Laura Don

Laura Don began her acting career with a traveling troupe performing in Brooklyn and later spent time with John Ellsler's company in Cleveland. By August 1875, (as Laura Don) she was playing Ophelia to E. L. Davenport's Hamlet at New York's Grand Opera House.^[4] At the same venue that September, she played Isabel, the principle female lead in The Pioneer Patriot: or the Dawn of Liberty with Harry Watkins and Joseph F. Wheelock^[5] and in July 1876 at Hooley’s Theatre in Brooklyn, the Spanish beauty, Donna Jovita Castro, in Bret Harte's Two Men of Sandy Bar.^[6] At Booth's Theatre in late 1878 she was Mary Meredith in Our American Cousin to George Parkes’ Lord Dundreary and Frank Hardenberg's Asa Trenchard,^[7] and the following January she appeared at The New Fifth Avenue Theatre in Dr. Clyde as Lady Hammond.^[8] On June 16, 1880, Don sailed for England aboard the Cunard liner S.S. Seythia with Frank Mayo's company^[9] and was back in New York by that September to assume the role Antonia in Archibald Clavering Gunter's Two Nights in Rome during the closing days of its run at Union Square Theatre.^[10][11] On February 7, 1881, Don began a two-month run as Erima in Fresh, the American^[12] and on November 28 of that year she starred in the American debut of George Robert Sims' My Mother-in-Law, both staged at Abbey's Park Theatre on 932 Broadway, New York.^[9]

Her play, A Daughter of the Nile, premiered on September 6, 1882, at the Standard Theatre in Manhattan with Don in the lead role of Egypt.^[3] A Daughter of the Nile is a melodrama that revolves around an American woman and her mysterious guise as an Egyptian. Some critics found the play lacking, others thought it creative and before its time.^[13][14] After a modest run in New York, Don took the play on the road with scheduled engagements at Montreal, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston.^[14] Not too many years later, the actress Effie Ellsler would find success touring in Don's play that by then had been re-titled Egypt, or a Daughter of the Nile.^[15]

All Miss Don's versatility is called into play in A Daughter of the Nile. Her poetry and passion are seen in her creation of Egypt, her literary skill in the dialogue, her artistic instincts in the exquisite costumes. Right here I may say that Miss Don's eye for color is more correct than Oscar Wilde's; the lining of the cloak, as it is, is perfection, the bars of red are exactly what is wanted. Music and Drama, September 23, 1882^[14]

Circa 1884, Don traveled to San Francisco to join the cast of Baldwin Theatre, then under the directorship of David Belasco. Soon, Belasco pictured Don in the role of Cleopatra and began working with her for an upcoming production. At times he found her difficult and moody, but when Belasco noticed traces of blood on her lips after she fainted during a rehearsal, he realized she was ill. Don later spent the better part of a year in Nice, France, in a vain attempt to regain her health. She eventually returned to her parents' home in Greenwich, New York, where she died on February 10, 1886. Before her death, Don had reportedly reconciled with George Fox, her first husband.^[2][3]