Frances Starr (1881 – 1973) [Section 122, Lot 11]
Actress of the stage, screen and early television
Frances Starr was born on June 6, 1881, to Charles Edward Starr and Emma Grant in Oneonta, N.Y. She started acting in plays in 1901 in Albany where she performed alongside Lionel Barrymore and English actor Alison Skipworth. She was picked up by the director, producer, and impresario, David Belasco who went on to launch the careers of Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, and James O’Neill, father of playwright Eugene O’Neill.
In 1906 she appeared in several small roles, appearing in the Murray Hill Stock Company receiving a salary of $7.50 a week, which she is quoted to have “made many a meal out of crackers and milk.” Her breakout was in the 1909 production of The Easiest Way directed by David Belasco, receiving a salary of $1000 - $15000 a week over the next decade.
Many of the plays she was in were adapted to early silent film by the Famous Players – Lasky, a precursor to Paramount Pictures. The play Rose of the Rancho, was turned into a silent film in 1914, directed by Cecil B. DeMille where she did star in it. Additionally, a film adaption of The Easiest Way was released in 1931 starring Clarke Gable though Frances was not part of the film.
Between the years of 1915 – 1922 Alfred J. Frueh, a caricaturist, and illustrator who was known to do portraits of stage actors drew Frances. Titled “Stage Folk” it is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
She also caught the eye of Haskell Coffin, one of the most highly paid illustrators of in America. His specialized images of women were seen on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post, Redbook,and McCall’s. During World War I, he was commissioned by the U.S. Government to do a Joan of Arc, which resembles Frances, to market efforts on war saving stamps.
Frances and Haskell married in 1920, however, the marriage didn’t last long. On August 15, 1932, she married again to the banker Robert Golden Donaldson, Chairman of the Board to Mount Vernon Savings Bank in Washington, D.C. Her second marriage also ended in divorce and married Emil Churchill Wetten, a lawyer from Chicago.
Frances continued to act; a standout role was in the 1931 early talkie Five Star Final which also starred Edward G. Robinson. She did not have a presence on the silver screen after the early 1930s but continued to act on stage. She performed a lot of summer theatre, mainly at Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey and Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine. With the creation of television she appeared in a variety of roles such as Marmee March in Little Women for The Ford Theatre Hour in 1949, and Mrs. Fairfax in Jane Eyre for Studio One in Hollywood in 1952.
Frances died on June 11, 1973, at her home of 10 Mitchell Place in New York City at the age of 92. She is buried in the William H. Van Tuyl family plot at Albany Rural Cemetery.