Caroline Louise Dudley (June 10, 1857 – November 13, 1937) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
silent filmA silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
and stage actress who used her married name,
Mrs. Leslie Carter, as her stage name to spite her former husband. She was called "The American
Sarah BernhardtSarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...
".
Early life
Caroline Dudley was born in
Lexington, KentuckyLexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
. The exact date is not known but research points more accurately to the year 1857. Her father was Orson Dudley, a wholesale dry goods merchant of means, who gave to his daughter every advantage that money could bestow. Her mother was Catherine Dudley. Most of her childhood was spent in
Dayton, OhioDayton is the 6th largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County, the fifth most populous county in the state. The population was 141,527 at the 2010 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 841,502 in the 2010 census...
. She aspired to the stage from childhood, but for family reasons she never appeared publicly, even at amateur entertainments.
At the time of her 1880 marriage in Dayton to lawyer Leslie Carter, a
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
millionaire, she was considered a great belle, as she was a strikingly beautiful girl with great vivacity. They had one child, a son, Dudley Carter. In 1887 she filed for divorce on the grounds of physical assault and abandonment, but in 1889, Mr. Carter obtained the divorce naming actor,
H. Kyrle BellewHarold Kyrle Money Bellew , more commonly known as Kyrle Bellew, was a British stage and silent film actor in the late 19th and early 20th century. Bellew notably toured with Cora Brown-Potter in the 1880s and 1890s and was cast as the leading man in many stage productions alongside Brown-Potter...
, as correspondent. Son Dudley chose to live with his mother and was cut out of his father's will as a result. Press coverage of the trial was suppressed, but the filing and results were front page scandal.
Career
Her association with Broadway impresario,
David BelascoDavid Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
, skyrocketed her to theatrical fame. Her first hit was as the lead character in
The Heart of MarylandThe Heart of Maryland was a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco. The four-act melodrama set in the American Civil War opened at the Herald Square Theatre in New York on October 22, 1895 and ran for 240 performances. Mrs. Leslie Carter originated the role of Maryland...
(1895), a huge hit that was followed by the even more sensational
ZazaZaza is a play, originally written by French playwrights Pierre Berton and Charles Simon, but probably best known in the English-speaking world in the 1898 adaptation by David Belasco. The title character is a prostitute who becomes a music hall entertainer and the mistress of a married...
(1898) and
Madame Du Barry (1901). In
The Heart of Maryland, she wore a wig with six-foot tresses. Her great scene came as the heroine swinging in the belfry tower, her hands gripping the clapper to prevent the ringing of a huge
curfew bellThe curfew bell was a bell rung in the evening in Medieval England as the signal for everyone to go to bed.A bell was rung usually around eight o'clock in the evening which meant for them to cover their fires - deaden or cover up, not necessarily put out altogether...
. The sensational swinging out of Mrs. Carter thirty-five feet above the stage with off-stage fans sending her long tresses streaming set New York audiences cheering.
Carter became her generation's greatest dramatic actress. When she broke with Belasco in 1906 after her surprise remarriage, she was already considered a relic and abandoned
BroadwayBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in favor of
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
. In July 1906, she married actor (William) Louis Payne (1875 – August 17, 1955) who was often her leading man on stage, and later managed her business affairs. They adopted a daughter, Mary Carter Payne.
In 1915, pioneer producer George Kleine hired her to recreate
Madame Du Barry for the motion picture cameras. She was already in her fifties and too old for the part, but it was nevertheless followed by a screen version of her first success, the civil war melodrama
The Heart of Maryland. Neither film was a success. Her last stage hit was as a decayed coquette, in Somerset Maugham’s drawing-room comedy,
The Circle, in 1921.
Returning to vaudeville, Carter's career collapsed in 1926 when she was fired during a
Newark, New JerseyNewark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, tryout of
The Shanghai Gesture, in which she had been cast as Mother Goddam. As she owned a half-interest in the show, which went on to be a Broadway success, she received half the royalties. She appeared in the road version of the show after its New York run.
Later years
She retired to
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
but returned to the screen twice in 1935, first as George F. Marion's wife in the
Zane GreyZane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage was his bestselling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence...
western
The Rocky Mountain Mystery (aka
The Fighting Westerner) and also playing a small role in the
TechnicolorTechnicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
film
Becky SharpBecky Sharp is a 1935 film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins. Other supporting cast were Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. It is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on...
, starring
Miriam HopkinsEllen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...
.
She died in 1937 at
Santa Monica, CaliforniaSanta Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
of
heart diseaseHeart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
. She is buried in
Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, OhioWoodland Cemetery and Arboretum , located at 118 Woodland Avenue, Dayton, Ohio, is one of the oldest "garden" cemeteries in the United States....
in the family plot with her second husband, her son Dudley, and several other Dudley and Payne family members.
Carter's ascendancy in the theatrical world was fictionalized and sensationalized, in
The Lady With Red Hair (1940).
Kay FrancisKay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...
and
Bette DavisRuth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
in turn had been slated for the role, but it was Miriam Hopkins who portrayed her.
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
portrayed David Belasco. Second husband Louis Payne was a technical adviser on the film. Louis Payne died in 1955 at the Motion Picture Country Home.
Ghost
Apparently after her death she stayed around the Theater Republic, where she got her start. Now
The New Victory TheaterThe New Victory Theater is an Off-Broadway theater located at 209 West 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, in Midtown Manhattan. The New Victory is New York's first and only theater for children and family audiences...
, staff and visiting companies say they are visited by the ghost of Mrs. Leslie Carter when trouble arises backstage.
Filmography
- The Scales of Justice (1914)
- DuBarry (1915)
- The Heart of Maryland (1915)
- The Lifeguardsman (1916)
- Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935)
- Becky Sharp (Uncredited, 1935)
Portrayals in film
A typically romanticized and inaccurate hollywood biopic,
Lady with Red Hair, staring
Miriam HopkinsEllen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...
, with
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
as
David BelascoDavid Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
was released in 1940.
External links