Elsie May Powers

The Alfred St Leon family, New York, 1908. From left Ida Jennie, unidentified, George, Vera, Vernon Ida, Elsie May and Alfred, seated

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Scene from Polly of the Circus, c.1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Polly of the Circus

At the close of the 1907 season, the St Leon family returned to New York and were engaged by Frederic Thompson for his production of Polly of the Circus, a three-act drama adapted from the popular novel by Margaret Mayo. The story of Pollyrequired the execution of live circus scenes on the stage by the family. The open contract with Thompson would keep the family engaged for several years.¹ Polly of the Circus had its initial performance in Washington D.C. on 10 December 1907 and two weeks later opened at the Liberty Theatre, New York.²

Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, c.1910. Author’s collection.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1872, Frederic Thompson had studied architecture before falling into theatrical management. With the fortune he made from his first entrepreneurial success, Brewster’s Millions, Thompson built Luna Park on New York’s Coney Island, the first large summer amusement park of its kind in the world.³

The 20-year-old Mabel Taliaferro, one of America’s leading actresses since childhood, played the role of Polly for its first two seasons, 1907-08 and 1908-09. Taliaferro had toured Australia in 1906 with William Collier’s company, as the leading actress in Collier’s productions of The Dictator and On the Quiet.⁴ On her return, she met Thompson at Coney Island and two weeks later, in November 1906, they married.⁵

Mabel Taliaferro, as Polly in Polly of the Circus, 1908

Author’s collection

Mabel Taliaferro, as Polly in Polly of the Circus, 1908

New York Public Library, New York

Polly of the Circus told the story of Polly, a young rider injured by a fall from her horse when her circus visited a small mid-western town. At the parsonage opposite the circus lot, she is left in the care of a young minister, to recover as the circus continues on its way. Finding herself in the midst of the staid community that is now her home, the young minister becomes her most promising hope for the future. To the annoyance of his parishioners, the minister is drawn to the circus girl, uneducated but intelligent and pure-hearted. To save the minister from their wrath, Polly flees the parsonage and returns to the circus to take her place as a performer again. The play’s climax came towards the end of the three acts with a 45-second explosion of circus activity in a make-believe circus tent on the stage featuring the ‘The Famous St Leon Family of European Acrobats’. Ida Jennie’s older sister, Elsie, performed the circus riding for Mabel Taliaferro. The St Leons leaped on and off their horses loping around the make-believe circus ring. In the midst of this performance, the minister suddenly appears and extracts Polly. The make-believe circus was then cleared away in an incredibly brief time to leave the final scene, a vacant circus lot.⁶ The curtain falls upon the minister and Polly as they stand on the deserted circus lot in a final happy union, watching the circus wagons disappearing into the distance.

Scene from Polly of the Circus, 1908. Author’s collection.

After the inaugural 1907-08 season with Polly of the Circus, the St Leon family returned to New York to perform at Luna Park on Thompson’s Coney Island for the summer of 1908. Luna Park featured an outdoor circus situated beneath other attractions such as Shoot the Chutes and the Scenic Railway.⁷ Before the summer was over, the St Leon family presented Ida Jennie performing a double jockey and hurdle act with her older sister, Elsie. Until then, Ida Jennie had mostly been seen performing as a tightwire walker, parasol in hand. As the two sisters closely resembled each other, each had to wear a different coloured ribbon so that the ringmaster, their father, Alf, could distinguish them as they performed.⁸ A photograph published in Variety showed the two girls posing on a single horse, along with a lengthy caption:

It isn’t often two sisters (who are sisters) are seen in a double riding act on one horse in the ring … Both girls are of the St Leon family, under the direction of Alf St Leon … His accomplished family can give an entire circus performance if called upon. They are riders, wirewalkers, acrobats and lots more besides of value under canvas or upon a stage. Elsie is a principal rider of distinguished reputation. The interest in the double appearance centers [sic] on her sister. Both are blondes and, on the evening seen, the girls were dressed in yellow and purple, making an attractive picture while performing upon a handsome white horse under the myriad of electrics [sic] in the ring set over the lagoon at the park. Ida Jennie gives promise of reaching Elsie’s expertness and confidence upon the horse’s back. At present she is not certain enough for the act to become spectacularly sensational. Elsie giving all attention to Ida Jennie to inspire confidence and prevent mishap. The girls are very pretty and it becomes a ‘sight’ act of large value, holding the crowd always gathered around the railings enclosing the small body of water. Elsie is an easy graceful rider of striking appearance in ring costume and in her single ‘principal’ act is the big feature of Luna this summer, where the Family has been playing since the park opened.⁹

