Amy Busby (January 19, 1872 – July 13, 1957) was an American actress.
Amy Busby | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Amy Busby January 19, 1872 Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| Died | July 13, 1957 (aged 85)[1] |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouses | Eugene Howard Lewis
(m. 1897; died 1907)Theodore Olynthna Douglas
(m. 1908; died 1920)John James Roy
(m. 1923; sep. 1938) |
| Children | 5 |
Early life
editAmy Busby was born in Rochester, New York, the daughter of Thomas Mark Busby and Eliza Ann Bennett Busby.
Career
editAmy Busby went to New York City as a teenager, hoping for a career on the stage. Described as "a vastly pretty woman",[2] she was a protegee of actress Helen Barry for a time, and later was engaged by Stuart Robson and William H. Crane for their companies.[3] She appeared in London Assurance, Victor Durand, The Pembertons, The Henrietta, She Stoops to Conquer, Is Marriage a Failure? The American Minister, On Probation, Brother John, For Money, The Senator, and Arms and the Man.[4] Busby's Broadway credits included The Fatal Card (1894), Madame (1896), The Law of the Land (1896), and Secret Service (1896).[5]
Theatrical producer William Berkeley Enos took the professional name "Busby Berkeley" from Amy Busby, who was his parents' friend.[6] Sam Insull met his wife, actress Gladys Wallis, at an 1897 dinner party hosted by Amy Busby and Eugene H. Lewis.[7]
In the late 1880s Between The Acts, cigarettes ran an advertising campaign featuring actors and actresses on coloured lithograph collectors cards. Amy Busby was featured on one in a series issued from 1880 - 1892.[8]
Personal life
editAmy Busby was rumoured to be engaged to actor William Gillette, but they did not wed.[9] She married several times. In 1892[10] she married English actor Aubrey Boucicault;[11] they divorced in 1893.[12] Her next marriage was to lawyer Eugene Howard Lewis, in 1897;[13] they had three daughters (Amy, Rosamund, and Eugenia) before his death in 1907.[14] She married again in 1908, to mining engineer Theodore Olynthna Douglas;[15] they had two daughters (Theodora and Ruth) before he died in 1920.[16] She was married a final time in 1923, to a man named John James Roy; they separated by 1938. Late in life, she enjoyed baseball as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.[1] Amy Busby died in 1957, aged 85 years, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.[17][18]
References
edit- ^ a b c "Amy Busby Plays Full Career of Life" The Pocono Record (July 16, 1957): 15. via Newspapers.com
- ^ "Our Gallery of Players CXLV: Amy Busby" The Illustrated American (October 20, 1894): 506.
- ^ "Amy Busby" Opera Glass (October 1895): 147-148.
- ^ "Amy Busby" Gallery of Players (Illustrated American Publishing Company 1894): 12.
- ^ Gerald Martin Bordman, Thomas S. Hischak, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (Oxford University Press 2004): 554-555. ISBN 9780195169867
- ^ Jeffrey Spivak, Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley (University Press of Kentucky 2011): 7. ISBN 9780813126432
- ^ Forrest McDonald, Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon (Beard Books 2004): 77. ISBN 9781587982439
- ^ "Amy Busby, from the Actors and Actresses series (N342), Type 4, issued by Thomas H. Hall Tobacco to promote Between the Acts Cigarettes". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- ^ "Miss Amy Busby Explains" New York Times (March 17, 1897): 7.
- ^ "To Be Married by the Mayor" Chicago Daily Tribune (January 9, 1892): 3.
- ^ Mary C. Francis, "The 'Alimony Poor'" The Scrap Book (August 1907): 383.
- ^ "Victory Bateman Exonerated" New York Times (December 15, 1893): 3.
- ^ "Miss Amy Busby Married" Washington Post (March 20, 1897): 7.
- ^ "Obituary Note" Electrical Review (March 9, 1907): 433.
- ^ "Amy Busby Lewis Married" New York Times (October 8, 1908): 9.
- ^ John William Leonard, William Frederick Mohr, Herman Warren Knox, Frank R. Holmes, 0infield Scott Downs, eds., Who's Who in New York (City and State) (Who's Who Publications 1918): 308.
- ^ "Amy Busby, Star of the '90s" Washington Post (July 16, 1957): B2.
- ^ "Amy Busby Dies; Retired Actress" New York Times (July 15, 1957): 15.
External links
edit- Amy Busby at IMDb
- Amy Busby on IBDB.
- Photographs of Amy Busby in the New York Public Library's Digital Collections online.