George W. Monroe

George W. Munroe (1857 – January 29, 1932) was an American actor and comedian who specialized in female impersonation. He was actively performing in American theaters from the 1880s into the early 1920s. He performed in both Broadway shows and in vaudeville. He was best known for his comic portrayals of gossipy old Irish women. The production then went on tour eventually arriving at Broadway's Union Square Theatre in January 1885. Munroe was still in the cast when it moved to the Fifth Avenue Theatre in March 1885.

In placing Munroe's career within the context of the broader history of drag during the 19th century, Laurence Senelick, writing in The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre, stated thatPuritans had attacked as 'sodomitical' the Elizabethan convention of boys playing girls, and it disappeared with the Restoration; but the accompanying tradition of the "dame" role – an elderly woman impersonated by a male comedian – survived on the American stage, carried on by Neil Burgess as the Widow Bedotte, George W. Munroe as various Irish biddies, Gilbert Sarony as Giddy Gusher, and the Russell Brothers as clumsy Irish maids. Munroe and Rice toured this play throughout the United States in vaudeville theaters in the latter half of the 1880s. The actor Andrew Mack became part of the Munroe and Rice team, and they continued to perform plays led by Munroe as Bridget through 1898; marking a 12-year-long span for the Munroe and Rice vaudeville team. Aurora Borealis in Anne Caldwell's The Top o' th' World at the Majestic Theatre in 1907–1908; Miss Tiny Daley in The Mimic World of 1908; Pansy Burns in Raymond Hubbell and Glen MacDonough's The Midnight Sons (1909, Broadway Theatre); Patricia Flynn in A. Baldwin Sloane's The Never Homes (1911, Broadway Theatre); and Mrs. Honoria O'Day in Lew Fields' production of The Sun Dodgers (1912, Broadway Theatre).

Munroe also starred in the musical revue The Passing Show in 1914 and 1915. He performed regularly in both Broadway and regional theaters owned by the Shubert family from 1911 until his retirement from the stage in 1922.