Ida Jennie St Leon, performing on Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, from the Burr McIntosh Monthly, September 1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie (l) and Elsie May St Leon (r), in double equestrian act on Luna Park, Coney Island, New York, from Variety, 25 August 1908

New York Public Library, New York

The family finished its summer engagement at Luna Park in time to open with the 1908-09 season of Polly of the Circus on Broadway on 5 September.¹⁰ Once again, Mabel Taliaferro was the leading lady but she had spawned an understudy. When she was not performing on the stage, the 14-year-old Ida Jennie hung around the wings to absorb the stage atmosphere and listen intently to Taliaferro as she spoke the words of Polly, until it was her time to perform in the on-stage circus ring. In Polly, Ida Jennie, a genuine circus rider, saw and understood something of herself.

Late in 1908, in a vaudeville house at Albany, New York, Alf St Leon fell seriously ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. Removed to a sanatorium at Rutland, Massachusetts, the Australian circus man died on Sunday, 14 February 1909.¹¹ Alf ‘was highly respected among show people and a gentleman of the old school’ and one of the best known of circus men who ever stood in a ring.¹² Laid to rest in Maple Grove Cemetery on Long Island, the family erected a striking tombstone over his grave.¹³

Gravestone for Alfred St Leon, Maple Grove Cemetery, New York, NY

Author’s collection

So persistent was Ida Jennie in observing Polly of the Circusfrom the wings that, eventually, she could recite every line of the play and she began to attract the interest and patronage of the play’s leading lady. As Mabel Taliaferro recalled:

She never hurried away from the theatre when her act in the stage circus ring was over, but remained back of the scenes in her costume, keeping track of every tick in the final evolution of the play. Her dainty personality and the fact that I felt that the part I was interpreting in the play was the little girl’s own real role in life gradually drew me to her... I was astonished when she told me she had memorised my part in its entirety … Although I could see many flaws in her work, I saw enough to convince me that my judgement of her ability was right … I did not want to overburden her mind at the outset with the heavy works of Shakespeare, but I urged her to read something good every week and to talk the novel or play over with me subsequently... Then I made her stop going to vaudeville shows, to which she had taken a fancy, and got her to go with me, whenever the opportunity presented itself, to see good plays. At such times, I would point out to her the subtleties and graces and tricks of acting... I took the child to church so that she might get the atmosphere necessary in the play. The circus atmosphere, of course, she had in her soul. That was born in her. But I wanted her not only to act the other side of the role but to feel it as well … It took a long time to work up this other side of the girl’s personality and to blend it with her circus side, but although the evolution of the complete Polly came slowly, I could see all the while the development of the sentimental in her and its gradual dominance over her pure circus girl self. So, the budding soul of the woman began to show in the makeup of the child and slowly the tinselled falsity of her earlier youth in the canvas-and-sawdust sphere faded from her. Not that she lost her enthusiasm and pride in herself as a girl of the circus and not that her riding ability did not continue to be a source of real joy to her, but that there came to her the realisation that there were other things in life than those that follow in the ruts of the red wagon caravan...¹⁴

An undated clipping in the Harvard Theatre Collection told the story a little differently. When Mabel Taliaferro suddenly fell ill one evening the stage manager, realising that Ida Jennie was up in her part, asked if she could do it. It would not hurt since they were playing the small town of Waterbury, Connecticut. When Miss Taliaferro recovered, she telephoned her husband to say that the show had a ‘real’ Polly. Ida Jennie was permitted to rehearse frequently and, after seeing her perform, Thompson immediately decided to obtain a new play for his wife and replace her with Ida Jennie as Polly.¹⁵

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, c.1909

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, c.1909

New York Public Library, New York

Returning to New York at the end of the 1908-09 season of Polly of the Circus, the St Leon family took up its regular summer role in the outdoor circus at Luna Park when Coney Island opened on 15 May 1909.¹⁶ At the same time, Ida Jennie commenced rehearsals on the stage of New York’s Aerial Theatre for her new leading role in Polly of the Circus.¹⁷ She had to hurry back to Luna Park to give her wirewalking performance each afternoon and evening.¹⁸ After eight months of Taliaferro’s coaching, Ida Jennie was ready to step into the role of Polly.¹⁹ For the next four seasons, the former circus acrobat acted the role of Polly on theatre stages throughout the United States and Canada. In the opinion of George Jean Nathan, the transition was almost unparalleled in the theatre.²⁰

