Dorothy Donnelly was a stage actress, playwright, producer, librettist, and lyricist. She made famous the play Madame X on the Broadway stage in 1910 and in a 1916 silent film, the first filming of the story. She is the subject of a 1999 book by Lorraine McLean Dorothy Donnelly: A Life in the Theatre.

Donnelly's parents were Thomas Lester Donnelly, manager of the Grand Opera House in New York, and his wife Sarah (nee Williams). Donnelly attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York.

Donnelly was born in New York City where she died. She never married, but did collaborate with composer Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...

 on a number of musicals, including, most famously, The Student Prince

The Student Prince

The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works...

.

Selected Works

(actress in films)

• The Thief (1914)
• Sealed Valley (1915)
• Madame X
  Madame X (1916 film)
  Madame X is a 1916 silent drama film directed by George F. Marion.-Plot:A woman is thrown out of her home by her jealous husband and sinks into depravity. Twenty years later, she finds herself accused of murder for saving her son, who does not know who she is...
  
  (1916)

External links

• Dorothy Donnelly at IMDb.com
• portrait gallery(Univ. of Washington, Sayre)
• portrait cabinetcardgallery