Hilda Spong

Hilda Spong (14 May 1875 – 16 May 1955), was an English-born actress of stage and screen, whose half-century long career was almost entirely in Australia and North America.

Early life

Frances Hilda Spong was born on 14 May 1875, in St. Pancras, London to Walter Spong, a scene painter, and his wife Elizabeth. Her father was born in London, and her mother in Northumberland; she was the second of their five children, and the only girl. During 1886, her father received a job offer from Robert Brough to be the chief scene painter for his theatre company, so the family moved to Melbourne, Australia.

Australian and New Zealand stage

Early career

Spong first went on the stage at age fourteen, with the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company for which her father worked. She appeared in Joseph's Sweetheart, produced by Robert Brough and Dion Boucicault Jr. at the Criterion Theatre in Sydney during July 1889. Adapted by Robert Buchanen from Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, the production with Spong in tow returned in June 1890 to the company's home venue, the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne.

By September 1890, Spong was performing in her second and third plays, The Parvenu and School. For a revival of Sophia in July 1891, she received her first accolade: "...Miss Hilda Spong, who is the prettiest, the most graceful, and the most promising of debutantes. She has everything to learn, but nothing to unlearn, and she made poor Molly quite a hit." Spong, now 16, took over a role in Led Astray when the regular actress was absent in December 1891. Later that same month, she had her first Shakespearean role, as Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing.

Spong had her first large dramatic part in May 1892, at the Princess Theatre production of Jo, adapted by J. P. Burnett from Charles Dickens Bleak House. Spong played Esther, the book's heroine but a featured role in this play, which starred Burnett's wife Jennie Lee as the title character. In June she moved with her mother to the South Yarra neighborhood of Melbourne, and a month later signed with George Rignold's troupe. She was cast as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, wearing tights designed by her father. This was followed by a part in the Australian premiere of Ludwig Fulda's The Lost Paradise during September 1892.

Leading player

The English Rose at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney, in November 1892, saw Spong playing the title role. The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer said she played the love scenes well but lacked a strong stage presence in the more dramatic moments. However, they were impressed with her improvement as the female lead in London Day by Day during late January 1893. Spong, called "a rising young star", received a new lead contract from George Rignold in February 1893. She was next cast in East Lynne, followed by It Is Never Too Late to Mend, both during May 1893.

Starting in July 1893, Spong was engaged by J. C. Williamson and George Musgrove to play "juveniles" for Edward O'Connor Terry's season in Australia. The first play up was Sweet Lavender, where Spong "proved an engaging and ingenuous Lavender, and acted with simplicity and tender directness". Artist Tom Roberts did a life-sized oil painting of Spong that was exhibited by the Art Society of New South Wales in August 1893. By October 1893, Spong had returned to George Rignold's company in Sydney with In the Ranks.

New Zealand tour

Spong continued performing with Rignold's Sydney company until January 1894, when her father and actor-manager Walter Howe formed a company for a tour of New Zealand. Her father went as scenic designer for the Howe and Spong Dramatic Company, while Hilda Spong was the leading lady. Their first production was Harbour Lights, at the Princess's Theatre in Dunedin, on 17 February 1894. The local reviewer said Spong "proved herself to be a capable and intelligent actress". Spong was accorded special billing in advertisements; her name was the only one in all caps for cast lists. The culmination of her Dunedin stay was a one-night performance as Rosalind for As You Like It, performed under the sponsorship of the Dunedin Shakespeare Society and University of Otago.

Following Dunedin, the tour went to Oamaru for two days, then played Timaru, and Christchurch. The tour left for the North Island, opening in Wellington on 2 April 1894. Throughout its New Zealand tour, the Howe-Spong company played the same seven works it had presented in Dunedin. After three weeks, the tour continued to Wanganui, Napier, and Auckland.