Not yet 17, her role as Polly made Ida Jennie the youngest leading woman on the American stage.²¹ With a voice like Florence Rockwell but a charm and a grace of her own, she was a “delightful” Polly, whether as the slangy little circus waif or as the circumspect young lady into which he grew under the minister’s patronage.²² 

As a true child of the circus, Ida Jennie invested her role as Polly with an added touch of pathos.²³ Furthermore, she both talked and acted in the argot of the circus. Taliaferro had led the beautiful white horse, Bingo II, onto the stage, but Ida Jennie made her entrance standing on its back.²⁴ As an example of the circus argot Ida Jennie spoke in the course of the play, the following conversation takes place between Polly and the minister after she learns that the show will move on and she will be left behind to recover from her injury:

“Kinder tough, ain’t it? How long will it be?” says Polly.

“The doctor can tell better about that when he comes”, answers the young minister.

“Doctor? As bad as that, eh? It’s my wheel ain’t it?”

“Yo’ what?” demands Mandy, the coloured nurse in surprise.

“My wheel - my creeper. Oh golly! That hurts. Is it punctured?”

Then, when Polly learns that John is a clergyman, Ida Jennie exclaims:

“Great Barnum & Bailey! You a sky pilot! Well, I never thought I was talking to one of you guys. How long have you worked here?” she asks.

“I’ve only been here about six months”.

“Six months! Haven’t they got mighty tired of your spiel?”

“I hope they haven’t.”

“Gee! Six months in a burg like this. They must be sick of you or you change your act. Do you do the same stuff all the time, or have you a rep?”

“A rep?” queries the puzzled sky pilot.

“Sure, repertory. Different acts - entries some call them. Why, Uncle Toby - he’s our clown - has got twenty entries.”

“I see. Well, I try to say something new every Sunday”.

“None of your acts is like circus acts, are they? Is there any laughs in your acts?”

“Not many laughs I am afraid. But ministers try to tell their people things which help them and make them forget their week-day troubles for a time.”

“Why, that’s just like the circus business - only circuses draw more people than the churches.” ²⁵

By the end of the 1912-13 season, after four consecutive seasons acting in the title role of Polly of the Circus, Ida Jennie was ready to move on to the “legitimate” theatre stage.²⁶ She handed over the title role of Polly to her older sister, Elsie.²⁷ By that time the name of “Ida St Leon” was ranked ninth amongst the twelve most popular and beautiful women in the United States based on the number of photographs declared best sellers. Invariably, actresses and operatic singers dominated these polls. Ranking behind such luminaries as Billie Burke, who was ranked third, and Ethel Barrymore, who was ranked sixth, Ida Jennie’s photograph was included for the first time on the 1912 list.²⁸ Although she retained her affection for the circus, the cry of Polly against the circus had left a deep impression.²⁹

Ida Jennie St Leon as Polly in Polly of the Circus, The Billboard, 17 May 1913

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Mae Marsh as Polly in silent film Polly of the Circus, 1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

In 1917, Polly of the Circus was made into a silent film by Sam Goldwyn, starring Mae Marsh in the title role with Vernon Steel as the minister.³⁰ Although the film was not a box-office success, it launched Goldwyn’s legendary 40-year career as one of Hollywood’s leading producers.³¹

Finishing Fanny

Ida Jennie was soon offered the title role in a new play by Lee Wilson Dodd, Finishing Fanny, aimed at the ‘fads, foibles, aimless lives and lax ideas’ of New York’s.³² A four-act comedy drama set in New York’s shady Bohemian life, Finishing Fanny told the story of Fanny who, direct from her Sabbatarian training, was thrust into this low life for her ‘finishing’. Despite her paucity of formal theatrical training, the four-foot-four Ida Jennie was ‘exquisite’ and ‘impressive’ as Fanny.³³ Early in the autumn of 1912, Ida Jennie took to the road with the Finishing Fanny touring production.³⁴ But Finishing Fanny proved to be a ‘flivver’ and, without losing a week, Ida Jennie next opened in William A. Brady’s Little Miss Brown. During 1913, Little Miss Brown was such a success that Brady engaged Ida Jennie to play the artistic, word-mangling Amy in a dramatisation of Louisa M. Alcott’s famous novel, Little Women.³⁵

