Virginia Brissac

Virginia Brissac
Virginia Brissac c. 1904
Born	Virginia Alice Brisac (1883-06-11)June 11, 1883 San Jose, California, U.S.
Died	July 26, 1979(1979-07-26) (aged 96) Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1913–1955

Virginia Alice Brissac (June 11, 1883 – July 26, 1979) was an American actress who came out of retirement in her early 50s to begin what would turn out to be a twenty-year career as a performer in cinema and television productions. She was known as an ingénue in her early theatrical years, in her later career, Brissac’s stern features often landed her roles as schoolteachers and other authority figures. She is perhaps best remembered today as James Dean's character's grandmother in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause.

Early life

Brissac was born in San Jose, California, and later raised in San Francisco.^[1][2] She was the daughter of B.F. Brissac, a well-to-do Bay Area insurance executive, and was said to be a niece of the actress Mary Shaw.^[3][4]

As a young girl she began a collection of autographs that would grow to include such notables as Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Richard Mansfield, Henry Irving and Rudyard Kipling. When she wrote Kipling asking for his signature, his secretary wrote back informing her that the writer would grant her request if she would be willing to donate $2.50 to a certain London charity. In her reply some weeks later, Brissac wrote:

Enclosed is the $2.50 for your Fresh Air Fund. I suppose you thought that when I saw $2.50 I’d give up the idea of your autograph, but I didn’t.You see I have had to save for soldiers here, for we have wars of our own once in a while, and as I’m only a little school girl with an income of 50 cents a week, you can see it has taken me some time to get the $2.50 together. But here it is and I am waiting for your autograph.

Brissac’s letter was forwarded to Kipling who was in India at the time. Her reply so amused him he sent her his autograph along with the following passage from his poem In the Neolithic Age:

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came, And he told me in a vision of the night: – "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, "And every single one of them is right^[5]

Stage career

By 1902, Brissac was a lead player at San Francisco’s Fischer’s Theatre opposite the Bay area actor Reginald Travers (c. 1879–1952). In September of that year, the two performed at a church benefit in a specialty act billed as Reginald and Virginia Brissac Travers. A month later, they starred together at Fischer’s Theatre in a hit farce entitled A Pair of Lunatics. After his death in San Francisco nearly fifty years later, Travers was described by The New York Times as a pioneer little theatre impresario and civic leader.^[6][7][8]

In February 1903, Brissac was with Ralph Stuart’s company playing Constance in a stage adaptation of The Three Musketeers at the Theatre Republic in San Francisco, and that September she appeared with Florence Roberts at the Alcazar Theatre performing ingénue roles^[5] in Welcome Home and Gabriele d'Annunzio's Gioconda.^[9][10][11] After touring with Robert’s company, Brissac appeared in June 1904 at the Alcazar (with actor White Whittlesey) in Soldier of Fortune, and again that August in Clyde Fitch's Nathan Hale.^[12][13]

In the fall of 1905, Brissac played Caroline Mitford in the William Gillette play Secret Service, and that December she played the title role in Leo Ditrichstein's Vivian's Pappas, both staged at the old Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles.^[14][15] The following February, she was declared a hit by The Los Angeles Herald for her portrayal of Tweeny at the Mason Opera House in Paul Kester's Sweet Nell of Old Drury.^[16]

In July 1906, Brissac married Eugene D. Mockbee, an actor with the Belasco players. The couple moved to Spokane, Washington, where on October 28, 1907, their only child, Ardel Mockbee, later known as Ardel Wray, was born. In May 1912, Brissac obtained a divorce from Mockbee on grounds of failure to provide, and was awarded custody of their daughter.^[3][17] Ardel Wray (1907–1983) later became a Hollywood screenwriter remembered for such films as I Walked With a Zombie, The Leopard Man and Isle of the Dead.^[18]

