Mabel Brownell

Mabel Brownell (December 19, 1883 — January 23, 1972) was an American stage actress and director, active on Broadway in the 1920s.

Actress Mabel Brownell, in a 1918 publicity photo.

Early life

Mabel Brownell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1883 (one source gives 1888).[1][2] She graduated from Hughes High School in 1902.[3] She also studied music and elocution.[4]

Career

Mabel Brownell made her debut in 1903,[5] when she also made her first visit to the American West, in Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush by Ian Maclaren.[6] Brownell appeared in a lead role in a revival of Ben-Hur on Broadway in 1907.[7] She was also lead actress of the Mabel Brownell-Clifford Stork Company, a theatre company based in Newark, New Jersey.[8] In 1909 she starred in William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in London.[9] She acted into the 1920s, often outside of New York City.[10][11][12]

She was known to do extensive research into her roles. In 1917 she spent six weeks living in a boarding house in McKeesport, Pennsylvania to play a laborer's wife in a steel town in Eugene Walter's Just a Woman.[13]

In 1927, she directed Immoral Isabella; the following year, she directed two plays on Broadway: Mrs. Dane's Defense and Within the Law, both featuring a similar cast, with Violet Heming, Stanley Logan, Robert Warwick, and Julia Hoyt among the actors appearing in both. As a star of the stage version of Ben-Hur in 1907, she was invited to the premiere of the film version in 1959.[14]

Personal life

Mabel Brownell was married to businessman Louis Vincent Aronson in 1935, as his second wife.[15] She was widowed in 1940,[16] and she died in 1972, aged 88 years, in New York City.[17]

References
  1. Harry Prescott Hanaford and Dixie Hines, Who's Who in Music and Drama (1914): 54.
  2. "Mabel Brownell as Ruth Jordan in 'The Great Divide'" Rock Island Argus and Daily Union (February 13, 1909): 7. via Newspapers.comopen access
  3. Annual Report of the Public Schools of Cincinnati (1902): 152.
  4. "Cincinnati" The Musical Courier 44(June 18, 1902): 23.
  5. "Steadily Rises as Actress" Democrat and Chronicle (November 26, 1916): 25. via Newspapers.comopen access
  6. "At the Theatres" Oregon Daily Journal (December 24, 1903): 7. via Newspapers.comopen access
  7. "The Theaters" Los Angeles Herald (August 27, 1908): 2.
  8. "Newark Co. Reorganized" Variety 33(3)(December 19, 1913): 14.
  9. "Current Stage Talk, Here and Elsewhere" Des Moines Register (March 7, 1909): 38. via Newspapers.comopen access
  10. "Mabel Brownell in 'Eyes of Youth' Which Opens at the Orpheum Tonight" Harrisburg Telegraph (September 25, 1918): 10. via Newspapers.comopen access
  11. "Premiere is Success" The Cincinnati Enquirer (September 14, 1921): 15. via Newspapers.comopen access
  12. "Mabel Brownell Enjoys Her Role" Middlesboro Daily News (September 26, 1924): 4. via Newspapers.comopen access
  13. "Goes to Mills to Get Atmosphere for Role" St. Louis Star and Times (January 11, 1917): 9. via Newspapers.comopen access
  14. Howard Thompson, "'07 Esther Glows at 'Ben-Hur' Film" New York Times (November 21, 1959): 26.
  15. "Mabel Brownell a Bride" New York Times (September 14, 1935): 8.
  16. "Louis V. Aronson, Inventor, 69, Dies" New York Times (November 3, 1940): 59.
  17. "Mrs. Louis Aronson is Dead; Widow of Ronson's Founder" New York Times (January 24, 1972).
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