Oliver Morosco’s Theatre Company

Ida Jennie’s next role was the part of Gertrude Mayer in Jack Lait’s Help Wanted, a production of Oliver Morosco’s theatrical stock company.³⁶ In Help Wanted, Gerald R. Scott, a millionaire businessman with a wife and family, cannot resist selecting private secretaries to whom he can ‘make love’. When Gertrude, a pretty but inexperienced stenographer, obtains her first job with Scott, he places her in a responsible position beyond her experience and relegates the wiser Miss Wiggins to do the real work of the office. Gertrude rejects Scott’s advances but is drawn to his stepson and accepts his offer of marriage. Throughout the entire performance, Ida Jennie did ‘not play her beauty harder than her brains’ and remained a simple, unassuming girl trying to get along in the business world.³⁷ The following bouquet may need to be taken cum grano salis:

It appears almost inconceivable that a young woman could play the principal part in one of the big season’s successes, and yet never have attended school for a day in her life. What education Ida St Leon had was taught to her by Al Miaco, a clown 72 years old, who is still doing service with Ringling Bros show. Ida St Leon never had a tutor. She learned geography by travelling. But the former circus rider writes a better letter than most Bryn Mawr girls.³⁸

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, c.1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, c.1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Said the Detroit News: ‘It’s a good clean show even if it does deal with the sex question’.³⁹ In December 1914, Ida Jennie was the subject of a full-page article in America’s leading show business magazine, Billboard in which she drew some sharp contrasts between circus and theatre:

... I love the circus and I like the stage... But oh! those muddy lots and those long parades and the cold dressing tents which we used to have down South in the fall. On the stage it is different, for instance the star’s dressing room, so nice and warm, with a private bath nearby... But I like the people of the circus better than I do the people of the stage... I love to hear the band play good old circus music, Happy Heiney, Thunder and Blazes, and somehow, nowhere else does it sound so nice and sweet as under the big, broad expanse of canvas. You see, with the circus, everybody is happy... Professional jealousy, nothing like that at all. You never see anybody flashing a rusty old contract. And with the circus, nobody ever needs an introduction. Why last, year I was a star in a show and it was nearly Christmas before some of the folks in the company appeared sociable.⁴⁰

Despite her nostalgia, Ida Jennie did not return to circus work. After Help Wanted, she appeared in The Unchastened Woman and starred in a revival of Polly of the Circus at the Burbank Theatre, Los Angeles.⁴¹ About this time, she settled at 601 South Rampart Boulevard, Los Angelos. Her name was listed in the 1916 Los Angelos City Directory, her profession given as ‘actress’.⁴²

Ida Jennie appeared in other Morosco productions, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Under Cover, Nearly Married, Kick In, The Argyle Case, and A Romance of the Underworld. In Rebecca, she played the lead part ‘with real curls of sunny gold that alone would make the part a go’. Many of these were ingenue roles but The Argyle Case called for more serious work.⁴³

in 1915, Ida Jennie was performing with the Morosco company in Taft, a little oil town near Bakersfield. From his seat in the audience, a mining engineer, Leo M. Rosenburg, looked on in admiration. A year or so later, they met at a party in Los Angelos.⁴⁴

According to the Los Angeles Express, the Morosco company’s next production, John Howard Lawson’s Servant-Master-Lover, was a ‘fantastic hodge-podge’. Its splendid director, Robert Milton, and Morosco’s extravagant production were wasted on ‘a lot of piffle’. The leading players both cracked:

... under the strain. It would take a far greater actress than Miss St Leon can ever hope to be to carry the play to success. She did everything she possibly could to make it go, but the part was miles beyond her.⁴⁵

Mr & Mrs Leon Rosenberg, wedding, Los Angeles, January 1917

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Program for Mamma’s Affair, Fulton Theatre, New York, March 1920

