Maxine Elliott
| Maxine Elliott | |
|---|---|
Maxine Elliott, circa 1917.
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| Born |
Jessie McDermott February 5, 1868 Rockland, Maine, U.S. |
| Died | March 5, 1940 (aged 72) Cannes, France |
| Occupation | |
Maxine Elliott (February 5, 1868 – March 5, 1940) was an American actress and businesswoman.
Born Jessie McDermott on February 5, 1868 to Thomas Dermot, a sea captain and Adelaide Hill, she had one sister Gertrude and at least two brothers, one of whom was a sailor and lost at sea in the Indian Ocean. By age 15 in 1883, Jessie was seduced and made pregnant by a 25-year-old male whom she may have married underage according to her niece's biography. She miscarried or lost the baby. This incident left a psychological wound on Jessie for the rest of her life. What became of this first husband is unknown. Jessie adopted her stage name Maxine Elliott in 1889, making her first appearance in 1890 in The Middleman. In 1895, she got her first big break when Augustin Daly hired her as a supporting actress for his star player, Ada Rehan. After divorcing her first husband, Elliott married comedian Nat C. Goodwin in 1898. The two starred together at home and abroad in such hits as Nathan Hale and The Cowboy and the Lady.
In a production of The Merchant of Venice, she negotiated a contract for $200 and one-half of the profits over $20,000. She was billed alone when Charles B. Dillingham's production of Her Own Way opened on Broadway on September 28, 1903. From then on, Elliott was a star. When the production moved to London in 1905, King Edward VII asked that she be presented to him. Her younger sister, Gertrude, was married to the English actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.
Goodwin eventually divorced Elliott in 1908. Around this time she became friendly with financier J. P. Morgan. Some biographers of Morgan claim the seventy-year-old Morgan had a sexual relationship with Elliott but no evidence substantiates these rumours. Assuredly Morgan gave her financial advice of all sorts and she became a rich woman because of this advice. Shortly after divorcing Goodwin, she returned to New York City and in 1908 opened her own theater, The Maxine Elliott, located on Thirty-Ninth Street just off Broadway. She was both owner and manager, and, at the time, the only woman in the United States running her own theater. Her first production was The Chaperon. Elliott experimented with acting in silent films in 1913. In that year, she was in Slim Driscoll, Samaritan, When the West Was Young and A Doll for the Baby, but she soon returned to Britain. She started dating tennis star, Anthony Wilding, in 1913, a man who was over 15 years her junior.
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