June 1895, Earle appeared in the comic opera portion of The Merry World, a revue written by Edgar Smith and Nicholas Biddle and staged at the Casino Theatre in New York City. Playing the character Vaseline, she performed alongside Marie Laurens. That same October, she took the role of Cecilia in the operetta Leonardo, produced at the Garrick Theatre. The following year, The Lady Slavey at the Casino Theatre featured Earle alongside Daniel Daly and Marie Dressler; after an absence from the cast, she returned on April 13, 1896, to play the title role. She was also associated for many years with the Edwardian musical comedy productions of Augustin Daly, including The Circus Girl and A Runaway Girl. In 1900 she appeared in The Belle of Bohemia, and that same year took part in a revival of The Belle of New York. At the Casino Theatre she also appeared in The Casino Girl, in which she portrayed a young man named Percy and performed a duet with Mabelle Gilman. In November 1901, The New Yorkers, featuring Earle alongside Daly, was presented at the Herald Square Theatre.

Both Earle and James T. Powers signed contracts with producer George W. Lederer in July 1899. In April 1903, producer George Edwardes signed Earle for a musical comedy engagement at the Gaiety Theatre in London, her second London engagement, planned for the following season. That production was Sergeant Kitty, an opera with music by A. Baldwin Sloane. Samuel S. Shubert of the Shubert Theatre secured her services in May 1903, and Sergeant Kitty opened at Daly's Theatre on Broadway in January 1904. In October 1904, Earle was summoned to rehearsal at the New Amsterdam Theatre as a member of the Klaw and Erlanger Comedy Company, a troupe that also included Fay Templeton. The resulting production, In Newport, a musical burlesque set in fashionable society, was staged at the Liberty Theatre at 234 West 42nd Street.

After several seasons in vaudeville, Earle became ill and was unable to perform on Broadway for an extended period. She returned to the stage in November 1911 in a leading role in The Wedding Trip, with music by Reginald De Koven. In April 1913 she replaced Lina Abarbanell as Molly Seamore, the heroine, in a production of The Geisha. In 1921 she appeared alongside Madeline and Marion Fairbanks in Two Little Girls in Blue, produced by A.L. Erlanger, with Edward Begley also among the cast.

Earle married Frank Lawton, an actor, whistler, and comedian who became known for playing Blinky Bill McGuirk in the London production of The Belle of New York, which opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on April 12, 1899. Earle brought a divorce action against Lawton in February 1897. Lawton died in 1914.

Earle was robbed of valuables on more than one occasion. In September 1895, she recognized a woman named Jennie Baldwin on Sixth Avenue near 28th Street in Manhattan wearing a cloak that had been stolen from the Casino Theatre, seized her, and called for help. Baldwin testified that her brother, employed by the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad, had found the cloak on the tracks, and several witnesses vouched for her character. The cloak was returned to Earle, who, noting its worn condition, ultimately threw it at the deputy district attorney in court. On New Year's Eve of the same year, a diamond pendant valued at $550 was stolen from Earle at the Hotel Bartholdt; the diamonds were later recovered at a Ninth Avenue pawnshop, where $100 had been advanced on them, and a hotel employee was charged with grand larceny. Earle also spoke publicly about wearing a ring on her thumb for nine years out of a belief that it brought good luck, and identified wearing a hat with a peacock feather as the one occasion she experienced bad luck.

Virginia Earle died on September 21, 1937, in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of sixty-four.