Famous 19th and Early 20th Century Actress Henrietta Foster Crosman Lived in Pelham Manor

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Henrietta Crosman was a famous Broadway, vaudeville, silent film, and movie actress known for her comedic talents.  Born in Wheeling, West Virginia on September 22, 1871, she became a famous star of the stage in the late 19th century.  She continued to act on Broadway and in national tours through the 1920s, but also appeared in numerous silent films and even made the transition to "talkies" late in her acting career.  Indeed, late in her career, Crosman appeared in Pilgrimage, a John Ford movie, in at least one Charlie Chan movie, and in a grandmotherly supporting role to Jean Harlow in the 1937 film Personal Property.  

Henrietta Crosman and her second husband, S. Maurice Campbell, moved to the Village of Pelham Manor in 1913 at the very height of Crosman's career.  The couple is shown in the 1930 U.S. Census as living at 1011 Prospect Avenue in the Village of Pelham Manor with their son, Maurice J. Cambell.

Crosman's second husband, S. Maurice Campbell, died in Pelham Manor on October 16, 1942.  By that time, the couple resided in an apartment within a building located at 908 Edgewood Avenue that no longer exists.  Henrietta Crosman died in her apartement on Edgewood Avenue, on October 31, 1944.

Today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog includes several images of Henrietta Crosman and transcribes the text of two detailed biographies as well as Crosman's obituary published in The Pelham Sun shortly after her death.

1011 Prospect Avenue in April, 2012.  Henrietta

Crosman, Her Second Husband S. Maurice Campbell,

and the Couple's Son, Maurice J. Campbell Are Shown

as Living in the Home in the 1930 U.S. Census.

Henrietta Crosman on December 31, 1905.

Source:  Publicity Still for Madeline in 1906,

New York Public Library Billy Rose Theatre

Collection Photograph File, Image ID TH-06181.

NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

"HENRIETTA CROSMAN. STARRING FOR HER SECOND

SEASON IN THE COMEDY 'SHAM'.  Source:  Munsey's Magazine,

Vol. 43, Apr.-Sep. 1910, p. 130 (The Frank A. Munsey Co., 1910).

NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

Henrietta Crosman in an Undated Publicity Photograph.

Source:  New York Public Library Billy Rose Theatre

Collection Photograph File, Image ID TH-06170.

NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

"CROSMAN, Henrietta Foster (Sept. 2, 1861 - Oct. 31, 1944), actress, was born in Wheeling, Va. (later W. Va.), where her father, George H. Crosman, was stationed as a regular officer in the quartermaster corps of the Union Armey.  Her grandfather, Maj. Gen. George Crosman, originally from Taunton, Mass., was a graduate of West Point.  Her mother, Mary (Wick) Crosman, was a native of Youngstown, Ohio.  Henrietta -- named for her maternal grandmother, a sister of the composer Stephen Foster -- was educated in Wheeling and at the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, Pa.  With her father in poor health and retired on half pay, family funds were limited, and she was forced as a young woman to support herself.  Success in amateur theatricals in Youngstown, Ohio, where the family was then living, encouraged her to try for a stage career.  A great-uncle, Morrison Foster, introduced her to the Pittsburgh theatrical manager John Ellsler, and through his recommendation she made her debut at the Windsor Theatre in New York City on Aug. 13, 1883, as Letter Lee in Bartley Campbell's melodrama about the Old South, The White Slave.  

