Dan Daly (comedian)

Dan Daly (c. 1854 – March 26, 1904) was an American actor known as the "eccentric comedian".[2] He was born in 1854 in Revere, Massachusetts as the youngest son.[3] His siblings were Thomas Daly, William Daly, Lucy Daly, Maggie Daly, and Robert Daly.

Dan Daly
Daly c. 1901
Bornc 1854
Revere, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died(1904-03-26)March 26, 1904 (age 40)
Resting placeHoly Cross Cemetery
Malden, Massachusetts[1]
OccupationActor

In 1896 he appeared in The Lady Slavey in New York co-starring Marie Dressler. In 1901 he appeared with Edna May in The Girl From Up There, and starred opposite Virginia Earle in The New Yorkers.[4]

He contracted tuberculosis. He married Mary Mooney of Boston, and they had a son, Dan Daly. Mary died around March 20, 1904. He died on March 26, 1904, at the age of 40, from a pulmonary hemorrhage at the Hotel Veldome in Manhattan.[2][5][6]

According to fellow comedian Eddie Foy Sr., Daly subsisted on a diet of snails and champagne for the last two years of his life:

One of the millions of mysterious happenings in the history of human psychology is that strange mental twist which seized upon Dan not so long after this and caused him to subsist during the last two years of his life entirely on snails. This was common gossip at the time, and George Rector, who furnished the snails, has since confirmed it. Dan ate nothing at all during the day, but after the show, along towards midnight, he would go up to Rector's and absorb about a quart of snails and a quart of champagne. How he lived as long as he did on such a diet I can't imagine.[7]

References
  1. "Funeral of Dan Daly". The New York Times. March 31, 1904.
  2. "Dan Daly, Actor, Dies Suddenly. Seized with Hemorrhage While Rising from His Bed" (PDF). The New York Times. March 27, 1904. Retrieved December 31, 2014. He was forty years old.
  3. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak (2004). "Daly, Dan". Daly, Dan (1858–1904). ISBN 9780195169867. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  4. Bordman, Gerald Martin; Norton, Richard (2010). American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Oxford University Press. p. 207. ISBN 9780199729708.
  5. "Comedian Dan Daly Dead". San Francisco Call. March 26, 1904. Retrieved December 31, 2014. Dan Daly, the comedian, died suddenly today in his room in the Vendome Hotel. For several years he has suffered from consumption. He got up this afternoon and while dressing was seized with a fit of coughing which brought on a fatal hemorrhage. His wife died suddenly two weeks ago in Revere, Mass., and he felt the lost keenly. ...
  6. "Dan Daly is Dead Eccentric and Popular Comedian Succumbs to Consumption". The Eagle. Vol. 4, no. 2, Ed. 1. Hennessey, Okla. April 7, 1904. Retrieved December 31, 2014. He was forty years old.
  7. Foy, Eddie (1925). Clowning Through Life, p. 295.
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