page_title: Jennie Lee (British actress)
section_title: San Francisco
hierarchical_section_title: Jennie Lee (British actress) / San Francisco
caption_attribution_description: English: Jennie Lee c. 1870s
context_page_description: Jennie Lee was a Victorian Era English stage actress, singer and dancer whose career was largely entwined with the title role in Jo, a melodrama her husband, John Pringle Burnett, wove around a relatively minor character from the Charles Dickens novel, Bleak House. She made her stage debut in London at an early age and found success in New York and San Francisco not long afterwards. Lee may have first starred in Jo around 1874 during her tenure at San Francisco's California Theatre, but her real success came with the play's London debut on 22 February 1876 at the Globe Theatre in Newcastle Street. Jo ran for many months at the Globe and other London venues before embarking for several seasons on tours of the British Isles, a return to North America, tours of Australia and New Zealand and later revivals in Britain. Reduced circumstances over her final years forced Lee to seek assistance from an actor's pension fund subsidised in part by proceeds from Royal Command Performances.
context_section_description: In August 1873, Lee and J. P. Burnett returned to New York aboard the Steamship Idaho and subsequently travelled by rail to San Francisco where they joined up with Susan Galton to form the Susan Galton and Jennie Lee Opera Bouffe, Burlesque and Comedy Troupe. Their first engagements there came in early September to mid-October at the New Alhambra Theatre in productions of the comedies Thrice Married by Howard Paul (1830–1905) and Andrew Halliday's Checkmate; operettas Fanchette; The Flower Girls of Paris; Too Many Cooks; Charles Selby's three-act comedy, Peggy Green; and an opera bouffe entitled Trom-Al-Ca-Zar.
  By the third week of October, Lee's company had moved to Gray's Opera House where they would remain until the end of February 1874. There she and Burnett played Mr. and Mrs. Honeyton in the comedietta, The Perfect Pair; Fanny Curry and Mr. Dabster in the farce playlette Dabster Done; and in November Lee was Wanda, the peasant girl, to Galton's Grand Duchess in an adaptation of La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and Fleurette to Galton's Boulotte in Offenbach's Barbe-bleue. The following month Lee reprised her role in productions of Kind to a Fault and later appeared with Burnett in the comedietta, The Happy Pair. The year ended in productions of the chinoiserie extravaganza Ching-Chow-Hi, an adaptation of Offenbach's Ba-ta-clan.
  Early in January 1874, Lee played Jelly, the chambermaid in an English farce entitled Beautiful Forever, and appeared in the H. J. Byron burlesque extravaganza Eily O'Conner, based on Boucicault's The Colleen Bawn. On 19 January, Lee and Burnett played Mrs. Julia Juniper and Mr. Singleton Sunbury in the Frederic Hay one-act farce Lodgers and Dodgers. A week later Lee was reported to have fallen seriously ill during an engagement in Sacramento. 
  By 31 March, Lee and Burnett had apparently parted from Galton's troupe and were now appearing together at San Francisco's California Theatre in Thomas Haynes Bayly's one-act farce The Maid of Munster. The two remained at the California and later Platt's Hall into the month of April appearing in the two-act English farce The Happy Pair and several benefit shows. On 23 May at San Francisco's Maguire's New Theatre Lee was the heroine Gilberte in Augustin Daly's adaptation of the Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac five-act comedy, Frou-Frou.
  Lee returned to the California Theatre in June 1874 for an engagement that would last into August of the following year. In June and July, she played Mary Meredith to Edward Sothern's Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin; in July, Polly Eccles, in Thomas Robertson's comedy Home; in August, Zamora to Bella Pateman's Juliana, in John Tobin's comedy, The Honeymoon; in October, Bob, the boot-black, to Frank Mayo's Badger, in Dion Boucicault's The Streets of New York; in November, Susan to William Florence's Captain Cuttle, in John Brougham's adaptation of Dickens's Dombey and Son; in December, Bridget Maguire to Florence's Bryan O'Farrell, in Edmund Falconer's Eileen Oge; in January 1875, reprised Polly Eccles for her benefit performance of Robertson's Home; and in February, Mrs. Wobbler in Henry J. Byron's drama Blow for Blow.
  On 7 June 1875, Lee played for the first time Jo, the crossing-sweeper, in H. A. Rendle's stage adaptation of Dickens's Bleak House entitled Chesney Wold, with Fanny Janauschek in the dual roles of Lady Dedlock and Hortense. Later that month Lee was Lady Aubrey to H. J. Montague's Mannel, in an adaptation of Octave Feuillet's comedy Il Romanzo Di Un Giovane Povero (The Romance of a Poor Young Man), and in July, Moya, lover of Conn the Shaughraun Dion Boucicault in The Shaughraun.
caption: Jennie Lee c. 1870s or 80s
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