During the next few years she toured and played in stock companies, concentrating on farce and light comedy, for which she seemed best suited.  She was married in 1886 to Sedley Brown, an actor, and a child, Sedley Brown, [Page 412 / Page 413] Jr., later called George Crosman, was born in 1887 in Youngstown.  On Dec. 17, 1889, she had advanced sufficiently to play Celia to ADA REHAN's Rosalind in Augustin Daly's production of As You Like It.  She worked in secondary roles with both Daniel Frohman's Lyceum Company and Charles Frohman's Commedians.  In 1896 she divorced Brown, receiving custody of their son.  That same year she was married to Maurice Campbell; they had a son, Maurice Campbell, Jr., in 1897.  The next three years were spent with stock companies in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Denver, where Miss Crosman advanced to leading lady.  During this time her husband became her manager.  Together they bought the rights to George Hazelton's Mistress Nell, a romantic comdey based on the life of Nell Gwyn.  Despite the opposition of the then powerful Theatrical Syndicate or trust, they managed to book it into a New York theatre (the Bijou) on Oct. 9, 1900, where Henrietta Crosman was acclaimed as a star.  In 1902 she played Rosalind, a performance the critic John Ranken Towse considered 'one of the most satisfying expositions of the character I have seen.'  'The mantle of high comedy,' asserted the Evening Sun, '. . . has fallen more than gracefully on Miss Crosman's shoulders.'  Her most spectacular success (1903-04) was in David Belasco's Sweet Kitty Bellairs, a historical romance in which she played an Irish Miss Fix-It.

Over the next ten years she acted in two or three new plays each season, touring the United States and parts of Canada when a long New York run was not possible.  Most successful were Geraldine Bonner and Elmer Harris' Sham in 1909 and Catherine Chisholm Cushing's The Real Thing in 1911, both more admired on tour than in New York.  heavy losses from an ambitious but unsuccessful production of a play they commissioned in 1907 based on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress left the Campbells bankrupt, and for several years (1908-16) Miss Crosman recouped their funds by occasional tours in vaudeville, in which she appeared in one-act plays.  Having now outgrown youthful comedy roles, she began to receive more satisfying parts in the theatre.  In 1916 she played Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Constance Collier.  That autumn she won praise for her Mrs. George in Shaw's Getting Married.  Her professional appearances became less frequent after World War I; her most important role in the early 1920's was as Madame Atherton in Martin Flavin's Children of the Moon (1923).  Her last Broadway appearance was in Thunder in the Air in 1929, though she played occasional parts elsewhere during the 1930's.

Between 1913 and 1927 Miss Crossman found time to appear in silent films.  In 1930 she created the talking-picture role of Fanny Cavendish in Royal Family of Broadway, based on the play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman.  Between 1933 and 1937 she appeared in seventeen films in Hollywood, most significantly, perhaps in John Ford's Pilgrimage (1933).  An ardent suffragist, she played in Percy MacKaye's suffrage drama Anti-Matrimony in 1910.  In an address in 1909 she told her se:  'You're too ladylike -- get together an army of women . . . and send them to Washington . . . [and] their employers would beg Congress for their immediate enfranchisement.  I have worked since I was sixteen and have supported not only mystelf but four or five others as well, and I have not omitted to darn my husband's stockings or to rock the cradle.  Some of those I took care of were men voters.'  (New York Sun, May 5, 1909, Robinson Locke Scrapbooks).  She died at her home in Pelham Manor, N. Y., in 1944 at the age of eighty-three, two years after her husband's death.

Henrietta Crosman never pretended to have a strong love for the theatre or for acting; it was, simply, a way of life she accepted in order to earn a living, but she gave herself to it without reservation.  Her distinctive features and graceful blond beauty were combined with great personal charm.  If her final reputation is not as great as that of her contemporaries Maude Adams (d. 1954), MINNIE MADDERN FISKE, JULIA MARLOWE, OR Ethel Barrymore (d. 1959), it is because she made her mark at first almost exclusively in comedy -- we reward Mrs. Siddons above Peg Woffington -- and because during her most active career, between 1900 and 1916, she found few suitable roles that could meet the taste of both the New York audience and the larger public on the road, where her real following was.  She could not, for example, accept the new realism, as her frequent public statements agaisnt Ibsen and 'sewer' drama attest.  Her long career spanned several eras in American theatrical history:  from Oceana in John Augustus Stone's Metamora in 1886 at Miner's Bowery Theatre to a grandmotherly supporting role to JEAN HARLOW in the film Personal Property in 1937.  Her charm and beauty, her acting and her sheer durability appealed to the American audience.

