Edith Ellis(1866-1960)

Edith Ellis was born in Coldwater, Michigan, to Edward C Ellis, playwright and actor, and Ruth McCarty Ellis, an actress. She claimed she was born to the stage, her first part was at age 6, and by 10 she was a star. Two plays were written for her before she was 12 years old. Several times she was head of her own stock companies, traveling or stationary, and wrote, produced, directed, and acted in many plays. Her first writing attempt was out of necessity, when she and her brother, Edward, were stranded on the road by the unexpected disbanding of their stock company. The play was successful enough to pay their way home. Edith married Frank A. Baker, and they leased the Park Theatre and the Criterion Theatre in Brooklyn, where she directed plays for many years. They later moved to the Berkely Lyceum in New York where she directed her own play, The Point of View, which never made it to Broadway. She also wrote uncredited scenarios for silent films for Samuel Goldwyn. Their daughter, Ellis Baker, became an actress. Later, Edith married C. Becher Furness, a Canadian. She finally made it to Broadway by age 34 with her play, "Mary Jane's Pa" (1908) which ran for a then-very respectable 120 performances. She continued her career there as a playwright/director through 7 more productions through mid-1925 (see "Other works"). While none of these later efforts were particularly wildly successful, her 1925 play, "White Collars" enjoyed two film adaptations by MGM in 1929 and 1938. Her earliest film adaptations were sold to Vitagraph and Myron Selznick.

Ellis had her fascinating quirks. As her theatrical career wound down in the mid-1930s, she took up an avid interest in (using modern terminology) channeling the dead. She claimed to transcribe works by none other than George Washington (whom she claimed demanded she transcribe his definitive autobiography in a receptive transcendent state) and common citizens such as a New England farm boy named Wilfred Brandon, supposedly killed in the Revolutionary War. These oddly entertaining works attracted enough attention to warrant several printings ("Incarnation: a Plea from the Masters," first edition 1936, 1951 reprint + UK/European editions). She was plagued with vision problems by her 60s and died at what is generally believed to be age 84, although her birth date is in dispute.