page_title: Trixie Friganza
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Trixie Friganza / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Trixie Friganza, 1911
context_page_description: Trixie Friganza was an American actress. She began her career as an operetta soubrette, working her way from the chorus to starring in musical comedies to having her own feature act on the vaudeville circuit.
  She transitioned to film in the early 1920s mostly playing small characters that were quirky and comedic and retired from the stage in 1940 due to health concerns. She spent her last years teaching drama to young women in a convent school and when she died she left everything to the convent. She became a highly sought after comic actress after the success of The Chaperons and is best known for her stage roles of Caroline Vokes in The Orchid, Mrs. Radcliffe in The Sweetest Girl in Paris, for multiple roles in The Passing Show of 1912, and her run as a vaudeville headliner. During the height of her career, she used her fame to promote social, civic, and political issues of importance, such as self-love and the Suffragist movement.
context_section_description: Friganza was born in Grenola, Kansas to a mother Margaret Friganza of Spanish descent and an Irish father Cornelius O'Callaghan, and was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She had two younger sisters, and along with their mother, these four women were a tightly knit unit growing up. She was educated at St. Patrick's School in Cincinnati, beginning what would become a lifelong allegiance to the Catholic Church. When asked by a reporter why she took the name Friganza she replied, “I didn't marry it”; Friganza, in fact, is her mother's maiden name (Margaret Jane Friganza), which she both liked and found to be suitable for the stage. A friend and colleague of hers by the name of Digby Bell (of the Digby Bell Opera Co.), christened her “Trixie” early on and the name stuck, for she had never been fond of the name Delia.
  She began working at a young age (12 or 13 years old) in order to help support her family, securing a cash girl position at Pogue's store, and earning $3.00 a week. When she was sixteen she was promoted to the handkerchief counter at Pogue's store and her salary went up to around $4.50–$5.00 a week, which was a substantial increase in income for her. It was her boyfriend at the time who encouraged her not to waste her talents as a singer and actress and to venture onto the stage where she could double or triple her current salary.
  Motivated by the desire to provide more for her family and the responsibility she must have felt due to being the oldest of the three daughters, she auditioned for a chorus girl position in The Pearl of Pekin' (1889). She got the part but in order to avoid any embarrassment to her mother and family (stage careers for women were not considered reputable at the time) she opted to begin performing once the production moved up to Cleveland, Ohio.
  Her mother was inconsolable and devastated at her daughter's decision to take to the stage. She notified Cleveland authorities who brought Trixie before a Cleveland judge to justify her decision to work in theater. She presented such a compelling and rational case for this career move (she had to prove to the judge that she was neither “silly” nor “stage-struck”, that this was a business move) that the judge granted her clemency and telegraphed her mother saying that Trixie was doing the right thing. She remained on stage in some form or another for the next fifty years.
caption: Friganza in 1911[2]
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