[The Robinson Locke Scrapbooks, Theatre Collection, N. Y. Public Library at Lincoln Center, especially for 1900-16, and other files there, including [Page 413 / Page 414] the Stella R. Newton Scrapbooks from Denver; George C. D. Odell, Annals of the N. Y. Stage, vols XII-XV (1940-49); Morrison Foster, My Brother Stephen (1896); Morrison Foster, 'Scrapbook Extracts' (typescript), Music Division, N. Y. Public Library at Lincoln Center; John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster, America's Troubadour (1934); Lewis C. Strang, Famous Acresses of the Day in America, Second Series (1902); John Ranken Towse, Sixty Years of the Theater (1916); Walter Browne and F. A. Austin, eds., Who's Who on the Stage (1906); obituaries in N. Y. Times, Oct. 17, 1942 (on her husband), and Nov. 1, 1944, N. Y. Herald Tribune, Nov. 1, 1944, and Variety, Nov. 8, 1944; Archie Binns, Mrs. Fiske and the Am. Theatre (1955); George C. Hazelton's Mistress Nell, in J. B. Russak, ed., Monte Cristo and Other Plays (American's Lost Plays, vol. XVI, 1941); Henrietta Crosman, 'The Story of 'Mistress Nell,' ' Harper's, Feb. 1938; information from Maurice Campbell, Jr., and from George Freedley.]

ROBERT J. DIEHLAM"

Source:  James, Edward T., ed., et al., Notable American Women:  A Biographical Dictionary, Vol. I, pp. 412-14 (USA:  Radcliffe College, 1971).

"HENRIETTA CROSMAN.

MISS HENRIETTA CROSMAN is a Southern woman, being born in Wheeling, West Virginia, September 22, 1871, and comes of good old stock.  She is the daughter of Major George H. Crosman, of the United States Army, and is a niece of the late Alexander Crosman, a commander in the navy, who graduated from Annapolis in the class with Admiral Dewey, and who lost his life in attempting to save two of his men.

Miss Crosman's first aspiration was to become an operatic star, and she studied both in Paris and Vienna for that purpose, but she lost her voice, and later studied for the dramatic stage.  Her first appearance was at the old Windsor Theatre, in New York, as Lily, in 'The White Slave,' under the management of its author, Mr. Bartley Campbell.  She was at this tiime seventeen years of age.  Mr. Daniel Frohman next engaged her for his Lyceum Theatre Company, and later she played Celia to to Miss Rehan's Rosalind in 'As You Like It.' under the management of Mr. Daly.  She hass played the leads with Robert Downing, and under A. M. Palmer played Gladys in 'The Rajah.'  Miss Crosman will also be remembered in 'Gloriana,' 'Madame Sans Gene,' 'One of our Girls,' and will Mr. William Gillette in 'Mr. Wilkinson's Widows,' under the management of Mr. Charles Frohman.  In all of these she has been seen with more or less success and is this season making a great hit in the title role of 'Mistress Nell,' and the critics have been loud in their praises of her in this role which is justly and truly merited by Miss Crosman."

Source:  "HENRIETTA CROSMAN" in Storms, A.D., ed., The Players Blue Book, p. 86 (Worcester, MA:  Sutherland & Storms, Publishers, 1901).

"FAMOUS ACTRESS DIED ON TUESDAY
-----

Henrietta Foster Crosman, leading actress at the early part of the century, died on Tuesday at the age of 83 at her home on Edgewood avenue, Pelham Manor.  She had been ill for several months.  The funeral will take place this afternoon at 2 o'clock at Walter B. Cooke Parlors, No. 117 W. 72d street, New York.  

Miss Crosman was known in private life as the wife of the late Maj. Maurice Campbell [illegible].  He was her business manager.  He died in 1942.

She came to Pelham in 1913 and made her home on Prospect avenue.  She was an enthusiastic member of the Manor Club and occasionally graciously contributed her professional talents to productions of the Drama Section.  Renowned for her beauty and charm, she reached stardom in 1900 when she played on Broadway in the leading role of 'Mistress Nell' at the Bijou Theatre.

