COWL, JANE

(1884-1950)

   Born in Boston, Jane Cowl made her Broadway debut in David Belasco's Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1903), after which she acted in several Belasco productions, including The Music Master (1904), The Rose of the Rancho (1906), A Grand Army Man (1907), and Is Matrimony a Failure? (1909).She had a modest success in Charles Klein's The Gamblers (1910), but did not attain stardom until her performance in the long-running Bayard Veiller thriller Within the Law (1912) won acclaim. Cowl scored further successes in Cleves Kincaid's The Common Clay (1915) and Edgar Selwyn and Channing Pollock's The Crowded Hour (1918). Also a playwright, she acted in plays she wrote or cowrote, including Lilac Time (1917), Daybreak (1918), Information Please (1918), and Smilin' Through (1920). Cowl impressed critics with her sensitive performance in Romeo and Juliet (1923), a major success that ran for 174 performances. Critics also applauded Cowl in Noël Coward's Easy Virtue (1925) and Robert E. Sherwood's The Road to Rome (1927). She continued to act until the end of her life. Her later notable appearances were in First Lady (1935), Thornton Wilder's* failed The Merchant of Yonkers* (1938), and Old Acquaintance* (1940). Cowl appeared in two silent motion pictures and five sound films.