Eva Le Gallienne

Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991) was an actor, director, producer, writer, and translator. Born in London, raised in Paris and Copenhagen, she made her West End debut at age sixteen, then moved to New York and became a Broadway star a the age of twenty-one. In 1926, she established the Civic Repertory Theatre, New York's first nonprofit classical repertory company, which she operated until 1933. Le Gallienne then continued her multifaceted career for a further five decades, performing on and off Broadway, founding and supporting noncommercial theatre companies, and earning Tony and Emmy Awards, an Oscar nomination, and the National Medal of Arts. She was the author of two autobiographies, At 33 (1934) and With a Quiet Heart (1953); a biography of Eleonora Duse, The Mystic in the Theatre (1965); a children's book, Flossie and Bossie (1949); and numerous translations of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Hans Christian Andersen. She died at her home in Weston, CT at the age of ninety-two.