Return to Australia

The Howe-Spong Company carried its same repertoire to Newcastle, New South Wales upon its return to Australia in late May 1894. However, Spong and her father then moved to Sydney, where W. B. Spong leased the shuttered Criterion Theatre for the season. Hilda Spong headlined the opening as Rosalind in As You Like It, on 23 June 1894. This was a more complete version than that performed on tour, with new scenery by Spong's father and original incidental music by Consterdine. A local reviewer pronounced it "a triumphant success" for Hilda Spong. This was followed by productions of An Unequal Match by Tom Taylor, Pygmalion and Galatea and Pinero's The Money Spinner.

Spong joined the Bland Holt Company for her first tour to Queensland, starting with Brisbane. She performed there as an unscrupulous adventuress in A Million of Money beginning 6 October 1894, followed by a woman wronged in Henry Pettitt's A Woman's Revenge. Spong had just finished the Brisbane engagement with Round the Ring, when a four-wheeled cart she was riding in overturned on an banked road in Bowen Hills, Queensland, injuring her ankle and delaying her return to Sydney. When the Bland Holt Company visited Newcastle, a local paper said: "Miss Spong is not yet 20 years of age, but is tall and of an imposing appearance. She has a handsome, classical face, and a rich sympathetic voice...", and added "Naturally she is anxious to try her fortune in London".

UK stage

Spong travelled with her mother to England in August 1896 for a part in The Duchess of Coolgardie. This melodrama was produced by John Coleman, who The Times implied may also have written it. It ran for two months, after which Spong went into a short-lived flop called The Kiss of Delilah, where the reviewer pronounced her performance "curiously uneven". She then replaced another actress in an ongoing production of Two Little Vagabonds to a much better review. This production ran through the end of May 1897, after which The Era reported she had rented a houseboat on the Thames for a vacation.

By September 1897, The People remarked that she had not been on stage since Two Little Vagabonds ended. Later that month she signed with Arthur Chudleigh and Dion Boucicault for a series of comedies to be played at the Royal Court Theatre. The first was a modern German fairy-tale called The Children of the King, which had incidental music by Engelbert Humperdinck. The Standard said the music "is interwoven with the text" in a unique way, and Spong "acquitted herself of a trying part with distinction". Her next performance would be a breakthrough role for her, as Imogen Parrott in Trelawny of the 'Wells'. This A. W. Pinero play was a pointed satire of the English stage scene of the 1860s, the decline of stock companies. It was as celebrated for its costumes as its characters. Among the performers was a first-time actor, billed as James Erskine, who was the notorious Earl of Rosslyn.

North American stage

The Frohman brothers

The Frohman brothers made annual trips to Europe, picking up the North American rights to plays, and looking for talent to perform them. During one such trip to England in September 1898, Daniel Frohman acquired rights to Trelawny of the 'Wells', then decided to recruit Hilda Spong to reprise her role. He asked her parents, who were managing her career, how much money it would take to bring her to America. Not wishing to leave England again so soon, they named an impossible figure, but were astonished when Frohman agreed. He signed Spong to a managerial contract and brought her to America in November 1898.

The American premiere of Trelawny of the 'Wells' starred another English actress, Mary Mannering, in the title role, but Spong drew the audience's attention with her outlandish retro fashions and charming mannerisms. The play carried no satirical overtones in America, where the audience was oblivious to the disguised references to real plays and actors. Spong now joined Mannering as the leading women for Daniel Frohman's Comedy Company, which specialized in playing adaptations of English and French comedies. Given the repertoire involved, having English-born actresses to play leads was an advantage to the company. Their home venue was at first the old Lyceum Theatre, and later Daly's Theatre.

The first sequin dress worn on the stage was designed by Mrs. Robert Osborne for Hilda Spong's character in Wheels Within Wheels during December 1899. The gown was so unprecedented, one reviewer could only describe it as "steel embroidery". Spong would stay with Daniel Frohman after Mannering left, during which perhaps her most successful play was the American adaptation of Lady Huntworth's Experiment. This comedy by R. C. Carton had Spong play an aristocratic divorcee, who decides to secretly resume her maiden name to become a chef in a vicarage.

