"The world is better for her having lived."
Generations of visitors to Pittsburgh's Allegheny Cemetery have paused at that inscription on a modest mausoleum. It is the resting place of a dazzling star whose radiance in the entertainment firmament of her day was legendary.
Her name appeared as "Mrs. A.P. Moore" in some local accounts of her death 80 years ago on June 6, 1922 (she would have been 61 in December). Ten years earlier, she had married Pittsburgh publisher and future ambassador to Spain and Peru, Alexander Pollock Moore (her fourth husband), and the people of Pittsburgh soon took her congeniality and grace to their collective heart. She and Moore had met in 1896, when she was asked to test the acoustics of the new Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland, not far from the Point Breeze home on Penn Avenue where they would live after their marriage.
Mrs. Moore's winning qualities also had endeared her to millions of theater- and concertgoers in hundreds of other cities. From dignitaries who had the best seats in the house, to the standing-room-only crowd, she always would be remembered as Lillian Russell, the bejeweled icon of light opera and the most famous actress on the American stage. ("Lillian Russell Moore" is inscribed on her mausoleum.)
Critic Alan Dale, who had panned Russell's work more than once, praised her renowned generosity.
"Everyone knew her help was theirs merely for the asking. It is cruel to realize that she has passed on...She never would have grown old, and now she never can."
Born Helen Louise Leonard in Clinton, Iowa, on Dec. 4, 1861 (the family called her Nellie), she was the youngest of Cynthia and Charles Leonard's five daughters. The couple rarely got along: Cynthia was a whirlwind, an early feminist, suffragette and self-styled social reformer who planned to save the world, and Charles, a mild-tempered journalist and printing-company owner who was given to keeping out of the whirlwind's path.
The Leonards moved to Chicago, and as the girls advanced in school, Cynthia enrolled them in voice lessons. "Our family was musical...we sang and danced...all of my sisters had exceptionally fine voices," as Russell was quoted in "Lillian Russell: the Era of Plush" by her definitive biographer Parker Morell (Random House, 1940). "Our favorite game was ‘Opera,' so it was natural that when I heard my first opera, ‘Mignon,' I should decide I would become a grand-opera singer."
Mother Cynthia had made up her mind: New York City would offer greater opportunities than Chicago could for helping women win the vote. The move was made in 1877, when Cynthia left three of her children with husband Charles, and headed east with the other two. Nellie's lessons continued in New York. The instructor was thrilled; an audition was held, and the slim, golden-haired soprano with the sweet, pure voice made her professional debut, at Tony Pastor's Bowery Theater at Broadway and 14th Street.
She was barely 19 on the November evening in 1880 when Pastor introduced to his patrons "an unusual treat, a vision of loveliness and a voice of gold – Miss Lillian Russell." But he went a step further by presenting this daughter of America's heartland as an "English Ballad Singer."
Since the young lady feared her mother's wrath if she learned her daughter was performing at a tiny Lower Manhattan theater, Pastor came up with several stage names. The story goes that Nellie chose "Lillian Russell" because all those letter ‘l's intrigued her.
Cynthia Leonard had no complaints when Russell was invited to join the chorus of Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore," then "Iolanthe." Well aware of her attributes, she was charting a course to success.
"[Alexander] Moore had relied on her mental as well as her social capabilities," wrote John Burke in "Duet in Diamonds" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1972). "'All the world talked of her beauty,' Moore remarked shortly after Russell's death. ‘It is strange that I think only of her mind. I have seldom met its equal in any walk of life.'"
But it was her star quality that touched loyal audiences for more than 30 years. Whether prima donna of operettas, damsel in distress of three-hanky melodramas or a captivator entrancing con artists in vaudeville routines from the "who was that lady..." school of snappy patter and belly laughs, it seemed that Russell could do no wrong.
But consider her stint as a figurehead, spreading the news about her "Lillian Russell Light Opera Company," launched in 1891. Plagued by so-so attendance and soaring costs, the short-lived company called it curtains.
That fiasco was among Russell's variety of woes, offstage and on, that would have reduced today's soap-opera story lines to child's play.
