Mabel Bert

Bert was born in Australia in 1862.[1][2] Her father was A.C. Scott whose family was very wealthy.[1] They immigrated to the United States in 1865, settling in San Francisco, California to allow Mabel better schooling.[1] She was educated in Mills Seminary in Oakland, California.[2][3]

Mabel Bert in Turn to the right

Mabel was an actress, known for Straight Is the Way (1921), The Wonderful Thing (1921) and Blackbirds (1920).[3]

She started as an actress by chance. She was behind the scenes with a friend during the performance of Oliver Twist and was asked at the last minute to replace a missing actress who had three lines.[2]

At the beginning of her career, she played with various companies throughout California for two years and in 1886 joined a stock company in San Francisco for leading parts. For 14 months she took a new part every week, including Shakespeare's plays, old comedies, melodramas, society plays and burlesques. In 1887, she went east and joined one of Frohman Brothers' companies in Held by the Enemy. Since that time, Bert took leading parts in various plays and appeared in all of the important cities of the U.S. She played leads for the John A. Stevens Company at the old Grand Opera House, San Francisco.[4][3][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]

Doris Rankin

She left school when she was 17 years old, and on 25 May 1879, she married Edward G. Bert,[1] theatrical manager working for his brother, Fred Bert, a pioneer theater man of Oakland. She made her debut on the stage in 1880.[3]

In 1887, she began a relationship with Arthur McKee Rankin (known as McKee Rankin) and became pregnant. She gave birth to a baby girl, Doris Rankin, who later married Lionel Barrymore, Bert's costar in Arizona.[23][24] In 1888 her husband filed for divorce on the ground of desertion.[1] In 1892, Rankin's wife filed for divorce, but Rankin, a devoted Catholic, did not marry Bert.[25] Rankin already had two daughters (Gladys and Phyllis) from his marriage to Kitty Blanchard.

On 28 July 1893, Bert married Forrest Robinson,[4] who was an actor from Broadway and later starred in films of Mary Pickford.[26] They met when performing together in The Lost Paradise.[27]

After becoming a widow in 1924, she lived with her daughter in Denver in the 1930s.[4]

• Mabel Bert portraits (University of Louisville, Macauley Theatre collection)