Eagels, Jeanne (1894–1929)

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Eagels, Jeanne (1894–1929)

American stage actress, best known for her portrayal of Sadie Thompson, who died from a drug overdose in her early 30s. Born Jeannine Eagels in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 26, 1894; died in New York City on October 3, 1929; one of four children of Edward (a carpenter) and Julia (Sullivan) Eagels; married Morris Dubinsky (manager of a theater troupe), around 1910 (divorced); married Edward Harris Coy (a stockbroker and former football star), in 1925 (divorced 1928); children: (first marriage) one son who was put up for adoption.

Selected stage appearances:

debuted as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1901); appeared asMiss Renault in Jumping Jupiter at the New York Theater (1911), Olga Cook in The "Mind-the-Paint" Girl at the Lyceum (1912), Dorothy Ainslie in The Crinoline Girl on tour (1914–15), Miriam in The Outcast on tour (1915–16), Kate Merrywether in The Great Pursuit at the Schubert (1916), Lady Clarissa in Disraeli opposite George Arliss on tour (1916), Lucy White in The Professor's Love Story and Mrs. Reynolds in Hamilton, both at the Knickerbocker (1917), Ruth Atkins in Daddies at the Belasco (1918), Mary Darling Furlong in A Young Man's Fancy at the Playhouse (1919), Eugenie de Corlaix in In the Night Watch at the Century (1921), Sadie Thompson in Rain at the Maxine Elliott Theater (1922–24), Simone in Her Cardboard Lover at the Empire (1927).

Selected filmography:

The House of Fear (1915); The World and the Woman (1916); The Fires of Youth (1917); Under False Colors (1917); The Cross Bearers (1918); Man Woman and Sin (1927); The Letter (1929); Jealousy (1929).

Actress Jeanne Eagels was in her late 20s when she achieved a hard-won dream of stardom

as Sadie Thompson in the 1922 Broadway production of Rain. She died only seven years later of alcoholism and drug addiction. Marilyn Monroe has often been regarded as Eagels' modern-day counterpart. John D. Williams, who directed Eagels in Rain and wrote her obituary for The New York Times, maintained that she was "one of the two or three highest types of interpretative acting intelligences" he had ever met.

Eagels was born in Kansas City in 1894. She made her first appearance on stage at age seven, in a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At 15, she ran away from home and joined a theater troupe with which she toured the midwest for two years. During this time, she married and had a son, who was put up for adoption after the short-lived marriage dissolved. By 1911, Eagels had made her way to New York, where she took small roles in Jumping Jupiter (1911), The "Mind-the-Paint" Girl (1912), and Crinoline Girl (1914). Determined to become a serious actress, she is said to have turned down an opportunity to become a Ziegfeld star.

In 1915, Eagels made the first of a series of movies for the fledgling Pathé Film Company (based in New York), while continuing to appear on stage at night. Her last Pathé film, The Cross Bearers (1918), coincided with her first Broadway hit, Daddies. The latter was produced by David Belasco who had spotted her in a small role and found her magnetic: "Her eyes were hard and bitter but shining with ambition," he later wrote. "Thousands of girls have come to me, but never such a girl as Jeanne Eagels, with the air of a Duse , the voice of an earl's daughter, and the mien of a tired, starved little alley cat." By this time, however, Eagels was already an alcoholic and experimenting with heroin. She was also developing into a diva and angrily walked out on Daddies halfway through the run, without a word to anyone involved. "Never deny. Never explain," she once told a reporter. "Say nothing and become a legend."

Eagels managed to hold her career together through several more Broadway shows. Her breakthrough role came in 1922 as the good-natured and tough prostitute Sadie Thompson in Rain, a dark, bitter play by John Colton, based on a story by Somerset Maugham. Reviews were glowing, including Stark Young's in the New Republic. "Miss Eagels has pathos and a wit of her own," he wrote, "and an oddly likable and wistful effect of naturalness. And she has from the moment she comes on the stage the gift of being entertaining, which is at the bottom of all good acting everywhere." The show ran for two years on Broadway, and Eagels toured with it for an additional five. (Rain was filmed in 1928 with Gloria Swanson ; it was remade in 1932 with Joan Crawford and in 1957, under the title Miss Sadie Thompson, with Rita Hayworth .) During the tour, Eagels entered into a second disastrous marriage, with Edward Harris Coy.

It was not until 1927 that Eagels found another role that suited her: the part of Simone in Her Cardboard Lover, opposite Leslie Howard. By this time, her substance abuse was taking its toll. The Boston Transcript described her performance as shaky, "all fidget and misgiving." While the show was on tour, she began to miss performances and was finally fined and suspended from stage work for 18 months by the Actors' Equity union. Eagels packed up for Hollywood, where Paramount signed her to a contract despite the fact that she was now 30 (old by early 20th-century standards) and an addict. Her first talkie, The Letter (1929), earned good notices. She went on to make Jealousy (1929), with Fredric March, in which her performance was adequate despite her failing health. In September 1929, Eagels spent ten days in a New York hospital, where she underwent an operation for an eye infection. She died of a drug overdose on October 3 in the office of her doctor. Eagels lay in state at Frank Camp-bell's Funeral Home at Broadway and 66th Street. Her final film Jealousy was playing at Lowe's Theater across the street.