About Me
At the turn of the century, Mrs. Patrick Campbell was England’s most celebrated and notorious actress. An acclaimed beauty, loved by many, she is remembered for her wit, for bad behaviour, and her close friendship with George Bernard Shaw. She was a great actress, when she wanted to be. She had a low boredom threshold and frequently behaved dreadfully on stage.
She could be a monster to work with, an atrocious snob and possessed a wicked sense of humour. But, on form, she was incomparable, the glory of her age. Her work was daring and unpredictable, enhanced by her great beauty. Shaw worshipped her, wrote Pygmalion for her and begged her to play Eliza. Rather than living to work she always worked to live and died in exile and poverty.
Stella (Mrs) Patrick Campbell was born Beatrice Stella Tanner at Kensington Gardens, London, on February 9th, 1865. She was the daughter of John Tanner, a well respected and well-to-do gentleman and his beautiful Italian wife Luigia (Rominini). Educated at Brighton, Hampstead and Paris, Stella soon displayed a prodigious talent for music which earned her a scholarship at the Guildhall School.
By her teens, it was clear that Stella had benefited from her mothers good looks as she blossomed into a beautiful young woman. When she was nineteen Stella fell for a penniless young man named Patrick Campbell, and when she fell pregnant the couple eloped and were married in 1884. A baby daughter, Beo, duly arrived but when a second, Stella, followed not long after, Patrick abandoned them and ran off to seek his fortune in the colonies.
Abandoned with no means of support, Stella turned to one of the few professions open to women at that time and decided to become an actress, taking her husband's name as her stage name. She made her first professional appearance at the Alexandra Theatre in Liverpool on 22nd October, 1888, as 'Sophia Moody' in "Bachelors". After touring with Mrs Bandmann-Palmer in "Tares" she joined Ben Greet's company touring in various Shakespearean roles. Stella made her first appearance in London at the Adelphi on 18th March, 1890, as 'Helen' in "The Hunchback".
After spending the next three years in London building upon her reputation, success was finally assured by her acceptance of a part which other better established actresses had turned down. That was the role of 'Paula Tanqueray' in Arthur Pinero's "The Second Mrs Tanqueray". According to the mores of the time, for a play to portray infidelity in a woman was shocking in the extreme, and it was felt that some of the stain of the character might rub off on the performer. Stella gave such a passionate and heartrending performance however, that the public took her to their hearts, almost overnight making her one of the top names on the London stage.
In November 1896, despite being at the height of her career, she volunteered to play a relatively minor role in a non-commercial production of "Little Eyolf", playing the part of 'The Rat Wife' to great acclaim. But when a theatrical syndicate took over the production to run as a commercial venture they felt she was too prominent a star to waste on such a small part and promptly fired the leading lady to promote Stella in her place. The part, however, was not one suited to Stella's particular talents and the venture was abandoned after only ten performances.
A succession of substantial roles followed, including her first overseas appearance with Forbes-Robertson as 'Ophelia' in "Hamlet" at Berlin in 1898. The following year she went into management for the first time, taking over the Prince of Wales and producing "The Moonlight Blossom" with herself as 'Inamura Nanoya'. On 5th April, 1900, Stella was made a widow when her estranged husband was killed in action in the Boer War. Patrick was at the time serving as a sergeant in the 10th Regiment of the Imperial Yeomanry, a volunteer force which was attached to Lord Methuen's division. He was one of three casualties in the Yeomanry's first action under enemy fire at Boshof (South Africa).
In November of 1901, Stella set sail for America to undertake her first year long American tour, making her first appearance on the New York stage at the Republic Theatre on 13th January, 1902. In July, 1904, she played alongside the great Sarah Bernhardt in the title roles of Maurice Maeterlinck's "Pelleas and Melisande" before embarking again to tour in America.
Further American tours followed in 1907/08, 1910, between her appearances in London and tours of the UK provinces. In 1912 Stella met George Bernard Shaw with whom she would form a lifelong friendship. Shaw wrote "Pygmalion" with Stella in mind for the lead role of 'Eliza Doolittle', and begged her to take on the role even though she was by then hardly of an age to play a young flower-girl. But play it she did with great success, opening at His Majesty's on 11th April, 1914. It is said that Shaw had become infatuated with Stella, but only days before her opening in Pygmalion she had married again - to George Cornwallis-West, an author and adventurer who until the previous year had been married to Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill.
When she took "Pygmalion" to America later that year it took America by storm. Following at run at the Park Theatre on Broadway she took it on a tour of the States, staying in America for almost two years in that play and revivals of some of her earlier successes. Following her return to England she remained regularly active on the English stage until 1920. Amongst her last stage roles was a revival of her part in "Pygmalion" at the Aldwych in London and in Cologne in that year.
After retiring from the stage she went to Hollywood to become a speech trainer and dialogue coach for aspiring movie actors, also making a few movie appearances herself during the 1930's in dowager roles. Never returning to England, she spent her last few years in Paris and the South of France. She died in Pau in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Aquitaine, France on 10th April 1940, aged 75.
At the height of her career Mrs. Patrick Campbell, known affectionately to all as 'Mrs. Pat', was England’s most celebrated and notorious actress, admired for her beauty and her quick acid wit, and ill-famed for her eccentricity and bad behavour. During a rehearsal, Charles Frohman once made a constructive criticism which she took in poor part, replying acidly "Mr. Frohman, I want you to know that I am an artist," to which Frohman solemnly replied "Madam, I will keep your secret." Whilst an actress of great talent, she could be notoriously difficult to work with and had a very low boredom threshhold, often playing tricks on her co-stars.
She counted among her friends Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and the actor-producer Forbes-Robertson with whom she had an ill-concealed affair. Her daughter Stella followed her on to stage and enjoyed a very successful career under the stage name of 'Stella Patrick Campbell'. Her son, Alan, became a playwright. Despite her success, she never amassed a personal fortune and lived her final years in relative poverty. The pragmatic approach she took to her career is perfectly summed up in this sample of her own words "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm".
