| MABEL LOVE on Collectors' Post | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Who's Who on Collectors' Post
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Biography Mabel Love (1874-1953) was a British dancer and actress who was considered to be one of the great stage beauties of her age. Many men found her irresistible. It is said that she was a great favourite of Edward, the Prince of Wales, and it is possible that he provided her with a London house. In 1894, Winston Churchill wrote to her asking for a signed photograph. Her grandfather had been a ventriloquist and her mother an actress. Mabel, the second of three daughters, made her stage debut at the age of twelve, on December 23, 1886 at the Prince of Wale’s Theatre playing The Rose in the very first stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. It was billed as ‘A Dream Play for Children’. In March, 1887, she played one of the triplet children in Masks and Faces at the Opera Comique. In 1887, she appeared in the Christmas pantomime at Covent Garden. It was the following October that she first attracted the level of public interest that was rapidly to make her on of the most adored and feted stage stars of the period. Still only 14, she became a member of Mr. George Edwardes's Burlesque Company at the Gaiety Theatre and was given the dancing role of Totchen, the little Vivandiere (‘camp follower’) in Faust Up To Date (1888-9). The men-about-town flocked to watch her performances. Presumably, all the attention became too much for her. In March 1889, under the headline ‘Disappearance of a Burlesque Actress’, The Star reported that, ate leaving the theatre, she had disappeared, adding: ‘She was wearing, when she left home, a black and white skirt, Oxford patent shoes, black plush hat and feathers, and a terra cotta coloured cloak trimmed with white fur round the collar and cuffs and with large metal buttons.’ After she had returned home, it was reported that she had gone to the Thames Embankment, considering suicide. As always, the publicity only increased the public’s interest in her. For the next 30 years, she appeared almost without a pause in a succession of burlesques, pantomimes and musical comedies. Among her impotent successes were: playing Francoise in La Cigale that opened at the Lyric Theatre in October 1890 and ran for fourteen months; playing Pepita in Caryll’s Little Christopher Columbus that opened at the Lyric on October 10, 1893, and ran for 279 performances; appearing in the Follies Bergere in Paris; and playing Violet Robinson in Man and Superman (1912) on Broadway. Mabel Love retired from the stage in 1918 and returned only once. In May, 1938, she played Mary Goss in Profit and Loss at the Embassy Theatre. After this, she went to live in a hotel in Weybridge, Surrey, where she resided for the next 15 years and where she died on May 15, 1953. For the help they have given, I thank David Railton and Helena MacLean (the great-grand-daughter of Mabel Love). Her informative site can be found at http://mabellove.topcities.com/index.htm. 
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