By the fall of 1906, Brissac was once again with Florence Roberts’ company, touring Eastern venues in The Strength of the Weak, a play by Alice M. Smith and Charlotte Thompson.^[19] By the end of 1906, Roberts’ company was touring the Pacific Northwest.^[20] By spring 1907, Brissac had joined the Jessie Shirley Company at the Auditorium Theatre in Spokane, Washington, appearing in productions of Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Bachelor’s Housekeeper, A Man of Her Choice, The Two Orphans and The Triumph of Betty.^[21]

For the 1907/08 season, she joined the Curtiss Comedy Company at Spokane’s Columbia Theatre, with leading roles in The Life of an Actress, In the Palace of the King, The Transgressors, By Right of Sword, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, Deadwood Dick's Last Shot, The Banker, the Thief and the Girl, Old Heidelberg and The Land of Cotton.^[22]

By May 1908, Brissac was appearing with Grant Churchill in a vaudeville act at the Pantages Theatre, Spokane in a piece called The Billionaire.^[23] On May 11, she opened Spokane’s new Natatorium Park theatre with her husband, Eugene Mockbee, a frequent co-star during their time in Spokane. Billed as Miss Virginia Brissac and Summer Stock Company, they filled out the remainder of the 1908 season there in productions of Sweet Clover, Troubles, Where Men are Game, School Days, Kathleen of Erin and Home Sweet Home.^[24]

Brissac returned to the Alcazar on March 20, 1911, supporting Max Figman in Mary Jane’s Pa.^[25] Three months later, she starred in the Hal Reid play Human Hearts at the Seattle Theatre in Seattle, Washington,^[26] and that July opened in nearby Tacoma, starring in A Yankee Doodle Boy with the Pringle Stock Company at the Tacoma Theatre.^[27]

On April 19, 1912, Brissac nearly drowned when the small boat she was aboard overturned. She was taking a picture of the cruiser USS Maryland, and was rescued by Robert Shear, a Maryland sailor.^[28]

In late 1912, Brissac joined the World’s Fair Stock Company and toured the Hawaiian islands for a year or so, working with her future husband John Griffith Wray, a lead actor and stage director with the World’s Fair Stock Company^[29] and a future MGM film director.^[30] Brissac opened at Honolulu’s Bijou Theatre in Brewster's Millions on December 21, 1912, and closed her Hawaiian tour toward the end of 1913, with the finale performance in Honolulu coming on October 21 at the Grand Opera House. During their time in Hawaii, Brissac and Wray made at least two short silent films together, The Shark God and Hawaiian Love, both directed by Wray. Brissac sailed home to San Francisco on January 28, 1914, aboard the steamship Wilhelmina.^[31]

Brissac and Wray married in Santa Ana, California, on June 29, 1915.^[32] They divorced in May 1927, some two years before Wray’s untimely death.^[33]

Brissac remained active, primarily in Bay Area theater, for several more seasons. Perhaps her last stage performance, billed as a "Finale Farewell", came at the Bishop Playhouse, Oakland, California, on August 5, 1917, starring in The Eternal Magdalene.

Russ Columbo

Virginia Brissac, Jim Backus, Ann Doran, Edward Platt and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause

Sometime after her divorce from Wray, Brissac served as a private secretary and assistant to the entertainer Russ Columbo until his death on September 2, 1934, from a freak accident involving a friend's antique dueling pistol. Brissac was later called upon by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office to testify and identify Columbo’s remains at the subsequent inquest.^[34]

Film career

Brissac returned to film as Mrs. Van Twerp in the 1935 comedy Honeymoon Limited. Over her career, she performed in over 155 big and small screen productions in mostly supporting and minor parts. During what is considered the American Golden Age of Television, Brissac appeared in episodes of Dragnet, The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, I Love Lucy, Crown Theatre with Gloria Swanson, Mayor of the Town (1954 series based on the 1940s radio show) and The Lone Wolf.^[35]

Brissac retired in 1955 after filming Rebel Without a Cause and died nearly 25 years later in 1979 at the age of 96 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.^[2]

Complete filmography

References

External links

• Virginia Brissac on IMDb
• Virginia Brissac at AllMovie