Mary Jeanette Robison (19 April 1858 – 20 October 1942), known professionally as May Robson, was an Australian-born America-based actress whose career spanned 58 years, starting in 1883 when she was 25. A major stage actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she is remembered for the dozens of films she appeared in during the 1930s, when she was in her 70s.
Robson was the earliest-born person, and the first Australian to be nominated for an Academy Award (for her leading role in Lady for a Day in 1933).
Early life
May Robson carte de visite
Mary Jeanette Robison was born 19 April 1858 in Moama, in the Colony of New South Wales, in what she described as "the Australian bush". She was the fourth child of Julia, née Schlesinger (or Schelesinger) and Henry Robison; her siblings were Williams, James, and Adelaide.
Henry Robison was born in Penrith, Cumberland, England and lived in Liverpool. He served 24 years in the foreign trade of the British Merchant Navy as a mate and a sea captain. He retired at half-pay due to his poor health and travelled with Julia Robison to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1853 on the SS Great Britain. By April 1855, he was a watchmaker, jeweller, silversmith and ornamental hairworker in Melbourne. According to Robson, her parents both suffered from phthisis pulmonalis, and moved to "the bush" for their health. Henry bought a large brick mansion in Moama, New South Wales, in August 1857 and opened the Prince of Wales Hotel. From there, he co-operated Robison and Stivens, coach proprietors for the Bendigo-Moama-Deniliquin service. The hotel was Robson's first home. Henry died in Moama Maiden's Punt on 27 January 1860.
On 19 November 1862, Julia married Walter Moore Miller, solicitor and mayor of Albury, New South Wales, at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne. Julia, Walter and the four children moved to Melbourne in 1866. Miller was a partner with De Courcy Ireland in the firm of Miller & Ireland in Melbourne in November 1867, and until 20 January 1870, when it was mutually dissolved.
In 1870, the family moved to London. Robson attended Sacred Heart Convent School at Highgate in north London and studied languages in Brussels. She went to Paris for her examinations in French. According to her obituary, she was also educated in Australia.
Marriages and children
Robson ran away from home to marry her first husband, 18 year-old Charles Leveson Gore, in London. They were married on 1 November 1875 at the parish church in Camden Town, London. They traveled on the steamer SS Vaderland and arrived in New York City on 17 May 1877. They purchased 380 acres of land in Fort Worth, Texas, where they built a house and established a cattle ranch. According to Jan Jones, "the Gores survived two years in their prairie manor house before homesickness, rural isolation, and repeated bouts of fever convinced them to sell and try their fortunes in the more settled East." They moved to New York City with little money, and Robson said that Gore died shortly thereafter.
Robson supported her children by crocheting hoods and embroidery, designing dinner cards, and teaching painting. By the time she began her acting career in 1883, two of her three children had died from illnesses, leaving only Edward Hyde Leveson Gore.
Six years after beginning her stage career, Robson married Augustus Homer Brown, a police surgeon, on 29 May 1889. They were together until his death on 1 April 1920. Robson's son, Edward Gore, was her business manager.
On 17 September 1883, Robison became an actress in Hoop of Gold at the Brooklyn Grand Opera House stage. Her name was misspelled "Robson" in the billing, and she used it from that point forward "for good luck". Over the next several decades, she flourished on the stage as a comedian and character actress. Her success was due partly to her affiliation with powerful manager and producer Charles Frohman and the Theatrical Syndicate. She established her own touring theatrical company in 1911.
Robson's initial appearances in film date back as early as 1903 or 1904 with uncredited roles in Edison short film productions. She appeared as herself in a cameo in the 1915 silent film How Molly Made Good; which was probably her first feature film and starred in the 1916 silent film A Night Out, an adaptation of the play she co-wrote, The Three Lights. She picked up another film role in 1916, appearing in the Marguerite Clark version of Snow White, and in 1919, made a guest appearance in the Jack PickfordIn Wrong. Respected and firmly established in the theatre, Robson's fame and recognition allowed her to appear in films uncredited. As so many silent films are missing or lost, she may have appeared in many more.
In 1927, she went to Hollywood, where she began a successful film career as a senior woman, often in comedic roles and nearly rivaling her longtime friend Marie Dressler. Among her starring roles was in The She-Wolf (1931) as a miserly millionaire businesswoman, based on real-life miser Hetty Green.
She also starred in the final segment of the anthology film If I Had a Million (1932) as a rest-home resident who gets a new lease on life when she receives a $1,000,000 check from a dying business tycoon. She played the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1933), Countess Vronsky in Anna Karenina (1935), Aunt Elizabeth in Bringing Up Baby (1938), Aunt Polly in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), and a sharp-tongued Granny in A Star Is Born (1937). She was top-billed as late as 1940, starring in Granny Get Your Gun at 82. Her last film was 1942's Joan of Paris.
Robson was the first Australian to be nominated for an acting Oscar, and for many years was also the oldest performer nominated.