She was born in Wheeling, W. Va.  Her mother was a relative of the composer, Stephen Foster, composer of 'Home, Sweet Home.'  She began her career in her home town at the age of nine.  She appeared in later life in several motion pictures.

With her at her death was her son, Maurice Campbell and his wife.  Another son by a former marriage, George Sedley Browne, is deceased."

Source:  FAMOUS ACTRESS DIED ON TUESDAY, The Pelham Sun, Nov. 2, 1944, Vol. 35, No. 29, p. 1, col. 2.  

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The Earliest Years of The Pelham Picture House

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The Pelham Picture house is a movie theater located at 175 Wolfs Lane in Pelham.  It opened in 1921 and has been claimed to be the oldest continuously-operating movie theater in Westchester County (although it has been closed temporarily for renovations and for other reasons over the decades).  The Pelham Picture House was named to the National Register of Historic Places on May 28, 2010.    

In the application for inclusion of the structure in the National Register of Historic Places, the Picture House is described as follows:

"The Pelham Picture House is significant in the area of architecture as an intact-representative example of an early-20th century movie theater in Westchester County.  The building typifies early-20th century commercial architecture of New York City commuter suburbs with its eclectic styling reflective of the Mission style.  Its stuccoed facade has angled end bays, a distinctive round-arched entrance, tiled hoods over the large windows on the end bays, and a wood open truss ceiling in the auditorium.  The theater is also significant in the area of entertainment as an important social and cultural resource for residents of the suburban village and town of Pelham.  The Pelham Picture House was built in 1921 by the Pelham Theater Corporation and has been in almost continuous operation since then as a movie theater.  Despite the remodeling of the lobby and minor changes to the auditorium, the theater retains a high level of integrity of location, setting, design, materials, craftsmanship, feeling, and association."

Source:  National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Pelham Picture House, 175 Wolf's Lane, Pelham, New York, Westchester, Code 119, 10803, Section 8, Page 1 ("Narrative Statement of Significance").  

The Picture House held its grand opening on September 10, 1921, featuring the silent film "Passing Thru," a comedy-drama starring Douglas MacLean and Madge Bellamy.  In the film:

"Bank teller Billy Barton shoulders the blame for a cash shortage for which Fred Kingston, a fellow employee, is responsible and is sentenced to prison.  On his way there, the train is wrecked and he escapes.  In the town of Culterton, he meets and falls in love with Mary Spivins, the bank president's daughter, and charms the populace by playing the mouth organ.  He obtains work as a farmhand with Silas Harkins, taking the farm mule as wages.  When Spivins orders Harkins arrested for assault, Billy learns it was a kick from the mule that laid out Spivins.  At the bank he finds Spivins bound while Fred and the clerk are robbing the safe; Billy is locked in the safe, and all efforts to save him prove futile until the wall is kicked out by the mule.  Through the efforts of Willie Spivins, the bank is dynamited, but all ends happily."

Source:  Munden, Kenneth White, ed., The American Film Institute of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Part 1, "Passing Thru," p. 592 (Berkeley, CA:  Univ. of California Press, 1997).  

When it first opened, the Picture House was billed as "Pelham's Newest Place of Amusement, Up to Date, Airy and Comfortable."  Only two days after it opened, the first paid advertisement for the Pelham Picture House appeared in the September 23, 1921 issue of the local newspaper, The Pelham Sun.  The theater showed silent films until August, 1929 when it showed "Nothing But the Truth" with Richard Dix and Helen Kane, its first "talkie."  For more about that event (and for information about an earlier movie theater that was the first to serve Pelham even before the Pelham Picture House), see:  Early Films in Pelham at "Happy Land," Then Talkies at Pelham Picture House, The Pelham Weekly, Vol. XIII, No. 10, Mar. 5, 2004, p. 12, col. 3.

