Kate Bruce

Born and raised in Columbus, Indiana,^[5][2] Bruce was the youngest of three children of Newton and Matilda Bryant.^[5][6] In 1885, she left Boone, Iowa, in a wagon with a group of traveling actors at a time when stages were illuminated by oil lights.^[7] On Broadway, Bruce performed in The Starbucks (1903).^[8] The following year she toured in Our New Man with Harry Beresford.^[9][2]

Bruce died at the age of 86 in the Bronx, New York on April 2, 1946.^[6] She was buried at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.^[1] Later that month, Hedda Hopper reported that Bruce's entire estate had been left to her longtime friends and sometime co-stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish.^[10][11]