Jane Peyton
| Jane Peyton | |
|---|---|
Jane Peyton c.1904
|
|
| Born |
October 26, 1870 Spring Green, Wisconsin |
| Died |
September 8, 1946 (aged 75) Auburn, New York |
| Other names | Jennie Van Norman |
| Occupation | American actor |
Jane Peyton (October 26, 1870 – September 8, 1946) was an American lead and supporting actress whose career did not commence until she was nearly thirty. During her time on stage she appeared in several long running Broadway plays and successful road tours. Peyton was perhaps best remembered for performances in The Ninety and Nine, The Earl of Pawtucket, The Heir to the Hoorah, The Three of Us and The Woman. Once the wife of actor Guy Bates Post, Peyton retired after fourteen years on stage when she married the writer Samuel Hopkins Adams.
Jennie Van Norman was born in Spring Green, Wisconsin, the daughter of George Bosworth Van Norman and Elizabeth Atkinson. Her father served as a sergeant and later drill master with Company H, Wisconsin 8th Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. After the war he purchased a small meat packing company in Spring Green that would eventually expand to include branches in Milwaukee and Chicago and employ over 200 workers. Peyton's mother, a native of Maine, died on October 24, 1875, in Milwaukee at the age of thirty-seven. Peyton's father next married Cornelia Elizabeth Parsons on November 4, 1876. She died on April 8, 1878, leaving Van Norman to marry Minnie A. Booth, in Milwaukee on November 4, 1878.
In her youth Peyton gave recitals and sang at social and church gatherings and at G.A.R. functions hosted by her father. She married a local physician after attending Northwestern University and for some years hence her activities would routinely merit a mention in newspaper society pages. With the encouragement of Otis Skinner, in the summer of 1900 she left her family and comfortable life behind and departed for New York for a career in theatre.
Peyton's debut was a minor rôle in Prince Otto, a romantic melodrama Skinner adapted from the book by Robert Louis Stevenson. Prince Otto opened at Wallack's Theatre on September 3, 1900, and closed after five weeks with a run of 40 performances. She played Lady Fitz-Herbert in Tom Moore, a fictionalized romantic drama about a young Thomas More (Andrew Mack) by Theodore Burt Sayre. The play opened on August 31, 1901, at the Herald Square Theatre, and closed on October 5 after 40 performances. Peyton was the adventuress Kate Van Dyke in Ramsay Morris' The Ninety and Nine, a melodrama loosely based on the hymn by Ira D. Sankey. The Ninety and Nine was presented at the Academy of Music on October 7, 1902, and closed after a run of 128 performances on January 24, 1903. On August 27, 1903, at the Republic Theatre in Rochester, New York she opened with William Collier, Sr. in Eugéne Presbrey's society comedyPersonal. The play began a 38-run engagement at New York's Bijou Theatre the following week.
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