Actresses of Stage & Screen Prints, & Photographs, “B...-”
for threatre, drama, social studies classrooms, home schoolers, and inspirational art for the studio.

Pearl Bailey
b. 3-29-1918; Southampton Co., Virginia
d. 8-17-1990; Philadelphia (heart disease)

Pearl Bailey was a singer and actress in such notable stage and film musicals as St. Louis Woman, Carmen Jones, Porgy and Bess, St. Louis Blues, and Hello Dolly!.

Pearl Bailey quotes ~
• “Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.”
• “The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.”

Pearl Bailey was the sister of tap dancer Bill Bailey.

• Black History Posters

Lucille Ball
b. 8-6-1911; Jamestown, NY
d. 4-26-1989; California

Comedienne and film executive Lucille Ball, called “Queen of the Bs” for her numerous, unfeatured roles in B movies, turned out have one of the longest careers in Hollywood. She is most fondly remembered for her ground breaking sitcom “I Love Lucy.”

Ball starred in the 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat.

Tallulah Bankhead
b. 1-2-1902; Huntsville, AL
d. 12-12-1968; NYC

Tallulah Bankhead was a premier celebrity of her day, pulling such stunts such as underwearless cartwheels in a skirt.

FYI - the character Cruella De Vil in Walt Disney Pictures' One Hundred and One Dalmatians, was “a manic take-off on famous actress Tallulah Bankhead.”

Tallulah Bankhead quotes ~
• “Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.”
• “My heart is as pure as the driven slush.”
• “If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.”

• Tallulah: My Autobiography

Ethel Barrymore
née Ethel Mae Blythe
b. 8-15-1879; Philadelphia, PA
d. 6-18-1959; Los Angeles

Ethel Barrymore was a member of the noted Barrymore acting family: her parents were Maurice Barrymore (real name Blythe) and Georgiana Drew, her brothers were John and Lionel, and she was the great aunt of Drew Barrymore.

Ethel Barrymore quotes ~
• “You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.”
• “For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a MaCaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.”
• “The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.”

Blanche Bates
b. 8-25-1873; Portland, OR
d. 12-25-1941; San Francisco

Blanche Bates performed numerous stage roles such as Nora in A Doll's House (Ibsen), Cigarette in Under the Two Flags (Ouida), Mirtza in The Great Ruby, the Girl in The Girl of the Golden West, and the lead in the stage play Madam Butterfly by Long and Belasco, on which the opera Madama Butterfly is based.

Constance Benson
née Gertrude Constance Samwell, or Cockburn
b. 1860; London, England
d. 1-19-1946

Stage actress Constance Benson, the wife of actor Frank Benson, appeared in silent film versions of Shakespeare's Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and The Taming of the Shrew, all in 1911.

Ingrid Bergman
b. 8-29-1915; Stockholm, Sweden
d. 8-29-1967; London, breast cancer

Ingrid Bergman won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress, ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute. Bergman's best remembered role is Ilsa Lund in World War II drama Casablanca (1942), co-starring Humphrey Bogart.

Ingrid Bergman quotes ~
• “Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
• “Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.”

Sarah Bernhardt
b. 10-22-1844; Paris, France
d. 3-26-1923; Paris

The “Divine Sarah”, famous for her slim beauty and bell-like voice, was the leading actress of the day. She also had talent in sculpture and painting, wrote plays, a work on acting (1923), and her memoirs (1907). Sarah Bernhardt played for troops at the front in World War I and was made a member of the Legion of Honor in 1914. Although she had a leg amputated in 1915 at the age of 70, she continued to appear on the stage until her death in 1923.

• more Sarah Bernhardt posters

Halle Berry
b. 8-14-1966; Cleveland, OH

Actress, former fashion model, and beauty queen Halle Berry became the first and, as of 2011, only woman of African American descent to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (Monster's Ball, 2001).

Jessie Bond
b. 1-10-1853; London, England
d. 6-17-1942

Jessie Bond, English singer and actress, is best remembered for her mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas.

Clara Bow
b. 7-29-1905; Brooklyn, NY
d. 9-27-1965; Los Angeles (heart attack)

Clara Bow rose to stardom in the silent film era and personified the “roaring twenties”. Her style made her the premier “flapper” and the film “It” (1927) made her world famous as the “It-Girl”.

FYI - The animated cartoon character Betty Boop had many of Bow's characteristics.

Novelist and scriptwriter Elinor Glyn coined the use of “It” as a euphenism for sex appeal, as it was applied to Clara Bow.

Dame Lilian Braithwaite
née Florence Lilian Braithwaite
b. 3-9-1873; England
d. 9-17-1948

Lilian Braithwaite is best remembered for her stage acting in light comedies such as Arsenic and Old Lace (movie version 1944). She played Lady Berwick in Alfred Hitchcock's silent film Downhill in 1927.

FYI - Braithwaite and her actor/manager husband were the parents of character actress Joyce Carey (cast as Violet in Blythe Spirit and the buffet manager in Brief Encounter.)

Mary Louise Brooks, “Lou Lou”
b. 11-6-1906; Cherryvale, KS
d. 8-8-1985; Rochester, NY

Louise Brooks was a dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for her bobbed haircut and three best known feature roles: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930).

FYI ~ Brooks danced in the Denishawn company.

• Louise Brooks, Looking for LuLu, DVD

“Billie” Burke, née Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke
b. 8-7-1884; Washington, DC
d. 5-14-1970; Los Angeles, CA

Billie Burke is best remembered for her roles as Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz musical film (1939), the ditzy hostess in Dinner for Eight (1933), and as the daffy Clara Topper in the Topper films (beginning in 1937). Burke was married to Flo Ziegfeld (1867-1932), theatrical producer.

• Mrs. Ziegfeld: The Public and Private Lives of Billie Burke