When the Pelham Picture House faced possible demolition in 2001, it was acquired by Pelham Picture House Restoration, a not-for-profit whose goal is to restore the theater and expand its uses.  After the theater was acquired in 2005, it became The Picture House Regional Film Center and, over time, began to operate as a second-run theater for independent films while also showcasing classic and family films.  The Picture House Regional Film Center since has embraced the mission of providing Westchester residents not only with the opportunity to see such films, but also the opportunity to learn about the filmmaking process.  Additionally, it offers educational courses on such subjects as filmmaking, editing, animation, acting, directing, and screenwriting.

The Picture House in 2004, Shortly Before Restoration Began.

The role of the Picture House has, in effect, come full circle.  Few realize that in its first few years, the Picture House played a role in the education of Westchester residents in addition to its role as a cultural, social and entertainment center.  Indeed, the Picture House received attention less than two years after it opened when it began to show what were considered ground-breaking and awe-inspiring films by a local scientist who used time-lapse techniques and a cutting-edge "microscope camera" to reveal the growth of cells, the growth of chicken embryos inside their eggs, and the like.  That scientist used the Picture House to show his films to other scientists interested in his techniques.

The local scientist was Dr. Charles F. Herm who lived in the Village of North Pelham.  He developed what became known as the Herm Microscope that permitted the creation of time-lapse films that depicted microscopic growth in cell colonies and the like.  Dr. Herm used thd Picture House on occasion to screen his films for other scientists interested in his techniques.  Dr. Herm served for a time as the curator of physiology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. See, generally, First Movies of Nature's Actual Process in Creation of Life, Springfield Missouri Republican, Oct. 21, 1923, p. 23, cols. 1-6.  Herm had been working on his technology since at least 1919.  See Biological Pictures, N.Y. Times, Nov. 23, 1919. 

Below are transcriptions of two articles that appeared in The Pelham Sun describing the films that were shown at the Picture House by local scientist, Dr. C.F. Herm.  The second article has been particularly difficult to transcribe because the very top of the headline and much of the left edge of the article are missing and the quality of the image being transcribed is exceedingly poor.  Every effort has been made to determine what can be determined, however.

"Great Progress of Microscope Camera
-----
Many Close Studies of Nature Revealed in Films Shown to Private Audience Saturday
-----

A small but interested group of scientists and newspaper men attended a private showing of wonders revealed by the Herms' microscopc [sic] camera at Pelham Picture House on Satuorday [sic] afternoon.  Plant life and growth which first taken a single picture every ten minutes and then speeded up to a movie film showed the many phases of development and will be of great aid to botanists.

A film story entitled 'The Life of Robin Hood' showed the nest of a pair of robins with three eggs, from one of which Mr. Robin was industriously picking its way out out [sic] of the shell.  Its growth to a fledgling and final development to maturity was interesting.

A study of the blood circulation, and a closeup of the heart action and its method of blood pumping was weird and uncanny, but its aid to medical research is aparent [sic].

'Life on the Seashore' showed many forms of life invisible to the naked eye but in which a single drop of sea water when enlarged one million times by the microscopic camera became an arena of battle of an army of animalculae which showed amazing rapacity and agility.  

Dr. Herms the North Pelham scientist has been offered a lecture tour of the United States in whcih [sic] to present his microscopic camera revelations, but is understood to be somewhat reluctant to relinquish the scientific studies which he is pursuing."

Source:  Great Progress of Microscope Camera, The Pelham Sun, Nov. 2, 1923, p. 13, col. 2.

"[Illegible] Movies Produced by Dr. C.F. Herm
-----
Pelham Man Gives Exhibition to Group of Scientists at Pelham Picture House Last Saturday--Incubation of Fish Eggs Shown in All Stages--Window in Egg Shell Enables Taking of Picture of Chick Until First Heart Beat Is Shown.
-----

