Name Olga Nethersole | Role Actress | |
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Died January 9, 1951, Bournemouth, United Kingdom | ||
Olga Isabella Nethersole, CBE, RRC (18 January 1867 – 9 January 1951) was an English actress, theatre producer, and wartime nurse/health educator.
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Biography
She was born in London, of Spanish descent on her mother's side. Her father was Henry Nethersole, a solicitor. She made her stage début at Theatre Royal, Brighton in 1887. From 1888 she played important parts in London, at first under Rutland Barrington and John Hare at the Garrick Theatre.
She toured Australia and America, playing leading parts in modern plays, notably Clyde Fitch's Sapho, where she and her male costar Hamilton Revelle were arrested for "violating public decency" and later found innocent at trial. Her powerful emotional acting, however, made a great effect in some other plays, such as Carmen, in which she again appeared in America in 1906.
She played "La seconde madame Tanqueray" at the Odeon theatre of Paris in 1904. Then she was at the Sarah Bernhardt theatre for Magda, Sapho, Adrienne Lecouvreur, adaptation of a French play by Scrive et Légouvé, Camille, adaptation of a French play la Dame aux Camélias, and The Spanish Gipsy, adaptation of a French play Carmen de Mérimée in 1907. Every summer she spent a week at the house of Edmond Rostand in Cambo les Bains. In 1907, she got from Rostand's play La Samaritaine an English version of it to play it in London. In a conference at the Athenee theatre in Paris on 17 November 1908, Robert Eude said that Olga Nethersole invented the soul kiss (an especially long kiss, of which actress Miss Maud Adams was the recordwoman).
At that time she inspired the character of "Miss Nethersoll", an American dancer, in the French novel La Danseuse nue et la Dame a la licorne by Rachel Gaston-Charles (1908).
She served as a nurse in London throughout World War I and later established the People's League of Health, for which she received the Royal Red Cross (RRC) in 1920. She combined her theatre work with health work for the rest of her life. She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1936.
She died on 9 January 1951 in Bournemouth, England. Her brother, Louis F. Nethersole, was a theatrical manager, producer and press agent and one-time husband of the American actress and singer, Sadie Martinot.
Performances
This is a partial list of her notable performances:
Legacy
Between 1885 and 1890, her portrait was painted in Omaha, Nebraska by artist Herbert A. Collins.