Author’s collection

Ida’s Marriage

Ida Jennie acted the role of the ‘downstairs’ parlour maid in Upstairs and Down which opened in New York in September 1916, at the Cort Theatre, on 48th Street, just east of Broadway.⁴⁶ Before the season had finished, Ida Jennie suddenly turned her role over to another and returned to Los Angelos.⁴⁷ At 8.30 on the evening of 14 January 1917, in a flower-decked ballroom of the Engstrum apartments, Ida J. St Leon and Leo M. Rosenburg, president of the Hippolito Screen and Sash Company, were married. The bride was attended only by her mother, while Herman Rosenburg, a brother of the groom, gave her away. Immediately following the ceremony, the couple departed for Santa Barbara for their honeymoon before returning to their Los Angeles bungalow.⁴⁸ Later in 1917, Ida Jennie gave birth to their only child, Leo Alfred Rosenburg.⁴⁹

That year, Ida Jennie’s photograph and career details were published in America’s Best 100 Actresses.⁵⁰ With marriage, Ida Jennie declared she had left the stage for good but, the following August, she and her husband separated. Ida Jennie boarded a train for New York to begin rehearsals as the bashful bride in Please Get Married.A few months later, Oliver Morosco engaged Ida Jennie for his production of Rachel Barton Butler’s prize-winning comedy, Mamma’s Affair. The three-act comedy opened in the remodelled Little Theatre, New York, on 19 January 1920.⁵¹

Oliver Morosco’s theatre company, Mamma’s Affair, 1920. Ida Jennie St Leon, fourth from right. Author’s collection.

Mamma’s Affair

Mamma’s Affair told the story of a female hypochondriac, Mrs Orrin, who drains her family of energy and sympathy on the specious grounds that her nerves are to blame. She drives her devoted, self-sacrificing daughter—18-year-old Eve Orrin, played by Ida Jennie, to nervous exhaustion and insists that she marry a young man named Henry even though Eve does not love him. A hard-headed physician, Dr Jansen, is called. He announces that ‘Mamma’ is quite healthy but obsessed with self-analysis and ‘taking something’ to relieve her mind. Separating ‘Mamma’ from those around her, he then realises that Eve is at the point of a nervous breakdown. He prescribes fresh air, sunshine and wholesome food for her but, before long, comprehends her problem: Eve has sacrificed her young life tending to her mother’s imaginary illnesses and is now expected to marry Henry, a man she does not love, just to please her mother. Soon, Dr Jansen and Eve fall in love with each other. The doctor’s personal code of honour does not permit him to appear a ‘cradle snatcher’ and admit his love for Eve who is only half his age. To force Dr Jansen to acknowledge his feelings for her, Eve fakes an hysterical attack which quickly brings Dr Jansen to his senses and he embraces the inevitable. Mamma must live with the situation.⁵²

[The] superb performance of Ida St Leon, playing the young girl was like a star rocket that disengaged itself from the surrounding illuminations. In a special sense the evening was Miss St Leon’s. She is a fair haired roseleaf ingenue- with an ingenuousness that is not thickly compounded of kohl and lipstick—who has, besides, the gift of youth and charm and amazing power for tragic suggestions. She meets the various demands of her part with flexibility and power and a priceless intelligence.⁵³

The seating capacity of the Little Theatre was taxed to its limit and the play soon had to be moved to a larger theatre, the Fulton.⁵⁴ On the strength of her appearance in Mamma’s Affair, Ida Jennie was hailed as ‘one of the really promising discoveries of 1920’ and was ‘likely to go further on the American stage’.⁵⁵ The New York Dramatic Herald said:

With all the praise that has been unloaded on her for her deft and charming acting, Miss St Leon remains just as simple and unfeignedly gracious after her rise to notice as she was before Broadway’s lights winked at her. Her manner is utterly unassuming and its naivete is reflected in a winsome, child-like face that’s as friendly as a handshake. Her golden hair—it’s the English type of corn silk hair—is naturally arranged, and she smiles frequently, though not for the purpose of showing her pretty teeth. Perhaps her unaffected poise is due to the fact that her family has been in show business for several generations and pay as much attention to applause as to the air they breathe.⁵⁶

During the season of Mamma’s Affair,Ida appeared as Alice in four benefit performances of Alice in Wonderland, dramatised by Rachel Barton Butler, for the New York Kindergarten Association.⁵⁷ With about 25 other actors, including Ethel Barrymore, she also appeared in a benefit performance at the Century Theatre to raise funds for the new Navy Club in East 41st Street.⁵⁸

At the height of her theatrical fame, Ida Jennie’s growing reputation was blemished by the publicity given her extra-marital affair with a New Jersey banker:

When taken to task for his coldness to her and asked to say if there was another woman in his life, George McIntyre, the vice-president of the Metropolitan Credit Company, gave his wife Eugenia the frank answer, ‘Yes, four or five...’, she alleged. One of her rivals, says Mrs McIntyre, who lives at 72 Denver Avenue, Newark, was Ida Jane [sic] St Leon, playing the part of Eve in Mamma’s Affair. In a suit for divorce which she has commenced, she named the actress as co-respondent... In one of her affidavits, Mrs McIntyre said that... [after] considerable time and endeavour I found that my husband was overfriendly with Ida Jane St Leon, an actress of No 22 West 52^nd Street, Manhattan. I further investigated and found he was in the habit of seeing Miss St Leon home from the theatre and remaining with her in the apartment until 2, 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning... I was grief stricken and endeavoured to win him back but the more I endeavoured the more firm he was in his determination. He would tell me a divorce was of no consequence in these days...⁵⁹

But nothing more was heard about the matter. Ida Jennie went on a 22-week tour with the Mamma’s Affair company across the United States. After the San Francisco season, she returned to the family home in Los Angeles to rest—and perhaps reconcile—before returning to Mamma’s Affair for the remainder of the 1920-21 season.⁶⁰

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, Mamma’s Affair, 1920

Author’s collection

Ida Jennie St Leon, publicity photograph, Lightnin’, 1923

Author’s collection

The Wheel

Ida Jennie won the leading role in Winchell Smith’s new comedy The Wheel, a drama in four acts, which opened in Atlantic City on 2 May 1921.⁶¹The following week, the Clipperreported the success of The Wheel with ‘... a cast [that was] very close to perfection...’. Ida Jennie played Kate O’Hara, a Fifth Avenue milliner, who marries Theodore Morton Jnr, a young society man to discover he is addicted to gambling. To teach him the costliness of his passion for the roulette wheel and the absurdity of his theory that someday he would have a big winning, Kate conspires with Edward Baker, a professional gambler, to fit up a gambling room and invite Theodore in to play. Gradually denuded of all his possessions, Theodore learns to his relief that the checks he has signed for $35,000 all went to Kate. He resolves never to gamble again. The self-sacrificing Baker, having made Kate happy, gracefully retires. The Wheel was voted one of the best plays of 1921-22.⁶²

Ida Jennie St Leon, c.1924

Author’s collection

St Leon sisters, Ida Jennie Rosenberg and Elsie May Powers, and Elsie’s husband, Freeman L. Powers, California, 1951

Mark St Leon Collection, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Lightnin’

Ida Jennie’s last known appearance was in another Winchell Smith play, Lightnin’, which toured the mid-west during 1923.⁶³ According to a 1924 reference, Ida Jennie was ‘still playing in legit’ but she appears to have retired from the stage soon after.⁶⁴ Reconciled, she returned to her husband, son and their Los Angelos home and never worked professionally again, either in theatre or circus. Interviewed in Malibu in 1995, her son Leo recalled:

I think she was happy to get out. My mother made a living as an actress but theatrical business is not profitable unless you are really tops. Mother was a every exuberant person, bubbly, outgoing but never said that she wanted to go back into show business. She did not keep many friends from show business. She was just a housewife and did charity work. In the 1940s, she did acting for a charity theatre company called The Thespians which included Debbie Reynolds.⁶⁵

Grave of Ida Jane Rosenberg, Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California. Author’s collection.

Ida Jennie Rosenburg died after a brief illness on 19 September 1961 at the age of 67.⁶⁶ Her husband, Leo M. Rosenburg, died on 3 July 1966 at the age of 85.⁶⁷ Both were buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.⁶⁸

Polly of the Circus—Screen Test for ‘Polly’, 1917

In 1917, Sam Goldwyn produced a silent film version of Polly of the Circus, based on the stage production in which Ida St Leon had played the lead role over four seasons. That year, the Australian bareback rider, May Wirth, was a household word throughout the United States, one of the leading stars of the huge Ringling Bros Circus. During the visit of the Ringling circus to Los Angeles, Goldwyn invited May to do a screen test to act the role of Polly in his coming film. May did not get (or perhaps declined) the role, but left to posterity this amazing four-minute screen test. The screen test is now part of the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

Polly of the Circus—Sam Goldwyn’s 1917 production, starring Mae Marsh as ‘Polly’

Endnotes

1. Variety, 26 October 1907, 15 August 1908.

2. New York Times, 24 December 1907.

3. New York Star, 10 October 1908.

4. Age, 26 May, 18 June 1906.

5. New York Clipper, 9 December 1911.

6. Unsourced clipping. Harvard Theatre Collection.

7. Chicago Journal, 11 September 1908.

8. Variety, 1 August 1908

9. Variety, 15 August 1908..

10. Variety, 15 August 1908; New York Clipper, 5 September 1908.

11. New York Clipper, 27 February 1909.

12. Billboard, 19 December 1914; Massachusetts Death Return 1909, Vol. 83, No. 13, p. 305; Variety, 20 February, 11 December 1909.

