100 Years of the Cornish Theater Department

 

Centennial Heroes from the Nellie Cornish years.

 

Notable Department Heads:

Ellen Van Volkenburg & Maurice Browne, co-founders

Ellen Van Volkenburg

Moroni Olsen

Burton and Florence James

Herbert Gellendré

Jean Mercier

Alexander Koiransky

 

Notable Alumni (in progress):

Josephine Hutchinson '29 started her career as a child actor in silent films. She studied under Ellen Van Volkenburg and Moroni Olson at Cornish, playing in the resident professional company at the same time. She played the maid in A Doll's House with the two of them starring, and she would step up to the role of Nora later with Le Gallienne, below. After graduating from Cornish, Hutchinson became the leading actress for  Eva Le Gallienne and her ground-breaking Civic Repertory Theatre company. Most notably, Hutchinson played Alice in Le Gallienne's classic production of Alice in Wonderland. She went on to a lengthy career in film and television, acting in such movies as North by Northwest, Mountain Justice, and in such series as The Twilight Zone and in the pilot of The Waltons.

Byron Foulger became a durable character actor with a long list of movie credits.

Gloria Grafton, b. Yakima, 1909, actress and well-known singer esp. "A Cigarette in the Dark".

Walter Coy, performed on Broadway from 1930–1948 with the Group Theater including performances in Golden Boy and Waiting for Lefty. He also appeared in Hitchcok's North by Northwest.

Keinert Wolff, appeared on Broadway an on a European Tour with Katherine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

Elena Miramova '25, Nellie Cornish's adopted daughter, played in Grand Hotel in London's West End as well as several roles on Broadway, where she also succeeded with her play, Dark Eyes.

Beatrice Straight attended Cornish in 1930 after having studied with Van Volkenburg and other Cornish faculty at Dartington Hall art school in Devon, England, founded by her mother, Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst; both became a leading contributors to the school. Straight was the winner of a Tony Award for her work creating the role of Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible and an Academy Award for the film Network.

Ford Rainey '33 appeared on Broadway with Straight in Michael Chekhov'sThe Possessed, went on to be a regular in films and TV.

Myrtle May Moss '32.

Richard Odlin '29.

Marion Clayton Anderson 20s was born Marion Clayton in B.C. in 1907 and attended Cornish in the 1920s. She appeared in the movies in a number of smaller parts, but they were in notable flms of the1930s, including Mutiny on the Bounty and the The Barrets of Whimpole Street and an uncredited role in All Quiet on the Western Front. Anderson was active into the 1960s, when she co-directed the film The Crowing Experience, a biopic musical on the life of African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune.