Jane Cowl

Jane Cowl
Jane Cowl circa 1913
Born	Jane Bailey December 14, 1883 Boston, Massachusetts
Died	June 22, 1950(1950-06-22) (aged 66) Santa Monica, California
Other names	"Crying Jane" C. R. Avery
Occupation	Actress, playwright
Years active	1903–1950
Spouse(s)	Adolph Klauber

Jane Cowl (December 14, 1883 – June 22, 1950) was an American film and stage actress and playwright "notorious for playing lachrymose parts". Actress Jane Russell was named in Cowl's honor.

Cowl was born as Jane Bailey in Boston, Massachusetts to Charles Bailey and Grace Avery. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York. And she also took some courses at Columbia University.

She made her Broadway debut in New York City in Sweet Kitty Bellairs in 1903. Her first leading role was Fanny Perry in 1909 in Leo Ditrichstein's Is Matrimony a Failure?, produced by David Belasco, and then she played stock. This was followed by The Gamblers (1910), her first great success, and by Within the Law (1912), Common Clay, and other successes (New International Encyclopedia). She was known for her interpretation of Shakespearean roles, playing Juliet, Cleopatra and Viola on Broadway. She made Broadway history by playing Juliet over 1000 consecutive performances in 1923; critic George Jean Nathan declared her "not ... the best Juliet that I have seen, but she is by all odds the most charming". Cowl's affecting performances led her to be described as having a "voice with a tear." Biographer Charles Higham admired Cowl's "marvelous bovine eyes and exquisite genteel catch in the voice ..."

In 1930 Cowl appeared with a young Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway production of Benn W. Levy's play Art and Mrs. Bottle, and in 1934 she created the role of Lael Wyngate in S. N. Behrman's Rain from Heaven opposite actor John Halliday. Noting the challenges posed by Behrman's heightened dialogue, critic Gilbert Gabriel noted approvingly that their scenes together were "models of aristocratic parlando." She also starred in Noël Coward's Easy Virtue.