13. Variety, 16 October 1909. The grave is located in Selection 985, Lot No 358, Prospect Plot of the Maple Grove Cemetery, Kew Gardens, New York.

14. Nathan, George Jean, ‘Through a star to stardom’, Burr McIntosh, September 1909.

15. O. L. Guernsey, Jnr (ed.), The Best Plays of 1978 to 1979, Dodd Mead and Company, p. 503; Who Was Who in Theatre, 1912-1976, Vol. 4, Gale Research Company, Detroit, Michigan; W. Rigdon (ed.), The Biographical Encyclopaedia and Who’s Who of the American Theatre, James H. Heineman Inc., New York, 1966.

16. New York Clipper, 22 May 1909.

17. New York Telegraph, 18 June 1909.

18. New York Clipper, 22 May 1909; Dramatic News, 12 June 1909; New York Telegraph, 18 June 1909.

19. Dramatic Herald, 12 June 1909.

20. Burr McIntosh, September 1909.

21. Toledo News Bee, 15 March 1910.

22. Toledo Flame, 18 March 1910.

23. Unsourced clipping, Harvard Theatre Collection.

24. Toledo Blade, 15 March 1910.

25. Unsourced clipping dated 15 November 1912.

26. Variety, 29 November 1912.

27. Spokane Review, 14 January 1912; Variety, 15, 29 November 1912; Atlanta Georgian, 26 March 1912; New York Telegram, 23 November 1912.

28. San Francisco Call, 24 December 1913.

29. Atlanta Georgian, 14 September 1910.

30. The American Film Index lists the title, ‘Polly of the Circus’, directed by Charles Thomas Horan and Edwin L. Hollywood, screenplay by Margaret Mayo. None of the St Leon family were engaged in the making of the film.

31. F.N. Magill, Magill's Survey of Cinema: Silent Films, Vol. 2, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press.

32. Atlanta Georgian, 26 March 1912; Variety, 29 November 1912.

33. Dramatic News, 2 December 1912.

34. New York Clipper, 2 August 1913.

35. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

36. New York Clipper, 22 August 1914.

37. Detroit News, 19 October 1914.

38. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

39. Detroit News, 19 October 1914.

40. Billboard, 19 December 1914.

41. Los Angeles Examiner, 11 May 1915.

42. Los Angeles City Directory, 1916.

43. Los Angeles Examiner, 2 August, 20 October, 6 November 1915, 7 January, 7 March, 20 March 1916.

44. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

45. Los Angeles Express, 17 July 1916.

46. New York Times, 26 September 1916.

47. Morning Telegraph, 11 December 1916.

48. The Los Angelos City Directory lists Leo M. Rosenburg residing at 2354 W 31st Street between 1917 and 1941 inclusive.

49. California Birth Index, 1905-1995.

50. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

51. New York Mail,10 December 1919.

52. New York Mail, 20 January 1920.

53. New York Tribune, 20 January 1920.

54. New York Telegraph, 2 February 1920.

55. Unsourced clipping, Locke collection, New York Public Library.

56. New York Dramatic Herald, 15 February 1920.

57. New York Sun, 13 April 1920.

58. New York Clipper, 18 February 1920.

59. New York Evening Journal, 5 April 1920.

60. New York Clipper, 22 September 1920.

61. New York Clipper, 27 April 1921.

62. New York Clipper, 4 May 1921.

63. Daily Iowan, 14 March 1923.

64. Variety, 3 January 1924.

65. Conversation with Leo A. Rosenburg, Malibu, California, 17 July 1995.

66. Los Angeles Times, 22 September 1961.

67. Information from Los Angelos Public Library.

68. Ida Jennie Rosenburg is buried in Space 4, Lot 2553, Acacia, Forest Lawn, Glendale. Her husband, Leo M. Rosenburg, is buried beside her.