Edith Taliaferro - Child Actress

Child Actress

Henry Arthur Jones once said of Taliaferro that "she was the greatest child actress." She made her acting debut at the age of two in Shore Acres with James A. Herne. It was rumored that she obtained the part because her sister Mabel was too big to depict the character. Her New York City debut came in 1896 at Miner's Theatre on Fifth Avenue, in the same play. The Harlem Opera House presented Shore Acres in October 1897. The play was beginning a sixth consecutive year with leading man Herne portraying Nathaniel Berry.

At the age of ten, in 1904, Taliaferro was paid $100 per week by George Tyler of Liebler & Company. She signed a contract for the following season to appear with Ezra Kendall. She was the youngest Shakesperean actress on the stage. She portrayed Puck in a Ben Greet production of A Midsummer Night's Dream before an audience at Princeton University in May 1904. She was lauded by professors there and they sent her a Princeton flag and pin.

By then she had performed in six to eight juvenile roles after her professional debut. When she returned to New York, Taliaferro appeared with Clara Bloodgood in The Girl With The Green Eyes. Early in her career she toured with such stars as Olga Nethersole and E.H. Sothern.

Taliaferro played a youthful ciecus rider in Polly of the Circus 1907. The setting is a small midwestern town. Like her mother before her, the character depicted by Taliaferro knows no other life than as an entertainer beneath the round top. The play, written by Frederic Thompson, was performed for more than a year at the Liberty Theater, 242 West 42nd Street. The production moved to the Wieting Theater in Syracuse, New York in November 1908.