Cornelia Otis Skinner

Cornelia Otis Skinner
Skinner in 1955
Born	(1899-05-30)May 30, 1899 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 9, 1979(1979-07-09) (aged 80) New York City, U.S.
Resting place	Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River, Massachusetts
Occupation	Actress, playwright, screenwriter, diseuse
Years active	1920-1970
Spouse(s)	Alden Sanford Blodget (1928-1964) (his death) (1 child)
Parent(s)	Otis Skinner Maud Durbin

Cornelia Otis Skinner (May 30, 1899 – July 9, 1979) was an American author and actress.

Biography

Skinner was the daughter of the actor Otis Skinner and actress Maud Durbin. After attending the all-girls' Baldwin School and Bryn Mawr College (1918–1919) and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage in 1921. She appeared in several plays before embarking on a tour of the United States from 1926 to 1929 in a one-woman performance of short character sketches she herself wrote. She wrote numerous short humorous pieces for publications like The New Yorker. These pieces were eventually compiled into a series of books, including Nuts in May, Dithers and Jitters, Excuse It Please!, and The Ape in Me, among others.

In a "comprehensive study" of Skinner's work, G. Bruce Loganbill (1961) refers to Skinner's scripts as "monologue-dramas," which were extensions of the "linked monologues" developed by Ruth Draper. Skinner's work differed in structure and content however, creating and performing full-length monologue-dramas that were based on the lives of historical figures. Such work was a "unique" and important contribution to the one-person show in America.^[1]

With Emily Kimbrough, she wrote Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a light-hearted description of their European tour after college. Kimbrough and Skinner went to Hollywood to act as consultants on the film version of the book, which resulted in the film of the same name and starred Gail Russell playing Skinner. Skinner was portrayed by Bethel Leslie replaced by Gloria Stroock in the short-lived 1950 television series The Girls, based upon Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. In 1952, her one-woman show Paris '90 (music and lyrics by Kay Swift) premiered on Broadway. An original cast recording was produced by Goddard Lieberson for Columbia Records, now available on compact disc. In later years Skinner wrote Madame Sarah (a biography of Sarah Bernhardt) and Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals about the Belle Epoque. She appeared with Orson Welles on The Campbell Playhouse radio play of "American Cavalcade: The Things We Have" on May 26, 1939.^[2]

In a 1944 conversation with Victor Borge, Skinner reportedly told the Danish comedian that she decided to drop the term “diseuse" from her act after reading in a Scottish newspaper: “Cornelia Otis Skinner, the American disease, gave a program last night.”^[3]

Filmography

Portrait of Cornelia Otis Skinner by Gladys Rockmore Davis

Bibliography

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cornelia Otis Skinner.

• Cornelia Otis Skinner on IMDb
• Cornelia Otis Skinner at the Internet Broadway Database
• Skinner Family Papers, 1874-1979 at Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Cornelia Otis Skinner scrapbooks, 1921-1978, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• Cornelia Otis Skinner at Find a Grave
• "American Cavalcade: The Things We Have" (May 26, 1939) on The Campbell Playhouse, with guest Cornelia Otis Skinner (Indiana University Bloomington)
• "Annotations: The NEH Preservation Project" Two Skinner monologues from a 1951 Book and Author Luncheon

Further reading

• "Cornelia Skinner papers". Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.