Death
Robson died in 1942 at her Beverly Hills, California, home at age 84. In her obituary, the Nevada State Journal said that she died of "a combination of ailments, aggravated by neuritis and advanced age." Her remains were cremated and buried at the Flushing Cemetery in Queens, New York, next to those of her second husband, Augustus Brown.
The New York Times called Robson the "dowager queen of the American screen and stage".
Works
Stage
The following is a partial list of her stage performances:
↑The obituary for Robson in the Berkshire Evening Eagle and Billboard Magazine, as well as the summary of her life at the Library of Congress, stated that she was born in Melbourne, Victoria, but the family was living in Moama, New South Wales at the time of her birth.
↑Nissen states that Robson was seven when her father died, but her father died in 1860 and she was born in 1858. Robson says in her biography for Theatre Magazine that she was three months old when her father died.
↑Nissen says that the family moved to London when Robson was seven.
↑Although Robson said that she was 16 when she married, she was 17 years-of-age, based upon her date of birth, when she married Charles Gore. Her husband's name has been said to be Charles Leveson Gore, Charles Livingston Gore, Edward H. Gore, and E. H. Gore.
↑ According to Jan Jones, when Gore wanted to return to England, Robson decided that she wanted to stay in New York City and the couple divorced. Gore returned to London. He died in the early 1880s.
↑Robson says that the children both died of scarlet fever. Axel Nissen states the causes of death as diphtheria and scarlet fever. Who's Who on the stage states that the children's death came about as the result of poverty (i.e., not a specific cause of death, but an influencing factor).
↑Her son, whose full name was Edward Hyde Leveson Gore, was born on December 2, 1876 and died September 23, 1954 Her son Edward and daughter-in-law were alive at the time of his mother's death. They had a son, Robson Gore.
↑She was critically ill for three weeks before her death and in ill health for months before. A biographical sketch of Robson in the Notable American Women, 1607–1950 stated that she died of cancer.
References
12Nissen, Axel (2007). Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p.184. ISBN978-0-7864-2746-8.
1234"May Robson, Stage, Screen Star, Is Dead: Character Actress Began Long Career in 1883". Berkshire Evening Eagle. Pittsfield, Berkshire, Massachusetts: 1. October 20, 1942.
12"Advertising". Bendigo Advertiser. Vol.VI, no.1145. Victoria, Australia. January 25, 1859. p.1. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia.
123"Family Notices - Henry Robison". Bendigo Advertiser. Vol.VII, no.1463. Victoria, Australia. February 1, 1860. p.2. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia. On the 27th ult., in his 49th year, at his residence, Prince of Wales Hotel, Maiden's Punt, Murray River, New South Wales, Henry Robison (of the firm of Robison and Stivens), late of Bourke-street, Melbourne, deeply regretted by a large circle of friends, leaving a wife and four children to lament their loss."
12345Marea Donnelly, History Writer (January 15, 2016). "A Town like Moama". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved November 12, 2016.
12Henry Robison, Master's Certificate of Service, Number 52.653, Liverpool, Registrar General of Seamen, London, February 21, 1853
12"Advertising". The Age. Vol.I, no.163. Victoria, Australia. April 27, 1855. p.2. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia.
↑"Advertising". The Sydney Morning Herald. Vol.XXXIV, no.5128. New South Wales, Australia. October 27, 1853. p.5. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia.
↑"Family Notices". The Argus (Melbourne). No.5, 139. Victoria, Australia. November 24, 1862. p.4. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia.
↑"Advertising". The Argus (Melbourne). No.7, 377. Victoria, Australia. January 31, 1870. p.7. Retrieved October 28, 2016– via National Library of Australia.
12"Marriages". The Times. No.28465. London, England. November 5, 1875. p.1.
123Jones, Jan (2006). Renegades, Showmen & Angels: A Theatrical History of Fort Worth, 1873-2001. Texas A & M University Press. pp.37–38. ISBN0-87565-318-9.
1234Edward T. James; Janet Wilson James; Paul S. Boyer (1971). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, vol 2. Radcliffe College. p.185. ISBN0-674-62734-2.
↑"Two Brilliant Women, They are Both Bright Ornaments of the Stage: Viola Allen and May Robson". The Olean Democrat. Olean, New York: 6. November 29, 1892.
12Nissen, Axel (2007). Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp.184–185. ISBN978-0-7864-2746-8.
↑George Clinton Densmore Odell (1940). Annals of the New York Stage. Columbia University Press. p.364.
↑Nissen, Axel (2007). Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p.3. ISBN978-0-7864-2746-8.
↑John C. Tibbetts, James M. Welsh, ed. (2010). American Classic Screen Features. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p.253. ISBN978-0-81087678-1.
↑Nissen, Axel (2007). Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp.3, 187–8. ISBN978-0-7864-2746-8.
12Nissen, Axel (2007). Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp.3, 187. ISBN978-0-7864-2746-8.
12Edwards, Anne (2000) [1985]. Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman. New York: St. Martin's Press. p.456. ISBN0-312-20656-9.
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