Elisabeth Marbury - Professional Life

Professional Life

Elizabeth (Bessy) Marbury's clients ranged from the French Academy of Letters to playwrights Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw; to the dance team of Vernon and Irene Castle. She was an early promoter of African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance. She also played an instrumental role in developing the modern "Book Musical" that audiences came to know as defining "Broadway" in the 20th century, notably of Cole Porter's first musical, See America First, and Jerome Kern (Nobody Home (1915), Very Good, Eddie (1915), and Love o' Mike (1916))through her American Play company.

Her friend and contemporary, the historian/journalist/critic, Henry Adams, a descendant of two United States presidents, would refer to Marbury and her companion Elsie de Wolfe as personifying the American tradition of self-reinvention that gained new vigor at the beginning of the 20th century. Marbury and de Wolfe discovered their careers amidst the amateur theatrical performances in high society in late Victorian New York. Both would end up defying this world's rules and expectations for women by making their interest in theater professional, and in no small way helped pave the way for many other "respectable ladies" that followed, both in the previously frowned upon world of the professional theater as well as independent careers and financial autonomy for women in general.

Thus it was at a 1885 successful benefit theatrical performance that she had organized that Marbury was inspired to try her hand at theater management. In 1888 she persuaded Frances Hodgson Burnett, who had written a dramatic version of her best-selling Little Lord Fauntleroy, to hire her as business manager and agent. The association quickly proved highly profitable to both women.

In 1891 Marbury traveled to France, and for 15 years she was the representative in the English-speaking market for playwright Victorien Sardou and the other members of the Société des Gens de Lettres, including Georges Feydeau, Edmond Rostand, Ludovic Halévy, and Jean Richepin. Her work on their behalf included securing suitable translations, sound productions with leading actors, and full royalties. She also represented George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie (whom she prevailed upon to rewrite The Little Minister for Maude Adams), Hall Caine, and Jerome K. Jerome, among British authors, and Rachel Crothers and Clyde Fitch among Americans.

Her office thus became a center of the New York theatrical business, and for many years Marbury worked closely with Charles Frohman and his Theatrical Syndicate in bringing order to a rapidly expanding field of enterprise. She later worked with the rival Shubert Brothers' organization. In both cases this drew criticism from those who fought the de facto monopoly held by these "Theater Trusts," particularly from the noted American actress Minnie Madern Fisk, who unsuccessfully struggled in the 1890s to form an actors union to fight the numerous fees and censorship imposed on actors and theater professionals by the Theater Trust.

In 1914 Marbury joined several other agents in forming the American Play Company, and she then turned to producing and helped stage Nobody Home (1915), Very Good, Eddie (1915), and Love o' Mike (1916), all with music by Jerome Kern, and See America First (1916) with music by Cole Porter. These works contributed significantly to the development of the characteristically American form of musical comedy. Marbury's other successes include bringing Vernon and Irene Castle, whom she had seen on one of her innumerable trips to Paris, to New York in 1913 and setting them up in a fashionable dancing school that was the springboard for their brief but spectacularly popular career.

Miss Marbury put her life story into a book "My Crystal Ball" which was published in 1923. She had been told frequently that Hollywood would be interested - this during the Silent Film Era - in the story of her travels with her companions Anne Tracy Morgan (daughter of Jon Pierpont Morgan, the financier) and America's first interior designer, Elsie de Wolfe. Elizabeth convinced Miss Morgan to purchase the Petit Trianon next to Versailles, where the trio held court with Europe's elite and entertained with George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, two clients she represented theatrically in New York and London, until the German Army came calling. Anne, Elsie and Bess Marbury escaped the army's clutches in their Rolls Royce convertible after packing hastily.

Miss Marbury and Miss De Wolfe convinced Anne Morgan's financier father to purchase a garbage dump on the East River of New York and to build Sutton Place. It was from their new residence at Sutton Place that Miss Marbury began to work with the greatest musical talents of the time to dominate Broadway.

Before her death, Miss Marbury chose her nephew John Marbury to produce a picture based on "My Crystal Ball." The rights passed through John's estate to his son, the late New York sculptor Peter Marbury. The rights are held currently by Peter Marbury's widow, Diana Marbury, a New York theatrical producer, director and actress.