[An inspiring] exhibition of movie films [made] in Pelham at the studio of Dr. Charles F. Herm was given last Saturday afternoon before a group of noted scientists at the Pelham Picture House.  The exhibition was private being principally a demonstration of the marvelous [view] which can be afforded to science now that the new microscopic movie camera which Dr. Herm has perfected at his [?]th Street studios.  Dr. Herm was formerly connected with the American Museum of Natural History but of late [years] has devoted his time to the development of the microscopial movies which have created amazement wherever shown.  The New York Herald contained an interesting account of the exhibition, [a] remarkable film portraying the changes in the contents of an egg during the period of incubation from the start to the first heart beat of the live chicken.  This is accomplished with the use of a time clock which causes the camera to flash a strong light through a glass window inserted in the side of the egg.  The glass window is three quarters of an inch square, sealed in place by paraffin.  A picture is taken every time the light flashes and the [illegible] process of incubation is going on for thirty-three hours, a picture being taken every ten minutes

Taking microscopic pictures automatically, every ten seconds, every two minutes, or at any interval desired, this machine can also record the details of clinical reaction, the action of white corpuscles and the growth of new tissue in the healing of wounds, the building up of fine crystals from solutions, or the gradual changes inside the egg of a fish from the original clear fluid to the fully formed baby fish.  

Operated in an observation night and day for two and even three weeks, this camera has made records of scores of biological and chemical processes hitherto incompletely observed.  

To Film Cancer Action

One of the experiments soon to be tried is that of placing a group of healthy cells and a group of cancer cells together in a solution to show the attack by the malignant bodies.  The camera is a development from an earlier type used by Dr. Herm to assist Dr. Alexis Garrel in studying the protecting and healing action of white corpuscles in wounded tissue.  It is planned to use the instrument for the diagnosis of many obscure plant diseases.

One of the most interesting of these films was a microscopial study of the life cycle of the oyster.  This film is expected to have a practical bearing on the problem of rearing oysters artificially and using their eggs for seed to stock beds from which the oysters have disappeared.  The film was made under the direction of Dr. Wells, who has worked out a system of making oysters lay billions of eggs for the State as a means of restoring the breed in part of the Long Island coast and other places where spells of bad weather, parasites or other enemies have temporarily wiped out the shellfish.

Baby Oyster's Life Perilous

The oyster lays eggs by the thousands and scatters them in an unfertilized condition in the water.  The male oyster [sic - omitted] tion by the microscope.  The chance meeting of the two varieties of cells fertilizes the eggs and starts the young oyster on its career which is ended ninety-nine times out of a hundred by predatory minnows.  Those which escape, however, are still numerous enough to keep the oyster industry flourishing.

Dr. Wells improved on nature by opening the female oyster during the egg season and scooping out the eggs by the million and raising the eggs in water which has been intensively fertilized by the male.  The film showed the process from the beginning.  The floating sperm met the floating egg, attached itself to the egg membrane and finally pierced through to the interior and awakened the vital processes.  

Celia or whiplike processes soon appeared with which the new hatched oyster rowed itself through the water with great speed.  Just how the minute oyster forward propelled itself was not known before.  [Illegible]

Taking the pictures through the microscope at high speed and then showing them at low speed, however, made the rowing motion discernible.  After acquiring the whips which enabled it to charge in all directions for food the oyster gradually acquired one shell, then another, and its after life was uneventful.

Another film taken over a period of weeks by the patient camera was the biological history of an infusion of hay and water.  Bacteria first developed in such quantities as to cloud the water.  The water cleared, as the protozoa, the smallest animals, multiplied and ate up the excess bacteria.  Then appeared the rotifers, a little more highly organized, which live on protozoa.  But the rotifers fattened themselves on the protozoa only to become themselves the prey of various water worms.  Hundreds of amazing feats of gluttony were exhibited with one drop of water for an arena. . . . "

Source:  Movies Produced by Dr. C. F. Herm, The Pelham Sun, Sep. 21, 1923, p. 10, col. 1.  

In addition to the above, below I have included two examples of early advertisements that appeared in the local newspaper, The Pelham Sun, in the first months after the Pelham Picture House first opened in late 1921.  Each is followed by a citation to its source.

Pelham Picture House [Advertisement], The Pelham Sun, Dec. 29, 1922, p. 6, col. 3. 

Pelham Picture House [Advertisement], The Pelham Sun, Nov. 30, 1923, p. 3, col. 2. 

