Winifred Lenihan

Winifred Lenihan (December 6, 1898 – July 27, 1964) was an American actress, writer, and director whose Broadway career spanned from 1918 to 1936. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before establishing herself as one of the notable stage performers of her era. She is best remembered for originating the role of Joan of Arc in the American premiere of Saint Joan in 1923.

Lenihan grew up in Brooklyn, describing herself as someone who had "always lived within subway distance of 42nd Street." At Bryant High School in Queens, she organized a dramatic company and performed leading roles, though she initially considered a career in teaching impractical to abandon for the stage. Her path changed when she encountered an advertisement for a dramatic school. She had been preparing to enroll at Smith College when she instead applied to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she was accepted as a student.

Her professional stage debut came in 1918, when she appeared as Belline in The Betrothal at the Playhouse in New York. She subsequently worked in stock productions, taking on a wide range of roles from ingenue to elderly characters. During the 1920s she accumulated a series of notable Broadway credits, including the role of Anne in The Dover Road (1921), Anne Hathaway in Will Shakespeare (1923), and Mary Todd in White Wings (1926), the latter among her verified Broadway credits alongside Major Barbara, The Boundary Line, Black Limelight, and Blind Mice.

The production that defined her reputation was the world premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, which opened at the Garrick Theatre in New York in 1923. Lenihan, a relatively inexperienced actress at the time, was cast in the title role and her performance drew immediate critical acclaim. Reviewing the production in The New York Times, John Corbin wrote that her portrayal rendered "Joan's moods of frank girlhood, and of a sainthood patient and proud" with "consummate simplicity and grace," calling it "a really great performance and one which, like the play, grows mightily in memory." Years later, Brooks Atkinson noted in The Times that Lenihan and Katharine Cornell, who later took on the role, had both "left their marks on the part, for both of them had something genuine to give it."

As her stage career continued, Lenihan developed a parallel interest in directing and teaching. In 1925 she became the first director of the Theater Guild's School of Acting in New York. She held that talent was innate and could be improved but not created, and she sought in her students qualities of emotional warmth, imagination, and intelligence. In 1932 she moved into radio, directing a series of Booth Tarkington sketches sponsored by the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Her approach to radio direction was unconventional: rather than having actors read scripts at microphones, she had them physically perform their actions before delivering their lines.

In addition to her performing and directing work, Lenihan co-wrote the play Blind Mice with Vera Caspary in 1930, which was subsequently adapted into the film Working Girls. Her only screen acting credit was the 1949 film noir Jigsaw. In 1928, she appeared on the cover of McCall's magazine, where she was identified as one of the ten most beautiful women in the world. She also served on the council of Actors' Equity Association, and in 1940 authored a resolution, adopted by the membership, that excluded from union office or employment any Communist, Nazi, or Fascist or sympathizer.

Lenihan married Frank Walker Wheeler in 1934, at the time vice president of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. He died on August 31, 1941. Lenihan herself died of a heart attack on July 27, 1964, at her home in Sea Cliff, New York, at the age of 65.