Sadie Martinot
| Sadie Martinot | |
|---|---|
Sadie Martinot, c. 1880s
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| Born |
Sarah Frances Marie Martinot August 19, 1861 New York City |
| Died | May 7, 1923 (aged 61) Ogdensburg, New York |
| Occupation | Actress and singer |
Sadie Martinot (August 19, 1861 – May 7, 1923) was an American actress and soprano singer who performed on stage in dramas, musical comedy and comic opera. Her career began at the age fifteen as Cupid in Ixion; or, the Man at the Wheel and, but for a few years absence, she remained active on stage in America and abroad until 1908. She was the first to play Hebe in an American production of H.M.S. Pinafore, the first Katrina in the comic opera Rip Van Winkle and the first to play the title role in an English adaptation of the operetta Nanon. Late in her life Martinot would fall victim to mental illness and spend her last few years confined to psychiatric institutions.
She was born Sarah Frances Marie Martinot in New York City on December 19, 1861, the daughter of William Alexander and Mary Lydia (née Randall) Martinot. Her father was the son of John P. Martinot, a French immigrant who founded a successful wholesale firm dealing in imported silk products. William Martinot worked for his father's firm and had served in the American Civil War and later as a New York City police detective who once brought charges of corruption against a NYPD police captain. Her mother was said to be of the family that once owned Randall's Island in Manhattan. Before taking to the stage at 15, Martinot was educated at area public schools and the Ursuline Convent in New Rochelle, New York. Some accounts have her birth name as Sally Martin or Sally Eagan, the daughter of an Irish-American single mother who worked hard to ensure her a good education. In March 1894 Martinot stated to the press that, though she would have been proud to have been raised under such a circumstance, she in fact was the daughter of Mary and William Alexander Martinot.
In 1876 Martinot joined Manhattan's Eagle Theatre as a $5-a-week walk-on player. Her debut came about in late August of that year when an injury prevented chorus girl Maude Branscombe from performing Cupid in that evening's performance of F. C. Burnand's Ixion. The next year she joined Adah Richmond's company at $18 a-week, touring in Chow Chow: or, A Tale of Pekin, in which she performed a popular imitation of Marie Aimee, singing Pretty as a Picture Later came a Christmas 1877 engagement at the Boylston Museum, Boston and a performance the following year at the city's Americus Club that led to an offer to join the Boston Museum stock company. That November she appeared at the Boston Museum in the original American production of Gilbert and Sullivan'sH.M.S. Pinafore and, over the following few seasons, rose to be their leading soubrette. Martinot left The Boston Museum after actor-manager Dion Boucicault offered her a substantial raise to join him in England and her request for a modest salary adjustment was rejected by the Museum's management.
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