BRADY, ALICE

(1892-1939)

   Born in New York, the daughter of theatrical producer William A. Brady and French dancer Rose Marie Rene attended the Convent of St. Elizabeth in Madison, New Jersey, before studying opera at the New England Conservatory of Music. Her father disapproved of her desire to be an actress, so she made her debut without his knowledge in a New Jersey production of As You Like It starring Robert Mantell. When she appeared successfully in The Mikado in 1910, her father relented. She won plaudits as Meg in Little Women (1912), toured in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with De Wolf Hopper, and by the mid-1920s, acted in over 30 silent motion pictures for the Famous Players Company. In the theatre, she appeared under her father's management in Owen Davis's Forever After (1918), and it was a long-running hit. She also appeared successfully in Zander the Great (1923), Bride of the Lamb (1926), Bless You Sister (1927), A Most Immoral Lady (1928), The Game of Love and Death (1929), Karl and Anna (1929), and Love, Honor and Betray (1930). She joined the Theatre Guild in 1928 and won the opportunity of playing her most significant stage role, Lavinia Mannon, in Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra* (1931). During the 1930s, Brady appeared in a string of films, winning a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance in In Old Chicago (1938).