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Louisa Lane Drew

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Louisa Lane Drew
Drew as Ophelia circa 1840–48
Born
Louisa Lane

(1820-01-10)January 10, 1820
London, England
(United Kingdom)
DiedAugust 31, 1897(1897-08-31) (aged 77)
Larchmont, New York, U.S.A.
Resting placeMount Vernon Cemetery, (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
OccupationStage actress
Spouses
Henry B. Hunt
​
(m. 1836)​
George Mossop
​
​
(m. 1848; died 1849)​
​
​
(m. 1850; died 1862)​
ChildrenLouisa Drew
John Drew Jr.
Georgiana Drew
Sidney Drew (adopted)
Signature

Louisa Lane Drew (January 10, 1820 – August 31, 1897) was an English-born famous British American actress and theatre owner . manager and an ancestor of the prominent Barrymore-Drew acting family.[1] Professionally, she was often billed and known as Mrs. John Drew.

Life and career

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Mrs. John Drew (a.k.a. Louisa Lane Drew, 1820-1897), in role as Mrs. Malaprop in an all-star Broadway theatre revival of The Rivals in New York City, (1895)

Louisa Lane was born in London, England, (of the United Kingdom), the daughter of Eliza Trentner (1796–1887), a singer and actress, and Thomas Frederick Lane (1796–1825), an actor and theatre manager.[2][3][4][5] Louisa and her mother came to America when she was six years old. She proved to be a child prodigy playing five different adult roles within one play at the age of eight in 1828. As a young woman and strolling player, her theatrical travels took her, her mother and half sisters as far away as Jamaica in the West Indies islands chain and Caribbean Sea, by sailing ship, where one of her step-fathers died. She returned to the United States in 1847 to support the elder Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852).[2] She appeared in several plays with both him and his youngest son, John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), who would later engage in a conspiracy and stalk, later assassinate 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865, served 1861-1865), at the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865).[6]

She and her third husband John Drew (1827-1862), were the parents of Louisa Drew (Mendum) (1851–1888) an occasional or sometimes actress, John Drew Jr. (1853-1927), and Georgie Drew (Barrymore) (1856-1893). She had no known children from her first two marriages. The Drews owned the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they staged performances, and she managed the business. The Arch Street was a competitor theatre of the still standing Walnut Street Theatre, also in Philadelphia. After her husband's 1862 death, Mrs. Drew adopted a baby boy and named him Sidney Drew. She was the grandmother through her daughter Georgie of John Barrymore (1882-1942), Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), and Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), all prominent actors / actresses of the thespian Barrymore-Drew family. Her other grandchildren were Georgie Drew Mendum,[7][8][9] Edmund Mendum, Louise Drew, and S. Rankin Drew. She is also the great-great-grandmother of another generation of the extended acting family, current actress, Drew Barrymore (born 1975).

Near the end of her stage career, in May 1895, the aged Mrs Drew appeared in an all-star revival of Anglo-Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan's (1751-1816), The Rivals.[10][11] In 1897, an ailing Louisa Drew spent her last summer at her annual retreat at Larchmont, (Westchester County), in upstate New York, north of New York City, with her young grandsons Lionel and John Barrymore.

Death

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She died on August 31, 1897, at the age of 77 years at her country estate retreat in Larchmont, New York of Westchester County, and her body was initially interred at the Glenwood Cemetery[12] and eventually later moved to the Mount Vernon Cemetery, both cemeteries on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The historic Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia that the Barrymores owned and managed, was demolished in 1936, but the other Walnut Street Theatre still stands in Philadelphia, as one of the nation's oldest theatres.[13][14]

References

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  1. ^ Mrs. John Drew: North American Theatre Online[dead link‍]
  2. ^ a b Billboard June 6, 1942
  3. ^ Bank, Rosemarie K. (2000). "Drew, Louisa Lane (10 January 1820–31 August 1897), actress and theater manager". American National Biography. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1800328. ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  4. ^ Moses, Montrose J. (1906). Famous Actor-Families in America. p. 169.
  5. ^ Hoffman, Carol Stein (2001). The Barrymores: Hollywood's First Family. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813122137.
  6. ^ "BarrymoreFamily.com". www.barrymorefamily.com. Archived from the original on July 18, 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
  7. ^ The Unrecognized Drew by Talia Myers Retrieved September 9, 2014
  8. ^ Georgie Drew Mendum; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  9. ^ Limited, Alamy. "Stock Photo - Stage actress Georgie Drew Mendum, ca. 1910s". Alamy. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  10. ^ Hopper, DeWolf (1927). Once a Clown, Always a Clown: Reminiscences of DeWolf Hopper. Boston: Little Brown and Company. pp. 119–124.
  11. ^ Brown, Thomas Allston (1903). A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901. Vol. 3. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. pp. 69–70.
  12. ^ James, Edward T. (1971). Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Volume 1. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 522–523. ISBN 0-674-62734-2. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  13. ^ America's Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre by Andrew Davis c.2010 ..Retrieved July 2, 2015
  14. ^ America's Longest Rum:... c.2010 author Andrew Davis ISBN 9780271035789 ..Retrieved July 2, 2015
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