The press didn't mince words about the star's tribulations, and the public followed them all. For starters, Russell made a wrenching, "show must go on" decision in 1896 by not attending the funeral of her beloved father during the out-of-town run of her acclaimed new play, "An American Beauty," although she explained that her absence would shut down the show, forcing fellow cast members to lose pay.
The papers didn't buy the excuse and lambasted her. Reported "Duet in Diamonds" author John Burke, Russell's best friend, actress Marie Dressler, wrote later that "Charlie Leonard would sit up all night in a day coach, if necessary, and travel a thousand miles to hear Lillian sing three songs."
Then there were the numerically challenged split-ups – two divorces and an annulment – of Russell's pre-Moore marriages. (Asked to write a brief article on her, a close Pittsburgh friend ignored Russell's first three "I do's" and called them three "romances" instead.)
The first divorce was during the aftermath of her infant son's tragic death; the second divorce, from Russell's third husband, was a farce (as was the allegedly "kissless" marriage), concerning in part a tidbit dutifully reported by the vindictive spouse, tenor Signor Don Giovanni Perugini (nee Jack Chatterton): "[She] wears...false hair and is horribly made up, and is not the least bit pretty off the stage," Perugini hissed, as quoted in "Diamond Jim Brady: Prince of the Gilded Age" by H. Paul Jeffers {John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2001).
As for Russell's annulment, her second husband had never mentioned his intact marriage to wife No. 1.
From another perspective, there was the future to worry about. The possibility that her bubble of fame as the highest-paid entertainer in America could burst any time preyed on Russell's mind. She had a daughter, Dorothy Solomon, to provide for, and after all, Russell wasn't getting any younger.
Parker Morell noted that point in his Russell biography:
"...Lillian feared and distrusted interviewers of her own sex...(they) always devoted more space to her toilette than what she had to say, and it enraged her to read the (printed) lines of a woman...who would write something like this: ‘The fair Lillian is in town, fortified as usual against the ravages of age. Away from the lights, it does not take an experienced or even overly observing eye to see the fine lines above the rather haggard orbs of the actress...,'" and plenty more of the same.
But good reviews could work wonders. Morell quoted Russell's response to her glowing notices for "Lady Teazle," the 1904 musical version of "The School for Scandal," Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 17th-century comedy of manners. Russell was 43 when she portrayed the naive young country wife of an elderly nobleman.
"If ‘Lady Teazle' had proved a failure, I would never have set foot on the stage again," declared Russell to a roomful of of reporters; "I would have taken in washing first."
Then she divulged a trade secret. "It's the part that makes the player, not the player who makes the part. I don't believe in writing a part to fit a personality. I've had it tried on me several times, and the part never fitted. (Famed impresario/playwright) David Belasco is the only one I know who comes anywhere near doing the trick. He studies a star's peculiarities and finds a way of working them into the play."
At the news of Russell's death, Belasco wrote the following to Alexander Moore: "My heart goes out to you, dear friend. All the world adored your beautiful wife. There will never be another like her...")
Russell's popularity was on the wane before her marriage to Moore, but her death created a void, an "empty chair at the table," so to speak, among remaining chums from New York's high-living set. They had shaped the sumptuous, eat-drink-and-be-merry " gilded age, or "era of plush" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Russell's devoted companion and confidante of that period was the hefty James Buchanan Brady – "Diamond Jim" to his immediate world, of which Russell was the center until his death in 1917.
The son of Irish immigrants, Brady had escaped early from New York's notorious Tenderloin District and ultimately amassed a fortune as a shrewd purveyor of railroad materials and entrepreneur whose practices were questionable.
The Russell-Brady friendship was just that, platonic, both agreed (Brady, reluctantly). But they did share a passion, two, in fact – umpteen-course lunches and dinners, and suppers after the show (some dubbed the couple "Beauty and the Beast," although Beauty once surpassed 180 pounds), and the most exquisite jewels Cartier's could come up with.
