Louisa Lane Drew

Louisa Lane Drew (January 10, 1820 – August 31, 1897) was an English-born British American actress and theatre owner-manager, and an ancestor of the prominent Barrymore-Drew acting family. Professionally, she was often billed and known as Mrs. John Drew, while her acting company would refer to her as The Duchess.

Lane was the manager of the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a position that she held for 31 years. Under her direction, the theater became one of the United States' most successful stock companies.

Early life Mrs. John Drew (a.k.a. Louisa Lane Drew, 1820–1897), in role as Mrs. Malaprop in an all-star Broadway theatre revival of The Rivals in New York City, (1895) Louisa Lane was born January 10, 1820, in Lambeth Parish, London, England, as the daughter of Eliza Trentner (1796–1887), a singer and actress, and Thomas Frederick Lane (1796–1825), an actor and theatre manager. Lane's paternal grandparents, Thomas Haycraft Lane and Louisa Rouse, were also actors. Lane made her stage debut when she was just twelve months old alongside her mother in a production of Giovanni in London. She acted in a number of roles during her childhood, including Meg Murnock and a production of Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, where she portrayed the scientist's younger brother and acted alongside T.P. Cooke. This was the first recorded theatrical adaptation of the novel.

Her father died around 1825, prompting Lane and her mother to sail to the Americas the following year and arrived in New York on June 7, 1827. She made her American stage debut in September 1827, as Margaretta in No Song, No Supper, at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. Later that month, she would also appear as the young Duke of York in Richard III, alongside Junius Brutus Booth. Her New York stage debut would happen in March 1828 at the Bowery Theater, where she led as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child. She proved to be a child prodigy playing five different adult roles within one play at the age of eight in 1828. An 1829 article described her with a "talent for and a knowledge of the stage beyond what we find in many experienced performers of merit".

Her mother remarried in 1828 to English actor and stage manager John Kinlock. She would gain three half-sisters, Adine (b. 1827), Georgiana (b.1829), and Rosalie Kinlock (b. 1830). The family set sail to Jamaica in November 1830 with Kinlock attempting to find better job opportunities. The ship wrecked, leaving the family and all passengers stranded for six weeks in San Domingo. Lane celebrated her 11th birthday stranded before eventually being rescued and taken to Kingston, Jamaica.

In 1831, Kinlock and baby Rosalie died of yellow fever while in Jamaica. Her mother took her and Adine on another voyage to the West Indies in 1833, however the ship would once again wreck on a sandbar in Egg Harbor, West Indies. The family was eventually rescued and took a "wood boat" back to New York.

In 1833, Lane began touring the United States with the Bowery Theater Stock Company. She often acted in male roles, such as Romeo, Mark Antony, and other Shakespearan characters. By 1836, she was playing a leading lady opposite of Edwin Forrest. During her time there, she would perform alongside a number of high-profile actors – Tyrone Power, Ellen Tree, Mary Ann Vincent, Charlotte Cushman, the Booths, Fanny Davenport, and more.

The Arch Street Theatre After her marriage to actor John Drew in 1850, the pair would tour together. This event lead to her advertising her "fireproof" theatre to invite in scared audiences. In 1863, Lane convinced stockholders to make an additional $20,000 in renovations to the theatre. She removed her bar, a signal to ban prostitutes from attending, allowing her female audience base to grow. The stage was also enlarged, giving her the second largest on in Philadelphia.

She would introduce a new form of payment for her actors. At the time, actors were paid through profits of special 'benefit' performances. Instead, she chose to pay actors after every performance, giving all actors a share of the total profits. Lane ensured she paid her actors every Saturday, personally, for her entire career. Another common practice at the time was for actors to be paid solely for performances, not rehearsals, leaving actors stranded when they closed. Lane implemented daily rehearsals and performances at nighttime. This would allow actors to be paid on a consistent timeline. This practice drew a variety of actors to the company and by the early twentieth century, most other theatres began to implement this and her salary system.

Lane also enforced a strict daily rehearsal schedule, something that was not common practice. Lines were expected to be learned in a timely manner and proper appearance and dedication were requirements. Her commitment to the stage and to the theatre's appearance would lend to its prestige. The company became known as a place for actors to train and refine their craft. During the Civil War, many renowned performers appeared under her management – Forest, Cushman, Edwin Booth, and John Wilkes Booth. Lane would star alongside Wilkes Booth in Macbeth, his last role before his assassination of 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, at the end of the American Civil War. Her final public performance was in late 1896, in a production of The Sporting Duchess at the Academy of Music in New York.

Her autobiography, Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew, was published in 1899, two years after her death, by her son. It was dedicated to her husband John Drew.

Personal life In 1836, at the age 16, Lane married Irish actor Henry Blaine Hunt, who was 40 years old. They would divorce in 1847 and Lane remarried to Irish singer and comedian George Messop in 1848.

When her daughter, Georgiana, died in 1893, Lane took responsibility for the three children, while their father, Maurice Barrymore, remained on tour. Eventually Lane would give up their Philadelphia residence and move into a boardinghouse. The children were sent to live with their Uncle Sidney (referred to as Uncle Googan) and his family.

Death In 1897, an ailing Louisa Drew spent her last summer at her annual retreat at Larchmont, in upstate New York, with her young grandsons Lionel and John Barrymore.

Louisa Drew died on August 31, 1897, at the age of 77 years at her country estate retreat in Larchmont, New York of Westchester County, and her body was initially interred at the Glenwood Cemetery and eventually later moved to the Mount Vernon Cemetery, both cemeteries on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Legacy She was the grandmother through her daughter Georgie of John, Ethel, and Lionel Barrymore, all prominent actors of the thespian Barrymore-Drew family. Her other grandchildren were Georgie Drew Mendum, Edmund Mendum, Louise Drew, and Sidney Rankin Drew. She is also the great-great-grandmother of another generation of the extended acting family, actress Drew Barrymore.

The historic Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia that the Drew-Barrymores owned and managed, was demolished in 1936, but the other Walnut Street Theatre still stands in Philadelphia, as one of the nation's oldest theatres.

Theatre