Florence Kahn (actress)

Florence Kahn (Lady Beerbohm) (born March 3, 1878 in Memphis, Tennessee – died January 13, 1951 in Rapallo, Italy) was a Jewish American actress and the first wife of caricaturist and parodist Sir Max Beerbohm.

Her father Louis Kahn was a German-Jewish immigrant from Baden who married Pauline Freiberg, a member of a prominent Cincinnati family. He founded the dry goods firm of Kahn & Freiberg in Memphis in 1860 and was also an amateur Shakespeare scholar. Florence's brother Samuel Kahn became an editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. She attended the Clara Conway Institute, a private school in Memphis, and had dancing lessons before going to a 'finishing school', which she left in June 1894. In 1895 she studied drama at Miss Grace Llewellyn's studio in Memphis. She also attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

Florence Kahn appeared in the first American performance of Maeterlink's Intérieur in February 1896. On graduating in April 1897 she joined a touring company as the female lead in The Girl I Left Behind Me. In Spring 1898 she played Lady de Winter in The Musketeers with Paul Gilmore in New York, and later on tour.

Kahn appeared in New York in El Gran Galeoto by José Echegaray at the Carnegie Lyceum New York City in 1899, and went on to become a well known Broadway actress noted for her roles in the plays of Ibsen. She played Hilda in the first performance of When We Dead Awaken in America which took place at the Carnegie Lyceum on January 16, 1900. She also appeared in The Master Builder (1900) as Hilda Wangel.

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