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Lillian Russell (December 4, 1860 – June 6, 1922) was an American actress and singer.

Born Helen Louise Leonard in Clinton, Iowa, Lillian Russell became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.

Contents 1 Life and career 1.1 Early career 1.2 Later years 2 Legacy 3 References 4 External links

Russell's father was newspaper publisher Charles E. Leonard, and her mother was the feminist Cynthia Leonard, the first woman to run for mayor of New York City. Her family moved to Chicago in 1865, where she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart and the Park Institute.

At the age of 18, she and her mother left for New York where Leonard studied singing under Leopold Damrosch. She joined the chorus of a touring production of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore in 1879 and two weeks later married the orchestra leader, Harry Braham.

In November 1879, having changed her name to "Lillian Russell," she made her first appearance on Broadway at Tony Pastor's Casino Theater, billed as "an English Ballad Singer."[1] Pastor, known as the father of vaudeville, was responsible for introducing many well-known performers. Russell immediately gained popularity, and she toured with Pastor and later starred in some of his comic operas. In the early 1880s Russell starred in the Bijou Opera House, on Broadway, and elsewhere in Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera roles, such as the title role in Patience, Aline in The Sorcerer.

Russell married her second husband, composer Edward Solomon, in 1884 (a year after their daughter was born) and travelled with him to England. There she starred in Solomon's Polly and Grundy and Solomon's Pocahontas. While in London, she was cast in the title role of Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida, but she was dismissed during rehearsals. She then returned to America, touring in Solomon's comic operas. They had a daughter named Dorothy. In 1886, Solomon was arrested for bigamy. Russell filed for divorce in 1893 and joined the J. C. Duff Opera Company, with which she toured for two years. When Alexander Graham Bell introduced long distance telephone service on May 8, 1890, Russell's voice was the first carried over the line. From New York City, Russell sang "Sabre Song" to audiences in Boston and Washington, D.C..

She married actor John Haley Augustin Chatterton (known as "Giovanni Perugini") in 1894, but they soon separated. Russell continued starring with various opera companies, including the McCaull Opera Company and later her own company. For many years, Russell was the foremost singer of operettas in America. Her voice, stage presence and beauty were the subject of a great deal of fanfare in the news media, and she was extremely popular with audiences. Actress Marie Dressler observed, "I can still recall the rush of pure awe that marked her entrance on the stage. And then the thunderous applause that swept from orchestra to gallery, to the very roof." Among Russell's best-known roles were in Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience and The Sorcerer and Gilbert's The Mountebanks, Alfred Cellier's Dorothy as well as Jacques Offenbach's The Princess of Trebizonde, The Brigands, The Grand Duchess, and The Queen of Brilliants.

For forty years, Russell was also the companion of businessman "Diamond Jim" Brady, who showered her with extravagant gifts of diamonds and gemstones and supported her extravagant lifestyle.

In 1899, Russell joined the Weber and Fields's Music Hall, where she starred in their entertainments until 1904. Composer John Stromberg had written several hit songs for Russell. Before the production of Twirly Whirly, he delayed delivery of her new solo, insisting it was not ready. Days before the first rehearsal, Stromberg took his own life, and the folded manuscript for a sentimental ballad entitled "Come Down Ma Evenin' Star" was found in his coat pocket. The touching ballad became the signature song of Russell's later years and is the only one that she is known to have recorded.

After 1904, Russell began to have vocal difficulties, but she did not retire from the stage. Instead, she switched to non-musical comedies, touring under the management of James Brooks, but she eventually returned to singing, appearing in burlesque, variety and other entertainments. In 1912, she married her fourth husband, Alexander Pollock Moore, owner of the Pittsburgh Leader, and mostly retired from the stage.

In later years, Russell wrote a newspaper column, advocated women's suffrage (as her mother had), and was a popular lecturer, advocating an optimistic philosophy of self-help. During World War I, she recruited for the U.S. Marine Corps and raised money for the war effort. Russell became a wealthy woman, and during the Actors' Equity strike of 1919, she made a major donation of money to sponsor the formation of the Chorus Equity Association by the chorus girls at the Ziegfeld Follies.

According to the March 17, 1922 edition of the New York Times, Russell traveled aboard the R.M.S. Aquitania from Southhampton, England, to the Port of New York on the March 11 to March 17 crossing. "[She] established a precedent by acting as Chairman of the ship's concert, the first woman, so far as the records show, to preside at an entertainment on shipboard."

Lillian Russell died on June 6, 1922, shortly after a completing a fact-finding mission to Europe on behalf of President Warren Harding. She was buried with full military honors. She is interred in a private mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A summer stock theater is named after Russell in her hometown of Clinton, Iowa.[2].

• Brief biography of Russell
• Profile of Russell and description of papers in library's collection
• Another profile of Russell
• A Bio-Bibliography
• Fields, Armond "Lillian Russell: A Biography of 'America's Beauty'" (McFarland & Company 1998) ISBN 0-7864-0509-0
• Brough, James H., "Miss Lillian Russell: A Novel Memoir" (NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, 1978) ISBN 0-07-008120-4
• Morell, Parker. "Lillian Russell: The Era of Plush" (NY: Random House, 1940).
• O'Connor, Richard. "Duet in Diamonds: The Flamboyant Saga of Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady in America's Gilded Age" (NY: Putnam, 1972).
• Information about Russell's stage career
• Chronology of marriages and other personal events
• Filmography of Russell's roles in silent films
• Biographical notes on Russell
• Article on Russell's involvement in the women's suffrage movement

• Image galleries
• IBDB page on 1940 film about Russell
• Photographs of Russell
• List of (some of) Russell's Broadway credits
• Interview of Russell from 1907
• Interview of Russell from 1914
• "Lillian Russell Flaunts Good Taste 1901"
• "Famous Tightlacers" Photos of Russell