Eva Le Gallienne
Eva Le Gallienne (1899 – 1991) was a theatrical actress, producer and director during the first half of the 20th century. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maet... Read more
Eva Le Gallienne (1899 – 1991) was a theatrical actress, producer and director during the first half of the 20th century. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 in a 1914 production of Maurice Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna. The next year Le Gallienne sailed for New York, and became a Broadway star in several plays including Arthur Richman's Not So Long Ago (1920) and Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1921). Disillusioned by the state of commercial theatre in the 1920s, Le Gallienne founded the Civic Repertory Theatre in the former Fourteenth Street Theatre in Manhattan, New York. She was backed by the financial support of one of her lovers, Alice DeLamar, a wealthy Colorado gold mine heiress, whose support was instrumental in the success of the repertory theatre movement in the U.S.