1887
| October 18 | Helene born to Fred and Rosa Gretsch |
1896
| Eleanor Duce, a famous Italian actress, came to the
USA and did a triumphant tour. Grover Cleveland and his wife came to every
performance. Mrs. Cleveland shocked the Washington society by having a tea
at the While House in her honor. It was the first tea for an actress. Eleanor Duce was a rival of Sarah Bernhardt. Bernhardt was outgoing thriving on publicity. Duce was the opposite. What did young Helene, mostly like already at ten interested in acting think of these women? They were after all the "movie stars" of the day! |
1906
| May 5 | Orlenev and his company which had once included
Nazimova left New York . |
| May 14 | Nazimova signed a contract with Lee Shubert. he engaged an
English teacher. |
| November 12 | Alla Nazimova made her first appearance on Broadway in
Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" at the Princess Theater. She played matinees only four times a week. A month of packed houses and heavy advanced bookings called for a change of plan. Gavin Lambert, NAZIMOVA
|
| Other actresses of the era who Helene would have been well
aware of were: Maude Adams, playing in "Peter Pan" Anna Held in Ziegfeld-Land, singing "Won't you come and play with me" Ethel Barrymore, Leslie Carter and Olga Nethersole, "Du Berry" and "Mary Magdalene" "All these stars were personalities first and actresses second" Gavin Lambert, NAZIMOVA. |
1907
| January 7 | "A Doll's House" opened the season at the Bijou and
alternated nightly with "Hedda Gabler" "Cosmopolitan" ran a special feature on Nazimova. Dissenter was William Winter, who launched an attack against Ibsen as a threat to American values. |
| continued to play to a packed house for two months. | |
| April 12 | Nazimova plays "Comtesse Coquette" a comedy....the house was
packed for every performance until the end of June when the theater season
ended.
|
| September | "Comtesse Coquette"again |
| September 23 | Ibsen's "Master Builder" |
1908
| February | Nazimova, Brandon Tynan go on tour together with "A doll
House", "Hedda Gabler", "Master Builder" Opened in Washington and sold out for three weeks. New Orleans to Toronto, a highly successful six month tour. |
1909
| Eleonora Duse retires from the theater. | |
1910
| March 11 | Helene Gretsch, gives a
performance as Helene Hope at a New York theatre. |
| March 15, Thursday
1913 magazine ad. |
Helene Gretsch, graduates
from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
The American Academy of Dramatic Arts is the oldest organization for the training of actors in English-speaking countries. Founded in 1884 by Franklin Haven Sargent the academy is located in New York City with a recently founded branch in Pasadena, California (1974). The courses do not just include stage work but television and film as well. Former students include Anne Bancroft, Kirk Douglas, Ruth Gordon, Agnes Moorehead and Spencer Tracy. See the magazine ad from 1913 to the left. In 1980,
Ted Clauss wrote to me that the American Academy of Dramatic Arts was a four
year program held at Carnegie Hall. |
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 |
Helene Hope on stage during this period.
Click on the image for an enlargement. |
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| April 18 | "Little Eyolf" American premier of another Ibsen play. Played to capacity houses for three months. 75,000 people saw it. at the 39th street theater which was to be renamed "Nazimova's 39th street theater". |
| September 15 | Schnitzler's "The Fairy Tale" in Chicago |
1911
| May | Frohman's office became the scene of what the press would describe as "secret negotiations".( Lambert) |
| May 15 | Frohman made an announcement to the press that Nazimova was moving over to him |
| Shubert countered with a press release of his own, the
Nazimova 39th Street theater was to be stripped of her name.( actually she
never performed there |
|
| Frohman, the first and most successful star makers among
American producers, had a star list that included John Drew, Ethel
Barrymore, Maude Adams, Billie Burke, Marie Doro, and William (sherlock
Holmes) Gillette. |
|
| Nazimova wanted to open with "Witness for the Defense" but Ethel Barrymore got the part and only lasted 6 weeks at the Empire. | |
| September 15 | Nazimova opened in Utica with " The Other Mary" and closed in Chicago three weeks later. |
| December 14 | "The Mrionettes" opened at the Lyceum. |
1919
| April 9 | Sidney Drew who Helene had toured with died. He had a son, S Rankin
Drew, who died in World War I. It is interesting to speculate how well Helene Hope knew Sidney Drew and how the war impacted them both. Sidney was the uncle of Ethel, John, Lionel Barrymore. It is believed that he was his mother'e Louisa Drew's biological child although she said that she adopted him after her husband died. |
1920
| According to US Census, dated January 4, 1920, Helene and John Welsh
are living with the Gretsch/ Kling family at 42 Sidney Place, Brooklyn. |
|
| January 25 | Walter Gretsch and Gertrude Beardall Gourlay are married and leave
shortly there after for Europe. . |
| September | In September Walter visits with William Gretsch and helps William
move from Heidelberg to Basel. William's property is released from the
Alien Property Custodian. There must have been talk in the family of
money coming to the family from this release. |
1922
| February 12 | " A Doll's House" a film financed by Nazimova opened in New York, "restored Nazimova's prestige as an actress". Lambert...a box office failure. in spite of this commercial failure, she invested $250,000. on a second independant project...ended up spending $400,000 by the time Allied put Salone on the shelf in June of 1922. |
1923
| February | "Allied gave Salome a very restricted run" " A movie SALOME is not. In the credits, Nazimova described it as " A Pantomime affter the Play by Oscar Wilde. and also said that she conceived it as a" in the style of a Russian Ballet." |
| July 30 | Eleonora Duse's picture appears on the cover of Time
Magazine,
the first woman ever. |
1924
| April 21 | Eleonora Duse dies in Pittsburg. It is the last stop of her American Tour. |
| April 27 | Nazimova sails to Europe on the Aquitania |
| August 30 | arrived back in New York. |
1928
| October 15 | "The Cherry Orchard" opened at the Civic Rep, at 14th street
near Sixth Ave. with Alla Nazimova as Ranevskaya. It sold out for the season
twenty-four hours after opening night.{Lambert) Civic, thought by some to be a lesbian theater. May Sarton, Gladys Marshall, Eva Le Galliienne, |
1929
| February 23 | Nazimova opened in her second play at the Civic but neither critics nor audiences shared her admiration for Katrina. |
| April 15 | Season ended. |
1945
| July 13 | Alla died. John Beal a friend of her latter years read at her memorial service from the books at her bedside. Spinoza's ETHICS and MEDITATIONS of Marcus Arelius. John Beal was a friend of Maxine Elsner. They were both from Joplin, Missouri. |