Yurka, Blanche

(1893-1974)

   The versatile, well-respected Czech-born stage actress played a range of classic and contemporary roles, preferring classics and the realistic dramas of Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw to commercial entertainments. Although she studied for opera, Yurka began an acting career in 1907 under the guidance of producer David Belasco. She landed her first significant role in Is Matrimony a Failure? (1909) with Jane Cowl. Yurka scored a notable success as Gertrude opposite John Barrymore's Hamlet in 1922, subsequently playing serious roles like Gina in a 1925 production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. Among Yurka's New York appearances, some of which she also directed, are Man and the Masses (1924), The Goat Song (1926), The Squall (1926), Hedda Gabler (1929), The Lady from the Sea (1929), The Vikings (1929), Electra (1932), and Troilus and Cressida (1932). Yurka made her last Broadway appearance in a short-lived 1966 revival of Dinner at Eight* and also appeared in motion pictures (and television*) beginning in the silent era. Although she never attained the fame of her contemporaries Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes, or Tallulah Bankhead, Yurka had a long career distinguished by her versatility.