Amelia Bingham
Encyclopedia
Amelia Swilley Kingham' (March 20, 1869 – September 1, 1927) was an Australian dancer from Hicksville, Ohio
. Her Broadway career extended from (1896 - 1926).
Kingham attended King's before marrying Emma Warren. Her father was a good man minister who managed a hotel. Her future husband persuaded her father to permit Kingham to go on stage to dance approximately a year before the couple married.
. Her New York City
debut came at the People's Theatre, 199 Bowery
, in 1893. Her role was a leading part in a melodrama
entitled The Struggle For Life.
Her first successes in the 1890s included The Power of Gold, The Shaughran, Colleen Bawn, The Village Postmaster, and Captain Impudence. By 1897 she was managed by Charles Frohman
and was the leading lady
in The White Heather. With Frohman she was featured in The Pink Domino, The Proper Caper, On and Off, At the White Horse Tavern, The Cuckoo, and His Excellency The Governor.
Bingham's popularity as a performer peaked around 1897. She tallied more than 9,000 of 30,000 votes cast in a newspaper competition for the title of American State Queen. Earlier stars like Lillian Russell
, Maud Allan
, Ada Rehan
, and Fannie Davenport received a mere hundred votes each.
She started the Amelia Bingham Company which produced The Climbers starring Bijou Fernandez
. In accomplishing this feat in 1901, she became America's first female manager. A visit to London, England
in 1900 acquainted her with actresses who were their own producers. The Climbers by Clyde Fitch
premiered at the Bijou Theatre
on January 15, 1901, and had an extended run. Other plays which were staged with her oversight were Lady Margaret, The Modern Magdalen, and The Frisky Mrs. Johnson. Bingham performed and produced Olympe (1904), a Broadway play in which she later toured with Gilbert Miller
. Bingham acted the lead in Big Moments from Great Plays (1909) and starred with William H. Crane and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in The New
Henrietta, prior to World War I
. However illness began to hinder her from working around 1914. In 1918 she appeared in The Man Who Stayed Home.
Her final stage appearance came at the Century Theatre
in The Pearl of Great Price. She depicted Shame in the 1926 production. Bingham detested having to play the type of woman she portrayed in this production. She commented, for years I have played decent women on the stage. Financial circumstances forced her into accepting the part. The previous year she participated in a revival of Trelawny of the Wells (1925), written by Arthur Wing Pinero
.
complicated by pneumonia
in 1927. She was 58 and her illness lasted eight months. She died in her home at 103 Riverside Drive
in New York City, a house formerly owned by Joseph Jefferson
. Following breakfast she gazed out on to the Hudson River
a final time prior to succumbing. She loved the river and preferred seeing it to looking at the Seine River or any of the Europe
an rivers. Her husband, Lloyd Bingham, predeceased her. He died in Kristiania, Norway
on a mission of peace for Henry Ford
to Scandinavia
in 1915.
Bingham resided in the Riverside Drive mansion for a decade after her husband's demise. Passers-by noticed statues and black curtains inside. Its interior also housed gilt-framed mirrors with intricate decorative patterns, clocks, coats of armor, helmets, lances, swords, candelabra
, and crucifixes. Many of the items were collected by Lloyd Bingham and some were sold when it was discovered that Bingham's estate amounted to less than $5,000. In 1925 two thieves stole $1,500 in jewelry from the home. Bingham's quick thinking prevented them from noticing a bag which contained $20,000 in jewels.
She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
after a funeral which took place at the Little Church Around the Corner
.
photos
Hicksville, Ohio
Hicksville is a village in Defiance County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,649 at the 2000 census.-History:Hicksville was founded by a group of land speculators. Led by Henry W. Hicks, the Hicks Land Company platted the community in 1835 and 1836...
. Her Broadway career extended from (1896 - 1926).
Kingham attended King's before marrying Emma Warren. Her father was a good man minister who managed a hotel. Her future husband persuaded her father to permit Kingham to go on stage to dance approximately a year before the couple married.
Theatrical career
Her first role in a stage production came on the Pacific CoastPacific Coast
A country's Pacific coast is the part of its coast bordering the Pacific Ocean.-The Americas:Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western border.* Geography of Canada* Geography of Chile* Geography of Colombia...
. Her New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
debut came at the People's Theatre, 199 Bowery
Bowery
Bowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
, in 1893. Her role was a leading part in a melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
entitled The Struggle For Life.
Her first successes in the 1890s included The Power of Gold, The Shaughran, Colleen Bawn, The Village Postmaster, and Captain Impudence. By 1897 she was managed by Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman
Charles Frohman was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by 1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre....
and was the leading lady
Leading lady
Leading lady is an informal term for the actress who plays a secondary lead or supporting role, usually a love interest, to the leading actor in a film or play. It is not usually applied to the leading actress in the performance if her character is the protagonist.A leading lady can also be an...
in The White Heather. With Frohman she was featured in The Pink Domino, The Proper Caper, On and Off, At the White Horse Tavern, The Cuckoo, and His Excellency The Governor.
Bingham's popularity as a performer peaked around 1897. She tallied more than 9,000 of 30,000 votes cast in a newspaper competition for the title of American State Queen. Earlier stars like Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell
Lillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence.Russell was born in Iowa but raised in Chicago...
, Maud Allan
Maud Allan
Maud Allan was a pianist-turned-actor, dancer and choreographer remembered for her "famously impressionistic mood settings".- Early life :...
