Ina Claire

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Ina Claire
in the film Ninotchka (1939)
Born	Ina Fagan October 15, 1893(1893-10-15) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Died	February 21, 1985 (aged 91) San Francisco, California, U.S. (heart attack)
Spouse(s)	James Whittaker (1919 - 1925) John Gilbert (1929 - 1931) William R. Wallace (1939 - 1976)

Ina Claire (October 15, 1893 – February 21, 1985) was an American stage and film actress.

[edit] Career

Ina Claire

Claire began her career appearing in vaudeville. She performed on Broadway in the musicals Jumping Jupiter and The Quaker Girl (both 1911) and Lady Luxury sophisticated comedienne, and starred on Broadway in plays by some of the leading comic dramatists of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, including the roles of Jerry Lamarr in Avery Hopwood's The Gold Diggers (1919), Mrs. Cheyney in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925), Lady George Grayston in W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters (1928), and Enid Fuller in George Kelly's The Fatal Weakness.

Her last stage appearance was as Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer in T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk (1954). She was particularly identified with the high comedies of S. N. Behrman, and created the female leads in three of his plays: Biography (1934), End of Summer (1936), and The Talley Method (1941). of her, Behrman wrote, "Her readings were translucent, her stage presence encompassing. The flick of an intonation deflated pomposity. She never missed a nuance." ^[1] Critic J. Brooks Atkinson praised Claire for her "refulgent comic intelligence. ^[2]

Claire's second husband was screen actor John Gilbert. Claire is an inductee in the American Theatre Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[edit] References

^ S. N. Behrman, People in a Diary (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1972), 196.
^ J. Brooks Atkinson, "Americans Stopping in London", The New York Times, Feb. 21 1928, p. 18.