July 17, 2007
Rollins professor and student conduct research on letters written by famous actress Annie Russell and her friend Faith Baldwin
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Annie Russell |
Faith Baldwin |
These days, Annie Russell is known simply as an actress, after who the Rollins’ Annie Russell Theatre is named. Most people don’t know much about Annie Russell, except that she supposedly haunts her namesake theater as a happy ghost. Jennifer Cavenaugh, the Winifred M. Warden Endowed Chair of Theatre Arts and Dance, and Rollins student Joseph Bromfield are doing their best to change that. As part of the 207Student-Faculty Summer Scholarship Program, they studied the letters of Annie Russell, particularly her letters to the author Faith Baldwin.
"If our students can learn and understand what high standards Annie Russell had, it will be a real source of pride and motivation to them,” Cavenaugh said. “We want to get her back on the historical record, starting with our students.”
The project started because Cavenaugh wanted to know more about Annie Russell. She was able to travel to the New York public library to see the letters of Annie Russell. There was a huge file of letters from Faith Baldwin that caught her interest as something of significance. “The file from her husband and family was much smaller,” Cavenaugh said. “So I identified the files that were the thickest and had them photocopied.”
The files sat in her office for a year as she pondered who would be willing to help her go through them. Meanwhile Bromfield, a second-year theater major in the Honors program, was looking for a summer research project and asked Cavenaugh if she would be interested in working with him. They decided to work on the Faith Baldwin letters and determine their history and significance in Annie’s life.
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Winifred M. Warden Endowed Chair of Theatre Arts and Dance Jennifer Cavenaugh (right) and Rollins senior Joseph Bromfield look through letters they will use to detail the relationship between Russell and Baldwin. |
The first part of the summer was spent just trying to read the handwritten letters and transcribe them. They have also frequented the Rollins archives to read the letters of Annie Russell kept there. The two came up with a format as to what topics to look for in the letters, such as mentions of the theater, writing and gender. Bromfield added health to the list, because many letters mention illness. The second part of the project is to formulate an article detailing the women’s relationship and the impact they had on each other. They hope to publish in a theater journal or women’s history journal, present at conferences and maybe even write a play. “I really think there is a story to be told here,” Cavenaugh said.
Annie Russell was one of the most famous actresses of her day. She originated the role of the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara in London. Faith Baldwin, one of the forefront romantic novelists, became a prolific writer, and wrote more than 85 books. The women started an intimate correspondence that lasted 28 years. Although theirs was a largely pen-pal relationship, the letters show a nurturing relationship that allowed each woman to be a mentor to the other during different parts of their lives and careers.
Their relationship was initiated by Faith who wrote Annie a fan letter in 1906. Faith was only 12 years old and Annie was 34. Over the years, their friendship continued to grow. According o Cavenaugh, they turned to each other for the intimate relationship they find with men. Women were more apt to be taken seriously by other women. If women wanted to engage in thought-provoking conversations, they had to seek out other like-minded women. “The thing that excited me is these women wanted more for women and expected more of women,” Cavenaugh said.
Both women were the primary breadwinners for their families. Annie often got her husband parts in the plays she was performing in. And Faith at one time used her income from the books she wrote to pay over 90 percent of her family’s bills and expenses. In their time, it was somewhat radical to be a strong, confident, assertive woman, even though the two women were in what were considered “feminine” careers. This summer research project is meant to bring attention to the careers of these two women.
“These women have faded into history,” Bromfield said. “I have a deeper appreciation for the difficulties of these women’s lives and what it was really like to be a woman writer and actress in the 1930s, what it was like to be Annie Russell and Faith Baldwin.”
Annie Russell retired to Winter Park where her friend Mary Curtis Bok Zimbalist gave a bequest to Rollins College for a theater to be built honoring Annie. She stipulated that Annie was to be put in charge. The cornerstone was built in 1932 and Annie ran the theater and taught students there until her death in 1936.
“This project is about passing the torch to the Rollins community, especially those in the theater here to know about these women and recognize their significant accomplishments as women in the 1930s,” Bromfield said.
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