Ina Claire

Ina Claire
Early portrait
Born	Ina Fagan October 15, 1893(1893-10-15) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Died	February 21, 1985 (aged 91) San Francisco, California, U.S. (heart attack)
Spouse(s)	James Whittaker (1919 - 1925) John Gilbert (1929 - 1931) William R. Wallace (1939 - 1976)

Ina Claire (October 15, 1893–February 21, 1985) was an American stage and film actress.

Career

Ina Clare in 1922's movie card

Born Ina Fagan in Washington, D.C., Claire began her career appearing in vaudeville. She performed on Broadway in the musicals Jumping Jupiter and The Quaker Girl (both 1911) and Lady Luxury sophisticated comedienne, and starred on Broadway in plays by some of the leading comic dramatists of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, including the roles of Jerry Lamarr in Avery Hopwood's The Gold Diggers (1919), Mrs. Cheyney in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1925), Lady George Grayston in W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters (1928), and Enid Fuller in George Kelly's The Fatal Weakness.

Her last stage appearance was as Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer in T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk (1954). She was particularly identified with the high comedies of S. N. Behrman, and created the female leads in three of his plays: Biography (1934), End of Summer (1936), and The Talley Method (1941). of her, Behrman wrote, "Her readings were translucent, her stage presence encompassing. The flick of an intonation deflated pomposity. She never missed a nuance."^[1] Critic J. Brooks Atkinson praised Claire for her "refulgent comic intelligence.^[2]

Claire's second husband was screen actor John Gilbert. Claire is an inductee in the American Theatre Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Filmography

from the trailer for the film Ninotchka (1939)

• The Wild Goose Chase (1915)
• The Puppet Crown (1915)
• National Red Cross Pageant (1917)
• Polly with a Past (1920)
• The Awful Truth (1929)
• The Royal Family of Broadway (1930)
• Rebound (1931)
• The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932)
• Ninotchka (1939)
• Claudia (1943)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ina Claire

• Ina Claire at the Internet Movie Database
• Ina Claire at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ina Claire at Allmovie
• Ina Claire at Find a Grave
• Ina Claire at the TCM Movie Database
• Ina Claire at Silent Ladies & Gents

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