Distinguished actress Helen Hayes, no less, described her first sight of Russell and her ever-present escort. The occasion was Hayes's New York debut at age 8, in 1909, in the Victor Herbert musical, "Old Dutch":
"What an opening night it was," recalled Hayes in her autobiography "My Life in Three Acts," written with Kathryn Hatch (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1990). "...Two of the most glamorous personalities of their day were in their boxes, Diamond Jim Brady, sparkling all over with the stones that evoked his nickname, and Lillian Russell, in a gown that showed her generous bosom and the diamonds therein."
There was a Hayes-Russell link by the name of Lew Fields, producer of "Old Dutch" and half ("the taller half," Fields would quip) of the celebrated vaudeville team Weber and Fields, or, "Weberfields." Russell had made her comedic mark with Fields and Joe Weber from 1899 through 1904, and rejoined them in 1912 for their farewell tour. The show, titled "Hokey Pokey," combined bits and pieces of old routines.
Russell was a hit as "Mrs. Wallington Grafter, with Bohemian instincts and a talent for poker." (She enjoyed that game, along with pinochle, offstage as well, causing some of her fans to grumble.)
Following the tour's June 12 completion of its Pittsburgh run, Lillian Russell and Alexander Moore were married at the elegant Schenley Hotel (converted later to the present Pitt Student Union) in Oakland. The wedding party included Joe Weber and Lew Fields, Pittsburgh theatrical manager Harry Davis, and Russell's vaudeville pal, Fay Templeton, whose husband, John Patterson, also was a Pittsburgher.
The Moores' honeymoon had to wait: Russell was returning to New York that night with the rest of the "Hokey Pokey" cast, and her groom, active in political circles, was heading west at the summons of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. When asked whether the couple would have much time to spend together, wrote Parker Morell, "'Marriage must be an equal partnership to be a success,'" (Russell) replied. "There must be tolerance and there must be understanding. I told Mr. Moore that I would insist upon having all my own undisturbed privacy, as I have now."
Over the next decade, Russell appeared in several highly forgettable plays; interviewed visiting theater friends for her husband's newspaper, The Leader; and wrote a beauty column for the Chicago Tribune. ("I believe that beauty of form and feature can be cultivated in every woman until she is made to ‘Blossom like a rose.'")
But somehow, she discovered that her mother's years of pounding the pavements as a suffragette appealed to her. She lectured on the voting issue, and appealed to powers-that-be for support – and then came World War I. "Before Congress passed legislation introducing the military draft, she flung herself into the recruiting program," wrote John Burke; "there was a Lillian Russell Recruiting Day in Pittsburgh and one night she persuaded 259 men to enlist at McKeesport...the government made her an honorary sergeant in the Marine Corps at a Liberty Bond rally in New York..."
Russell was honored in the fall of 1921 with a major plum reflective of her ardent patriotism: President Warren G. Harding appointed her as commissioner of immigration, noting that "a woman's ear can get more information from Europeans than all the diplomacy and intelligence of the Government."
On her return from overseas in June 1922, she presented a lengthy report, the gist of which shocked some Americans and had others cheering: "Many well-meaning people are hoodwinked by those parasites trying to bring to (the United States) men and women who do not understand our language...stories of suffering humanity in Europe, and oppression, all have the dollar sign back of them. Our slogan should be America for Americans."
A short time later, Russell noticed alarming symptoms said to have started from a fall aboard ship. Her death soon afterward was attributed to what doctors called "a complication of diseases."
Flowers and telegrams of condolence poured into the Moores' home by the thousands, from the likes of Andrew Mellon, Samuel Gompers, Helen Hayes, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, the widows of Theodore Roosevelt and Enrico Caruso and countless admirers who rarely missed a Lillian Russell performance. Funeral services were held at Trinity Episcopal Church (today's Trinity Cathedral) on Sixth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh; one of numerous memorial services took place at New York's Majestic Theater, where the Great Lakes Training Station Orchestra accompanied vocalists who sang some of Russell's favorite hymns and Rabbi Dr. Abram Hirschberg offered comments.
On Feb. 14, 1923, eight months after Russell's death in June of 1922, The Leader carried this message from Alexander Moore: "I am retiring from the newspaper field with this issue...concluding 42 years of active life in newspaper work here. Since June of last year, I have not had the same incentive to continuous effort as previously inspired me. For the people of Pittsburgh, I retain love, respect and gratitude."
