page_title: Effie Ellsler
section_title: Stage
hierarchical_section_title: Effie Ellsler / Stage
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketch of actress Effie Ellsler
context_page_description: Effie Ellsler was an American actress of stage and screen whose career had its beginnings when she was a child and lasted well into the 1930s. She was best remembered over her early career for playing the title role in Steele MacKaye's hit play Hazel Kirke, and as the self-sacrificing Bessie Barton in Frank Harver's Woman Against Woman. Ellsler remained active during her later years appearing between 1901 and 1936 in at least six Broadway productions and twenty-two motion pictures.
context_section_description: At the age of sixteen Ellsler became a regular player with her father's company performing roles ranging from minor bit parts to a leading lady in Shakespearean plays. When she was about twenty-three Ellsler starred at her father's new Euclid Avenue Opera House in the original production of  A Heroine in Rags, a comedy-drama written specifically for her by the playwright Bartley Campbell. Ellsler's big break came in 1880 when she created the title role in Hazel Kirke at the Madison Square Theatre, New York. She continued in the part, nearly without break, for three years and only stopped after her doctor advised her to do so.
  On November 26, 1884, in New York, Ellsler opened as Priscilla Sefton at the Union Square Theatre in the American debut of Robert W. Buchanan's Storm Beaten and at the same venue two months later appeared as Mabel Blair in the premier production of Bartley Campbell's  Separation. By late 1885 journalist Marcus Klaw had signed Ellsler to star in a national tour of the Frank Harver play, Woman Against Woman, a drama that tells the story of Bessie Barton and her sacrifice that saved the reputation of an ungrateful sister. With A. L. Erlanger as the company's advance man Woman Against Woman with Ellsler toured successfully for three seasons.
  Over the following decades plays of note that Ellsler starred in, either in New York or on the road, would include Camille from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, Clinton Stuart's The Keepsake, Judge Not by Frank Hervey, Laura Don's Egypt: or a Daughter of the Nile and as Julia Marlowe's replacement in Barbara Frietchie by Clyde Fitch.
  Ellsler last appeared on the Broadway stage at the Morosco Theatre in September 1922 after a two-year run in The Bat, a three-act mystery melodrama by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. Two nights before the play's finale, Ellsler collapsed during her performance, but against advice, insisted on returning for the play's last two engagements.
caption: Sketch by Marguerite Martyn, 1919
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