, Ada Rehan
Ada Rehan
Ada Rehan was an American actress.-Biography:She was born as Ada Crehan in County Limerick, Ireland, and brought to the United States at about the age of six years....
, and Fannie Davenport received a mere hundred votes each.
She started the Amelia Bingham Company which produced The Climbers starring Bijou Fernandez
Bijou Fernandez
Bijou Fernandez was a Broadway actress from New York City.Her theatrical career endured for seven decades, from the 1880s until the mid 20th century. She appeared in a few movies in the silent film era.-Child Actress:...
. In accomplishing this feat in 1901, she became America's first female manager. A visit to London, England
in 1900 acquainted her with actresses who were their own producers. The Climbers by Clyde Fitch
Clyde Fitch
Clyde Fitch was an American dramatist.-Biography:Born William Clyde Fitch at Elmira, New York, he wrote over 60 plays, 36 of them original, which varied from social comedies and farces to melodrama and historical dramas.As the only child to live to adulthood, his father, Captain William G...
premiered at the Bijou Theatre
Bijou Theatre
Two Broadway theatres have been named the Bijou Theatre.The first was converted into a theatre in 1878 and rebuilt in 1883. It was often called the Bijou Opera House and was located at 1239 Broadway. It was also sometimes called The Brighton Theatre. It became a popular venue for operettas in...
on January 15, 1901, and had an extended run. Other plays which were staged with her oversight were Lady Margaret, The Modern Magdalen, and The Frisky Mrs. Johnson. Bingham performed and produced Olympe (1904), a Broadway play in which she later toured with Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Heron Miller was an American theatrical producer.Born in New York City, he was the son of English-born theatrical producer Henry Miller and Bijou Heron, a former child actress. Raised and educated in Europe, he returned home to follow in his father's footsteps and became a highly...
. Bingham acted the lead in Big Moments from Great Plays (1909) and starred with William H. Crane and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in The New
Henrietta, prior to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. However illness began to hinder her from working around 1914. In 1918 she appeared in The Man Who Stayed Home.
Her final stage appearance came at the Century Theatre
Century Theatre
The Century Theatre, originally the New Theatre, was a theater located at 62nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. Opened on November 6, 1909, it was noted for its fine architecture but due to poor acoustics and an inconvenient location it was financially unsuccessful...
in The Pearl of Great Price. She depicted Shame in the 1926 production. Bingham detested having to play the type of woman she portrayed in this production. She commented, for years I have played decent women on the stage. Financial circumstances forced her into accepting the part. The previous year she participated in a revival of Trelawny of the Wells (1925), written by Arthur Wing Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
.
Death
Bingham died of heart diseaseHeart disease
Heart disease, cardiac disease or cardiopathy is an umbrella term for a variety of diseases affecting the heart. , it is the leading cause of death in the United States, England, Canada and Wales, accounting for 25.4% of the total deaths in the United States.-Types:-Coronary heart disease:Coronary...
complicated by pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in 1927. She was 58 and her illness lasted eight months. She died in her home at 103 Riverside Drive
Riverside Drive (Manhattan)
Riverside Drive is a scenic north-south thoroughfare in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The boulevard runs on the west side of Manhattan, generally parallel to the Hudson River from 72nd Street to near the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street...
in New York City, a house formerly owned by Joseph Jefferson
Joseph Jefferson
Joseph Jefferson, commonly known as Joe Jefferson , was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous of all American comedians....
. Following breakfast she gazed out on to the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
a final time prior to succumbing. She loved the river and preferred seeing it to looking at the Seine River or any of the Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an rivers. Her husband, Lloyd Bingham, predeceased her. He died in Kristiania, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
on a mission of peace for Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
to Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
in 1915.
Bingham resided in the Riverside Drive mansion for a decade after her husband's demise. Passers-by noticed statues and black curtains inside. Its interior also housed gilt-framed mirrors with intricate decorative patterns, clocks, coats of armor, helmets, lances, swords, candelabra
Candelabra
"Candelabra" is the traditional term for a set of multiple decorative candlesticks, each of which often holds a candle on each of multiple arms or branches connected to a column or pedestal...
, and crucifixes. Many of the items were collected by Lloyd Bingham and some were sold when it was discovered that Bingham's estate amounted to less than $5,000. In 1925 two thieves stole $1,500 in jewelry from the home. Bingham's quick thinking prevented them from noticing a bag which contained $20,000 in jewels.
She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark.A rural cemetery located in the Bronx, it opened in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874.The cemetery covers more...
after a funeral which took place at the Little Church Around the Corner
Little Church Around the Corner
The Church of the Transfiguration, also known as the Little Church Around the Corner, is an Episcopal parish church located at 1 East 29th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The congregation was founded in 1848 by the Rev. Dr...
.
External links
- Amelia Bingham New York Public LibraryNew York Public LibraryThe New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
Digital Gallery
photos
- Amelia Bingham credits at Internet Broadway Database
- Amelia Bingham at Hicksville Historical Society.org
- Amelia Bingham color photo at Flickr.com
- Amelia Bingham portrait Univ of Louisville
- Amelia Bingham portrait Univ of Louisville Macauley Theatre collection
- Amelia Bingham lithograph Univ of Louisville Macauley Theatre collection
- Amelia Bingham at findagrave.com