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

Liv Ullmann
Madame Vestris
Ethel Waters

Mae West
Pearl White
Peg Woffington

Liv Ullmann
b. 12-16-1938; Tokyo

Liv Ullmann, a Norwegian actress and film director, is most noted for her roles in Ingmar Bergman films.

Ullman is also a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and honorary chair of the Women's Refugee Commission.

Madame Vestris
b. 1797; London, England
d. 8-8-1856

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Stars of the Harlem Renaissance - Ethel Waters Poster

Ethel Waters
b. 10-31-1896; Chester, PA
d. 9-1-1977, CA

Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, into unhappy circumstances. Her mother was just 12 years old, and Waters was raised in poverty in Philadelphia by her grandmother. Still in her teens, Ethel was already divorced and working as a chambermaid for $4.75 a week when her friends convinced her to sing at an amateur night competition at a local club. She won first prize and a steady job, and soon she was performing on the black vaudeville circuit. She was billed as “Sweet Mama Stringbean” because she was tall and skinny.

Waters began to record blues songs at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance in 1919, and by 1921 she was a huge star. Her single “Down Home Blues” sold more than 500,000 copies in six months, and she drew rave reviews for her Broadway appearances in two important black revues, Africana and Blackbirds of 1928. But she never lived in luxury. In fact, she gave away most of her money to Harlem's poor. “There's an old saying that charity begins at home,” she said, “and all Harlem is home to me.”

Ethel Waters career lasted much longer than the Harlem Renaissance itself. She remained a popular stage, screen, and radio actress for many years. In the early 1950s, she played the title role on the television show Beulah – the first national TV show that featured an African American as its main character. Waters also received two Academy Award nominations for her work in the movies Pinky (1938) and A Member of the Wedding (1953), and she wrote two autobiographies. She died in 1977.

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Mae West
b. 8-17-1893; Brooklyn, NY
d. 11-22-1980; Los Angeles

Pearl White
b. 3-4-1889; Green Ridge, MO
d. 8-4-1938; France

Pearl White was a popular silent screen star known as the “Stunt Queen”. She is most remembered for her title roles in episodic Perils of Pauline and the Exploits of Elaine.

The term “cliffhanger” is often used to describe Pearl White movies perhaps due to much of the production happening at the Palisades on the Hudson, in New Jersey.

Margaret “Peg” Woffington
b. c 1720; Dublin, Ireland
d. 3-26-1760

Woffington was an enormously popular stage actress in Georgian England. She collapsed while playing the part of Rosalind in 'As You Like It' in 1757 and was never able to act again.

Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl
b. 12-20-1865; New York City
d. 7-12-1950; Versailles, France

Elsie de Wolfe whose interest in theatre as fundraising events suited to young society women, turned to the theatre as a means of making a living after her father's death.

When her skills of set design were noticed she became an interior designer noted for being repulsing the popular Victorian motifs for simplicity and airyness. The architect Stanford White helped her secure the interior commission for New York City's social club for women, the Colony Club.

She, and her partner Elisabeth Marbury, were restoring a villa in France before WWI. They remained and worked in hospitals; she received the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour for her Red Cross work.

FYI ~ de Wolfe was known as Lady Mendl after her marriage to a British diplomat.

Elsie de Wolfe quotes ~
• “Never complain, never explain.” (motto)

Anna May Wong
b. 1-3-1905; Los Angeles, CA
d. 2-2-1961; Santa Monica

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American actress to achieve celebrity status, had a long and varied career spanning film, television, stage, and radio. Wong's first leading role was in the movie The Toll of the Sea (1922) based loosely on Madama Butterfly.

Wong suffered discrimination in the loss of the role to European actress Luise Rainer in the movie The Good Earth based on Pearl Buck's novel of the same name.

Other appearances: Wong played a role in the silent film A Trip to Chinatown (1926), based on a 1891 musical comedy of the same name - and the plot of both makes you think of Hello, Dolly!. She also starred in the 1934 remake of the musical Chu Chin Chow.

Sada Yacco
b. 7-18-1871; Tokyo, Japan
d. 12-7-1946; Atami, Japan

Sada Yacco was a Japanese actress who toured Europe and America, the first Japanese theatre company to be seen in the West.

Sada Yacco, who was trained as a geisha, influenced the modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis.