Ina Claire
| Ina Claire | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Ina Fagan October 15, 1893 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | February 21, 1985 (aged 91) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Mount Olivet Cemetery |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1909–1954 (stage) 1915–1943 (film) |
| Spouse(s) | James Whittaker (1919-1925) John Gilbert (1929-1931) William R. Wallace (1939-1976) (his death) |
Ina Claire (October 15, 1893 – February 21, 1985) was an American stage and film actress.
Claire was born Ina Fagan in 1893 in Washington, D.C. After the death of her father, Claire began doing imitations of fellow boarders in the boarding house where she and her mother were forced to live. Claire's mother took her out of school in the eighth grade, and she used her mother's maiden name when she began her career appearing in vaudeville. In 1909, she appeared in a vaudeville act entitled "Dainty Mimic", which include an imitation of actor Harry Lauder. A booking agent described this act as "one of the best single Acts" he had seen that season and remarked that "She possesses a great deal of magnatism [sic] and is a big hit."
She performed on Broadway in the musicals Jumping Jupiter and The Quaker Girl (both 1911) and Lady Luxury, and starred on Broadway in plays by some of the leading comic dramatists of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including the roles of Jerry Lamarr in Avery Hopwood's The Gold Diggers (1919), Mrs. Cheyney in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925), Lady George Grayston in W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters (1928), and Enid Fuller in George Kelly's Fatal Weakness. Between 1929 and 1931, she was married to screen actor John Gilbert, her second husband.
Claire later became identified with the high comedies of S. N. Behrman, and created the female leads in three of his plays: Biography (1934), End of Summer (1936), and The Talley Method (1941). Behrman wrote of Claire's performance in one of Behrman's comedies: "Her readings were translucent, her stage presence encompassing. The flick of an intonation deflated pomposity. She never missed a nuance." Critic J. Brooks Atkinson praised Claire for her "refulgent comic intelligence". Her last stage appearance was as Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer in T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk (1954).
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