Fay Templeton (December 25 1865, Little Rock,
Arkansas
– October 3 1939, San Francisco, California
) was an American
stage actress.
Her
parents were actors/vaudevillians and she followed in their
footsteps, making her Broadway
debut in
1900. She continued to appear there until 1934. For a time
she dated
Sam Shubert, of the famous
Shubert family of theatre owners, up until his untimely death in a
railroad accident.
Some of her notable performances were in
HMS Pinafore and
Roberta.
After her
death at the age of 73 she was interred in Kensico
Cemetery
in Valhalla, New
York
.
Biography
Born into a theatrical family, Fay Templeton excelled on the
legitimate and vaudeville stages for more than half a century. As
an actress, singer, and comedian, she was a favorite headliner and
heroine of popular theater.
Fay Templeton was born on December 25, 1865, in Little Rock
(Pulaski County), where her parents were starring with the
Templeton Opera Company. John Templeton, Fay’s father, was a
well-known Southern manager, comedian, and author. Helen Alice
Vane, Fay’s mother, starred with her husband. At age three,
Templeton, dressed as Cupid, sang fairy tale songs between the acts
of her father’s plays. Gradually, she was incorporated into the
productions as a bit player and then, at five, had actual lines to
recite. At eight, she played Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at
New York’s Grand Opera House. She sang a contemporary tune, “Up in
a Balloon,” and created a sensation.
At fifteen, Templeton was an accomplished light opera singer. She
played in several juvenile versions of
Gilbert and Sullivan productions, often
as the leading singer. The same year, she eloped with Billy West, a
blackface minstrel performer, but they separated after a honeymoon
of six weeks.
On October 7, 1885, Templeton had her formal debut in a revival of
Evangeline. The play ran for 201 performances. In this show, she
displayed talent as both a comedian and mimic.
After several years on the road playing in various melodramas and
musical farces, Templeton was given the title role in Hendrik
Hudson, which opened at the 14th Street Theater on August 18, 1890.
It was a “trouser role,” one in which an actress appears in male
clothing, then a popular feature of operettas. Her role was of a
faithless husband. She won accolades singing “The Same Old Thing,”
but the show itself lasted only sixteen performances.
Between shows, in 1887, Templeton began living with Howell Osborne,
a wealthy broker for Jay Gould; there is no record that they ever
married, and the two had no children. The two lived in England and
toured the continent for several years. She starred in Monte
Cristo, Jr., an 1886 hit that ran for two seasons.
By 1890, Templeton had formed her own opera company and starred in
various operettas, none of which fared well financially. In 1895,
she starred in another trouser role in E. E. Rice’s Excelsior, Jr.
at Oscar Hammerstein’s new Olympic Theater.
In 1896, the comic duo
Joe Weber and
Lew Fields bought a Broadway theater and
formed a stock company made up of headliners, including Templeton.
Although she was now buxom even by Gay Nineties standards, her
comedic versatility, long dark hair, sultry smile, and
throaty-voiced singing won over audiences. She enjoyed the
Webserfieldsian productions and believed her time at the Music Hall
to be one of the best of her career. In a 1900 show, she introduced
John Stromberg’s “Ma Blushin’ Rosie, Ma Posie Sweet,” which became
the hit of the show. In 1901, she introduced “I’m a Respectable
Working Girl” in the new Music Hall show; she did encore
performances several times each evening.
After Weber and Fields split,
George
M. Cohan hired Templeton to play
the lead in Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway. Fay introduced the
hit songs “So Long Mary” and “Mary Is a Grand Old Name.” A few
months later, she married a Pittsburgh industrialist William
Patterson, co-founder of
Heyl
& Patterson Inc., and announced her retirement from the
stage; she and Patterson also had no children.
In 1911, Weber and Fields began planning their reunion with a
Jubilee touring company featuring all the old Music Hall stars.
Templeton was one of the first to volunteer. The tour lasted five
months and broke all records for touring companies. She continued
in vaudeville with an act that included songs from previous shows.
In 1913, Templeton again announced her retirement.
In 1925, she appeared in an old-timer’s show at the Palace Theater,
working with Weber and Fields. Asked if she would continue to
perform, she replied, “It’s been great fun, but it’s a new Broadway
and a new theater, and hereafter I’ll be content to look on from
out front.” But she returned to the stage again in 1926 to play
Buttercup in a revival of Pinafore. Again, she claimed it was her
last appearance on stage.
When Templeton’s husband died suddenly in 1932, she returned to the
stage to earn a living, appearing in Jerome Kern’s Roberta as Aunt
Minnie, a dress shop owner in Paris. Bob Hope, in his stage debut,
handled the comedy. She had only one song, “Yesterday.” The show
ran for nine months.
At age seventy-one and suffering from arthritis, Templeton found
herself out of funds and entered the Actors’ Fund Home in New
Jersey. On October 3, 1939, she died in San Francisco, where she
had moved to live with a cousin. She is buried in Kensico Cemetery
in Valhalla, New York; few attended her funeral.
Fay Templeton did not bother with entering motion pictures, making
phonographs or performing on radio shows and was devoted to the
theater. As a result she is not remembered today like other stout
grand dames of the turn of the century theater ie
Marie Dressler,
Lillian Russell,
May
Irwin,
Trixie Friganza. All of
whom at one point or another appeared in motion pictures.
Templeton, though pretty in the face like Russell, refused movies
and in so doing, missed having her stage presence and routines
recorded for lasting posterity or for future generations to visit
through the chasm of time.
In popular culture
In the 1942 musical,
Yankee
Doodle Dandy, Templeton was portrayed by actress
Irene Manning.
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