Grace Palotta

Grace Palotta (c. 1870 – 21 February 1959) was an Austrian-born actress and writer. She was a Gaiety girl in London, and toured in Australia several times between 1895 and 1918.

Grace Palotta
A handcolored portrait of a young white woman, seated, holding a closed parasol; she is wearing a large plumed hat and a blue gown with white lace sleeves
Bornabout 1870
Vienna
Died21 February 1959
London
Other namesGrace Parlotta
Occupation(s)Actress, Gaiety girl, writer

Early life

Palotta was born in Vienna.[1] She explained of her origins that her mother was "French and English", her father "Hungarian and Italian".[2] She studied at the Royal Academy of Music.[1]

Career
Woman in short dress standing with arms crossed
Grace Parlotta, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 8) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes, ca. 1888, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Palotta made her stage debut in London in 1893.[1] She spent four years working for George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre,[3] where she often played roles that highlighted her comic timing, her beauty, and her accented English,[4][5][6] though her singing voice was not strong.[7] She also performed at the Tivoli Theatre in London.[2] She sometimes played breeches roles, including the Prince in a pantomime based on Cinderella, and the principal boy role in Aladdin.[8] She toured in the United States in 1904,[9] and with the Hugh J. Ward company in Australia,[10][11][12] and New Zealand,[13] several times, from 1895 to 1918. Palotta had roles in The Shop Girl, All Abroad, Trial by Jury, The Circus Girl,[14] The Messenger Boy, A Runaway Girl, A Gentleman in Khaki,[15] Florodora,[7][16] Aladdin,[8] The New Clown,[17] and The Man from Mexico.[18]

Palotta was a popular subject of picture postcards.[19] She also wrote light articles and stories for periodicals.[5][20][21][22]

Australian composer May Summerbelle dedicated a 1904 waltz titled 'Beaux Yeux' (Beautiful Eyes) to grace. Her photograph appears on the cover artwork.[23]

Personal life

Palotta married Henry Samuel Kingston in 1888, in East Dereham, Norfolk.[24] She lived in Melbourne during World War I. She lived in Vienna and Jersey in her later years.[25][26] She died at a nursing home in Notting Hill, London in 1959, in her late eighties.[27]

References
  1. "Miss Grace Palotta". The Strand Musical Magazine. 3: 223. 1896.
  2. "Plays and Players: The Women of the Tivoli". Sunset. 15: 396–397. August 1905.
  3. Hamilton, Lord Frederick Spencer (1921). Here, There and Everywhere. George H. Doran Company. pp. 82–83. ISBN 978-1-4142-4702-1.
  4. Monckton, Lionel; Caryll, Ivan; Hicks, Seymour; Nicholls, Harry (1898). A Runaway Girl: New Musical Play. Chappell.
  5. Palotta, Grace (1900). "My Friend the Prince". The Era Almanack: 58–59.
  6. Casamajor, George H. (October 1901). "Beauty on the London Stage". Cosmopolitan. 31: 580–581.
  7. "The Theatre Brought Home". The Australasian Pastoralists' Review. 10: 742. January 15, 1901.
  8. "Grace Palotta". Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954). 1914-01-18. p. 21. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  9. "Vaudeville". Chicago Tribune. 1904-11-27. p. 27. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "A Third of the Ward-Willoughby-Palotta Combination". The Sketch. 57: 5. March 6, 1907.
  11. Rambler (1938-05-07). "Melbourne's Gay Nineties; A Collection of Memories". The Age. p. 35. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. "Melodious Memories; Grace Palotta Trip to Chinatown". The Age. 1939-10-07. p. 10. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. "Miss Grace Palotta in Nurse's Guise". Southland Times. 25 April 1911. p. 2. Retrieved April 13, 2021 – via Papers Past.
  14. Wearing, J. P. (2013-11-21). The London Stage 1890-1899: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Scarecrow Press. pp. 231, 279, 300, 319. ISBN 978-0-8108-9282-8.
  15. Wearing, J. P. (2013-12-05). The London Stage 1900-1909: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Scarecrow Press. pp. 3, 17. ISBN 978-0-8108-9294-1.
  16. Tallis, Michael; Tallis, Joan (2006). The Silent Showman: Sir George Tallis, the Man Behind the World's Largest Entertainment Organisation of the 1920s. Wakefield Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-1-86254-735-3.
  17. "Miss Grace Palotta". Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1919). 1907-01-23. p. 34. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  18. "'The Man from Mexico'". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1906-05-14. p. 4. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. Kelly, V. (2004). "Beauty and the market: Actress postcards and their senders in early twentieth-century Australia" New Theatre Quarterly, 20(78), 99-116.
  20. Palotta, Grace (1 November 1907). "In Praise of Simplicity". The Lone Hand. 2: 88–90.
  21. Palotta, Grace (1 August 1907). "The Woman's Way". The Lone Hand. 1: 400–403.
  22. Palotta, Grace (1 May 1907). "The Stage Kiss". Lone Hand. 1: 103–104 – via Trove.
  23. Summerbelle, May, Beaux yeux [music] : waltz / composed by May Summerbelle (in no linguistic content), W.H. Paling & Co., Ltd
  24. Norfolk Record Office; Norwich, Norfolk, England; Norfolk Church of England Registers; Reference: PD 86/27; banns of marriage dated certified September 2, 1888. via Ancestry.
  25. "Actress Coming in Orcades; Many Friends Here". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1939-02-02. p. 26. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. "Grace Palotta". Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954). 1928-06-03. p. 28. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Trove.
  27. "Grace Palotta". The Guardian. 1959-02-23. p. 2. Retrieved 2021-04-14 – via Newspapers.com.
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