I have written extensively about The Pelham Picture House and its history over the years.  For a two examples, see:  

Wed., Nov. 9, 2005:  The Historic Pelham Picture House at 175 Wolfs Lane in Pelham, New York.  

Wed., Nov. 16, 2005:  New Theory Regarding Identity of the Architect of the Pelham Picture House Built in 1921.

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Jose Ferrer, an Academy Award Winner, Tony Award Winner, National Medal of Arts Winner, and Emmy Nominee, Got His Start on the Periwinkle Showboat Out of Pelham

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Few people know that in the midst of the Great Recession, Pelham residents created a Showboat named "Periwinkle" that moored in the Hutchinson River and plied the waters of Long Island Sound.  It traveled to yacht clubs and provided melodramas as entertainment.  One of the first members of the "Periwinkle Players" was Jose Ferrer who became one of the nation's most notable actors, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1950.  He also won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in a Broadway revival of the play in 1946.  (He also won a Tony for directing three plays in the same season in 1952 and won another Tony for his performance in The Shrike.  He also received the National Medal of Arts in 1985 before his death in 1992.

The article below from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle mentions his stage debut on the Showboat S.S. Periwinkle.

"He Might Be, but --
Jose Ferrer Went to Princeton, Stayed an Extra Year, Got job on Periwinkle and Now He's in 'Mamba's Daughters'

Jose Ferrer might now be an architect, might now be brooding over blueprints and fiddling with compasses and rulers instead of supporting Ethel Waters in 'Mamba's Daughters' if he hadn't flunked a course or two in his last year at Princeton.

A non sequitur?  Definitely not -- for while Ferrer was at Nassau he had ever intention of becoming an architect.  His academic derelictions, however, forced him to spend an extra year at college, and during that time he fell into the habit of whiling away his idle hours at the celebrated Triangle Club.  At first he only joined it to paint scenery, but after being pressed into service in a mob scene he began playing small roles, and by the time he received his belated diploma Ferrer had become the Club's leading man.

His architectural ambitions a thing of the past, Ferrer began hunting around for a theatrical job, and managed to land a position on the S.S. Periwinkle, a showboat that was breasting the waters of Long Island Sound.  The pay was $5 a week, and for that sum Ferrer spliced hawsers, polished brass, sold soft drinks during the intermissions, and played leading roles in the showboat's productions, all of which were hoot-and-hiss melodramas.

Ferrer's Broadway debut?  He made it the following Fall, in the Howard Lindsey-Damon farce, 'A Slight Case of Murder.'  From that he went into something called 'Stick in the Mud' -- smile bitterly when you say that, stranger -- and then went out to Chicago to lick his wounds and spend 26 weeks in a road company of 'Boy Meets Girl.'

Upon his return to New York he played a cynical son of Eli in Philip Barry's 'Spring Dance,' the baseball catcher in George Abbott's 'Brother Rat,' a befuddled striker in Guthrie McClintic's 'How To Get Tough About It,' and an important role in the Krimsky's 'In Clover.'

Came the beginning of this season, and Ferrer had three offers of jobs hurled at him.  Max Gordon wanted him for 'Sing Out the News,' the Playwright's Company wanted him for 'Knickerbocker Holiday,' and Guthrie McClintic had an idea that he'd like to see him playing Billy Gashade in 'Missouri Legend.'  Ferrer weighed the possibilities of each venture, then decided to go into 'Missiour Legend' -- an ill-advised move, as it later turned out, for although the play received good notices it closed after a six-week engagement.

Ferrer is married, incidentally, to Uta Hagen, the young actress who gave such a glowing performance a month or so ago in the short-lived 'The Happiest Days.'  Some day -- as soon as possible -- they would like to do a play together."

Source:  He Might Be, But -- Jose Ferrer Went to Princeton, Stayed an Extra Year, Got Job on Periwinkle and Now He's in 'Mamba's Daughters', The Brooklyn Eagle, May 7, 1939, Trend Section, p. 8, col. 7.

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