Blanche Massey

Blanche Massey (c. 1878? – 1929) was a Gaiety Girl and actress best known for her stage appearances in London and the United States in the 1890s. Among her appearances in many productions with the George Edwardes company, especially in Edwardian musical comedies, she was perhaps most remembered for A Gaiety Girl.

Blanche Massey
Massey (at center) in The Geisha (1896)

Life and career

Massey was the daughter of Rose Massey, a well-known actress in her time, who died of consumption in 1883.[1]

Massey appeared in plays, Victorian burlesques and Edwardian musical comedies as A Run of Luck (1888), Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué (1889) (incorrectly listed as Blanche Massie),[2] Carmen up to Data (1890),[3] Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891), The Geisha (1896),[4][5] My Friend the Prince (1897), and Lady Madcap (1904).[6][7]

She appeared in both the 1893 West End production of A Gaiety Girl and also the 1894 Broadway production, playing Alma Somerset, the title role, in the latter.[8] The New York Times reviewer wrote, after its Broadway debut in September 1894, that "Blanche Massey is only to be looked at, and few persons will ever tire of looking at her."[9][10]

Massey married actor George F. Tully (1876–1930), an Irish-born actor and appeared in a few silent films in the 1910s.[11]

She died at age 51.

References
  1. "Personal and Other Jottings", The Morning Call, 7 October 1894
  2. Vinent, W.T. Recollections of Fred Leslie, Volume 2, p. 100 (1894)
  3. Carmen Up To Data Photo (1890), Retrieved August 4, 2011
  4. Platt, Len. Joyce, race and Finnegans wake, p. 134 (2007)
  5. "Massey in The Geisha", Munsey's Magazine (August 1896)
  6. The Play Pictorial, Vol. V (1905)
  7. Musical comedy in America, p. 66 (1991 ed.) (orig 1950)
  8. "A Gaiety Girl Is Here", The New York Times, 19 September 1894
  9. "The Week at the Theatres", The New York Times, 23 September 1894
  10. Photograph and profile of Massey in A Gaiety Girl", Munsey's Magazine (November 1895), pp. 235 and 237–238
  11. Who's Who in the Theatre, p. 1030 (1930); Theatrical costume, masks, make-up and wigs: a bibliography and iconography, p. 488; George Tully, Internet Movie Database, Retrieved August 4, 2011; and "Personal". The Australasian. CXXIX (4, 252). Victoria, Australia. 5 July 1930. p. 9 (Metropolitan Edition). Retrieved 15 October 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
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