Blanche Yurka
| Blanche Yurka | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Blanch Jurka June 18 or June 19, 1887 (varying sources) St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota |
| Died | June 6, 1974 (aged 86) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1910–67 |
| Spouse(s) | Ian Keith (1922–1926; divorced) |
Blanche Yurka (born Blanch Jurka; June 18/June 19, 1887 – died June 6, 1974) was a celebrated American stage and film actress and director.
Yurka was an opera singer, with minor roles at the Metropolitan Opera, before she became a stage actress. She made her Broadway debut in 1906 and established herself as a character actor of the classical stage, also appearing in several films of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to her many stage roles, which included Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore's Hamlet, she was an occasional director and playwright. She remained active in theater and film until the late 1960s. Her most famous film role was Madame Defarge in MGM's version of A Tale of Two Cities (1935), but she was also the compassionate aunt in The Song of Bernadette (1944). Another memorable role was as Zachary Scott's widowed mother in The Southerner (1945).
Born Blanch Jurka, apparently in St. Paul, Minnesota, she was the fourth of five children of Karolína and Antonín Jurka, ethnic Hungarian Roman Catholic emigrants from Bohemia. Her father was a teacher and librarian.
She inherited her father's artistic and scholarly interests, including a love of music and acting. She finished grade school before her father lost his job teaching Czech language at the Jefferson School in St. Paul. He found a new position with the Czech Benevolent Society in New York and moved the family to the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1900.
Her parents used their modest income to provide Blanche with singing lessons in New York even before she entered high school (1901–03). Her vocal talent attracted the admiration of composer and singer Harry Burleigh, and she won a scholarship at age 15 to study voice and ballet at the Metropolitan Opera School (1903–05).
She appeared in an amateur Czech-language production of Michael William Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl and made her Metropolitan Opera stage debut in the Christmas 1903 production of Wagner’s Parsifal - the first staged performance of the opera outside of Bayreuth - appearing as a flower girl and as the Grail-bearer. In his review of the premiere performance, New York Tribune music critic Henry Krehbiel singled out her contribution: "And while pointing out the beauty of the work of the principals, it is a pleasant privilege to lay a wreath at the feet of the little lady who carried the Grail with such reverent and touching consecration to her sacred duties."'. She continued her studies at the Met Opera School but was dismissed when she injured her voice singing the role of Leonora in Verdi's Il Trovatore in an amateur production. She transferred to the Institute for Musical Art (1905–07), forerunner of the Juilliard School but was dismissed from there for the same reason. Having lost her chance at an operatic career, she took the Institute director's suggestion and tried for a career on the theater stage.
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