FROM WICKED WOMAN OF THE STAGE TO NEW WOMAN: THE CAREER OF OLGA NETHERSOLE (1870--1951), ACTRESS-MANAGER, SUFFRAGIST, HEALTH PIONEER

Olga Nethersole was an English actress-manager whose great successes were on the American stage. She made eleven major tours of America between 1894 and 1914 before retiring to devote herself to the cause of promoting good health. Nethersole made a career of playing fallen women, including Camille, Carmen, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Sapho. In the latter, she became for one brief moment in 1900 the most famous actress on the New York stage, when her production at Wallack's Theatre was closed down and she was hauled into court to successfully defend a charge of lewd behavior. Dressed in exquisite gowns, furs and exotic headpieces, she titillated fin de siecle audiences with her candid portrayals of seductive courtesans who entrapped weak-willed young men with their serpentine charms. Her powerful and passionate displays of emotional virtuosity were seasoned with such thrilling effects as the "fainting" curtain call and "the Nethersole kiss." Despite her successful career as a major touring star who earned a fortune while crossing America in her personal railroad car, Nethersole has been overlooked in theatre scholarship thus far. This study provides a reconstruction of her life and career. It includes an examination of her acting style, her role as manager, her search for new plays and playwrights, her staging practices, her influence on fashion, and an account of the Sapho affair. Finally, it examines her support of woman's suffrage, her pioneering work in health education and social reform, and her founding of the People's League of Health in 1917. Nethersole serves as a classic example of a popular emotional actress who enjoyed fame in her time but has not survived for posterity because she did not have the respect of the major critics. Her twenty-seven-year career illustrates the difficulties faced by performers trying to adapt to the new modernism and reconfirms that there were women attempting to make inroads into the domain of the actor-manager system, a fact which has yet to be documented in any depth.