Eagels, Jeanne

(1894-1929)

   Born Amelia Jean Eagles in Kansas City, Missouri, she acted as a child and played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream there. She changed the spelling of her surname and made an inauspicious New York debut in a bit role in the musical Jumping Jupiter (1911), followed by similarly insignificant roles in The Mind-the-Paint Girl (1912) and Outcast (1916). George Arliss recognized her potential and cast her in plays with him: Paganini, The Professor's Love Story, Disraeli, and Hamilton. Success in Daddies (1918) and A Young Man's Fancy (1919) adumbrated her legendary performance as the amoral prostitute Sadie Thompson in W. Somerset Maugham's Rain (1922), a role she played continually for more than four years on Broadway and on tour. Eagels scored another success in her final role as Simone in Her Cardboard Lover (1927). From 1915, she acted in a half-dozen silent motion pictures. Her only surviving "talkie," The Letter (1929), captures her beauty and talent. This mercurial, fiery, and beautiful actress was perhaps the most promising stage performer of the time. But her offstage life was tumultuous and marred by drugs and alcohol. Her premature death enshrined her as a tragic legend of the American stage.