Minnie Maddern Fiske - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

MINNIE MADDERN FISKE (1865-), American actress, was born in New Orleans, the daughter of Thomas Davey. As a child she played, under her mother's name of Maddern, with several well-known actors. In 1882 she first appeared as a "star," but in 1890 she married Harrison Grey Fiske and was absent from the stage for several years. In 1893 she reappeared in Hester Crewe, a play written by her husband, and afterwards acted a number of Ibsen's heroines, and in Becky Sharp, a dramatization of Thackeray's Vanity Fair. In 1901 she opened, in opposition to the American theatrical "trust," an independent theatre in New York, the Manhattan. She won a considerable reputation in the United States as an emotional actress.