Moore died in February 1930 and was laid to rest beside his wife.
Memories
"Who's Lillian Russell?" George Bernard Shaw wondered aloud when Alexander Moore asked the playwright to write a libretto for his world-famous wife.
For the most part, mention of Russell today may evoke the same question, but not among some current members of Pittsburgh's theater community who have spent time with her.
If you were around in the 1950s and '60s, you might have dined in the plush, red-tufted Lillian Russell Room of the Pittsburgh Playhouse in Oakland, with the lady herself capturing your attention from a stunning oil portrait more than 3 feet high and some 2 feet wide.
The gala opening of the room on Dec. 6, 1958, was a fitting tribute to the Playhouse's 25th anniversary, and the portrait, was not only icing on the cake but part of the cake itself. Painter Franz Weiss of the Playhouse artistic staff at the time had modeled his work from a favorite Moore family picture after discovering that no two commercial photographs of Russell among dozens he examined bore similar facial expressions.
According to David Vinski, managing director of what's now called the Pittsburgh Playhouse of Point Park College, the Lillian Russell Room was located beneath the stage of the then Craft Avenue Theater, now the Rockwell Theater. "One whole wall of the room was covered in an especially nice wallpaper design displaying Al Hirschfield drawings (Hirshfield was the New York Times' famous theater cartoonist for decades)," said Vinski "Point Park became associated with the building around 1968, offering classes and such. So far as I know, the original owners sold it to the college in, maybe, 1972. So some time between those years, the room was dismantled."
Today, the portrait reposes in the playhouse's storage area. Maybe someday it will rise to another again.
In February 1980, Lillian Russell and Willa Cather bared their psyches onstage, in a University of Pittsburgh Theatre musical/documentary called "Hearts and Diamonds."
"The concept of the play was how Russell and Cather, both living in Pittsburgh around the same time and well-known in their fields, represented two alternative models for women," explained the playwright, Attilio "Buck" Favorini, then director of the Theatre Arts Division of Pitt's Department of Speech and Theatre Arts, and now chairman of its Department of Theatre Arts. The music was composed by teaching fellow Christine Frezza.
Russell and Cather had nothing in common but fame, Favorini explained. "Russell was completely men-oriented; her face and figure were seen everywhere; Cather was women-oriented, although she apparently had an affair with a young Spanish fellow, or at least tried to give that impression. She created some great female characters, and was close with the daughter of Judge (Samuel) McClung; Cather lived in the McClungs' attic for a time. The family home in Squirrel Hill still stands.
"I thought Russell and Cather made an interesting juxtaposition because their careers sort of crossed in an odd way. I don't think they ever met in real life, and they didn't meet in the play, either. Cather, early in her career, wrote for an early women's magazine called the Pittsburgh Home Monthly – that's what brought her here. In the course of writing her articles, she had something to say about Lillian Russell, whom she really disliked."
Another aspect of their figurative path-crossing involved the old Schenley Hotel. "Cather's first famous story, ‘Paul's Case,' was set there. And, of course, that's where the Moores were married."
Favorini added that his play was based on actual material; "We had actors playing the parts of people in Russell and Cather's lives: Diamond Jim Brady, for example, Russell's daughter, Dottie Solomon, Alexander Moore, of course – I cast a very bland actor for him. Cather's literary friend, George Seibel, was also portrayed."
So to cut to the chase, were the Moores happy together. Favorini chuckled: "I saw it as a marriage of convenience. Lillian fell into financial difficulties, and probably got tired of being in the unfavorable spotlight. It made sense: she got security for the rest of her life, and he got a trophy wife."
Among steadfast Russell admirers of the past was the late Margaret McKee Crothers of Pittsburgh. In March 1965, she donated an engaging, three-part Russell scrapbook to the Ford Curtis Theatre Collection of the University of Pittsburgh's Library System. Material includes theater programs, reviews, personal photos, correspondence and the like, plus Crother's notes. Of Russell's picture from in the 1903-04 Broadway revue,"Whoop-Dee-Do," Crother wrote, "It shows her as the regal queen she surely was.")
