Wikipedia

Grace Palotta

Grace Palotta (c. 1870 – 21 February 1959) was an Austrian-born actress and writer. She was a Gaiety girl in London, and toured in Australia several times between 1895 and 1918.

Grace Palotta
A handcolored portrait of a young white woman, seated, holding a closed parasol; she is wearing a large plumed hat and a blue gown with white lace sleeves
Bornabout 1870
Vienna
Died21 February 1959
London
Other namesGrace Parlotta
Occupation(s)Actress, Gaiety girl, writer

Early life

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Palotta was born in Vienna.[1] She explained of her origins that her mother was "French and English", her father "Hungarian and Italian".[2] She studied at the Royal Academy of Music.[1]

Career

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Grace Parlotta, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 8) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes, ca. 1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Palotta made her stage debut in London in 1893.[1] She spent four years working for George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre,[3] where she often played roles that highlighted her comic timing, her beauty, and her accented English,[4][5][6] though her singing voice was not strong.[7] She also performed at the Tivoli Theatre in London.[2] She sometimes played breeches roles, including the Prince in a pantomime based on Cinderella, and the principal boy role in Aladdin.[8] She toured in the United States in 1904,[9] and with the Hugh J. Ward company in Australia,[10][11][12] and New Zealand,[13] several times, from 1895 to 1918. Palotta had roles in The Shop Girl, All Abroad, Trial by Jury, The Circus Girl,[14] The Messenger Boy, A Runaway Girl, A Gentleman in Khaki,[15] Florodora,[7][16] Aladdin,[8] The New Clown,[17] and The Man from Mexico.[18]

Palotta was a popular subject of picture postcards.[19] She also wrote light articles and stories for periodicals.[5][20][21][22]

Australian composer May Summerbelle dedicated a 1904 waltz titled 'Beaux Yeux' (Beautiful Eyes) to grace. Her photograph appears on the cover artwork.[23]

Personal life

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Palotta married Henry Samuel Kingston in 1888, in East Dereham, Norfolk.[24] She lived in Melbourne during World War I. She lived in Vienna and Jersey in her later years.[25][26] She died at a nursing home in Notting Hill, London in 1959, in her late eighties.[27]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Miss Grace Palotta". The Strand Musical Magazine. 3: 223. 1896.
  2. ^ a b "Plays and Players: The Women of the Tivoli". Sunset. 15: 396–397. August 1905.
  3. ^ Hamilton, Lord Frederick Spencer (1921). Here, There and Everywhere. George H. Doran Company. pp. 82–83. ISBN 978-1-4142-4702-1.
  4. ^ Monckton, Lionel; Caryll, Ivan; Hicks, Seymour; Nicholls, Harry (1898). A Runaway Girl: New Musical Play. Chappell.
  5. ^ a b Palotta, Grace (1900). "My Friend the Prince". The Era Almanack: 58–59.
  6. ^ Casamajor, George H. (October 1901). "Beauty on the London Stage". Cosmopolitan. 31: 580–581.
  7. ^ a b "The Theatre Brought Home". The Australasian Pastoralists' Review. 10: 742. January 15, 1901.
  8. ^ a b "Grace Palotta". Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954). 1914-01-18. p. 21. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  9. ^ "Vaudeville". Chicago Tribune. 1904-11-27. p. 27. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ "A Third of the Ward-Willoughby-Palotta Combination". The Sketch. 57: 5. March 6, 1907.
  11. ^ Rambler (1938-05-07). "Melbourne's Gay Nineties; A Collection of Memories". The Age. p. 35. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Melodious Memories; Grace Palotta Trip to Chinatown". The Age. 1939-10-07. p. 10. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ "Miss Grace Palotta in Nurse's Guise". Southland Times. 25 April 1911. p. 2. Retrieved April 13, 2021 – via Papers Past.
  14. ^ Wearing, J. P. (2013-11-21). The London Stage 1890-1899: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Scarecrow Press. pp. 231, 279, 300, 319. ISBN 978-0-8108-9282-8.
  15. ^ Wearing, J. P. (2013-12-05). The London Stage 1900-1909: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Scarecrow Press. pp. 3, 17. ISBN 978-0-8108-9294-1.
  16. ^ Tallis, Michael; Tallis, Joan (2006). The Silent Showman: Sir George Tallis, the Man Behind the World's Largest Entertainment Organisation of the 1920s. Wakefield Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-1-86254-735-3.
  17. ^ "Miss Grace Palotta". Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1919). 1907-01-23. p. 34. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  18. ^ "'The Man from Mexico'". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1906-05-14. p. 4. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ^ Kelly, V. (2004). "Beauty and the market: Actress postcards and their senders in early twentieth-century Australia" New Theatre Quarterly, 20(78), 99-116.
  20. ^ Palotta, Grace (1 November 1907). "In Praise of Simplicity". The Lone Hand. 2: 88–90.
  21. ^ Palotta, Grace (1 August 1907). "The Woman's Way". The Lone Hand. 1: 400–403.
  22. ^ Palotta, Grace (1 May 1907). "The Stage Kiss". Lone Hand. 1: 103–104 – via Trove.
  23. ^ Summerbelle, May, Beaux yeux [music] : waltz / composed by May Summerbelle (in no linguistic content), W.H. Paling & Co., Ltd
  24. ^ Norfolk Record Office; Norwich, Norfolk, England; Norfolk Church of England Registers; Reference: PD 86/27; banns of marriage dated certified September 2, 1888. via Ancestry.
  25. ^ "Actress Coming in Orcades; Many Friends Here". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1939-02-02. p. 26. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ^ "Grace Palotta". Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954). 1928-06-03. p. 28. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  27. ^ "Grace Palotta". The Guardian. 1959-02-23. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
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