In June 1902 newspapers reported Charles Frohman had engaged Spong to support Virginia Harned in Iris for the Fall, and shortly after that it was definite she was not returning to Daniel Frohman's Comedy Company. Bertha Galland replaced her as Esmeralda in the road company of Notre Dame. The reason for this switch in managers, according to one drama critic, was the delay in building the new Lyceum Theatre, leaving Daniel Frohman's company without a Broadway venue. The new Pinero play Iris had its American premiere on Broadway during September 1902, with Spong in an inconsequential role.

Her next two plays under Charles Frohman were leading parts but in weak efforts: the melodrama Imprudence where she played an adulteress, and the ill-fated Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner. Not until the revival Lord and Lady Algy and Joseph Entangled in 1904 did she start getting good roles from Charles Frohman. Other strong parts under his management were The Firm of Cunningham in 1905, where a critic said "Miss Spong plays with familiar ease, dash, and spirit" in this Willis Steell play, and The American Lord in 1906, a four-act comedy by Charles Dazey and George Broadhurst which had Spong as an Irish widow.

Independent player

During May 1906, Spong switched management again, to independent actor-manager Walter N. Lawrence. Although a leading player with the Frohmans, she was not a star. Now it was reported that she would become one with Lawrence. Unfortunately, the vehicle Spong and Lawrence jointly chose for her first star turn was Lady Jim, a flawed work by neophyte playwright Harold R. Heaton. It lasted three weeks, then was withdrawn in favor of John Hudson's Wife. It also ran its course by the end of November 1906, when Spong was said to have ended her season.

Spong was then idle until April 1907, when she joined the Columbia Stock Company in Washington, D.C., and sued her former manager Lawrence for $4000 back pay. A newspaper report gave her weekly salary as $200 under Lawrence, and said she sought to recover pay for 20 weeks idle time. Her first performance with the Columbia Stock Company was a revival of her 1905 hit The Firm of Cunningham. This was followed by other one-week revivals, finishing up in July 1907.

That same month she agreed to a forty-week tour at the United Booking Office for performing in vaudeville, with a one-act play called Kit, written for her by Cecil B. DeMille. This was a western melodrama, in which Spong played Kit, a breezy big-hearted woman involved with a sheriff (Arthur Behrens) and a disguised thief (Walter Howe) who is actually her father, a justice of the peace. Her tour opened at Detroit's Temple Theatre on 2 September 1907. The tour ran thru February 1908.

She is next heard of in November 1908, rehearsing at the Lyceum Theatre in Manhattan for A Man and His Mate. The play opened in South Norwalk, Connecticut on 23 November 1908. Spong portrayed a doctor in this controversial play she co-wrote with H. R. Durant. Spong was upset at the reception the play received in Minnesota and other locales, particularly one scene when her character first meets "the man" and they are instantly bonded in love. Audiences snickered, provoking Spong's public ire.

Overseas interlude

The disappointment with A Man and His Mate and a certain amount of nostalgia, led Spong to accept an offer from J. C. Williamson to go on tour to Australia during 1911–1912. She starred in Everywoman, which had premiered on Broadway during February 1911 with Laura Nelson Hall. The tour was very successful, and later included William Desmond supporting Spong, in plays such as Alias Jimmy Valentine, Passers-By, and Camille. Spong also found time to play a small role in the Australian premiere of The Woman during September 1912. After one year in Australia, Spong went to England in December 1912 on board the RMS Orama.

The Daily Telegraph listed her London mailing address with the notation "Disengaged" during March 1913. It was in September 1913 that Spong reappeared on a London stage after a fifteen-year absence, in the first performance of George R. Sims' melodrama, The Ever Open Door. Spong starred in this "kind of Oliver Twist" play, as Lady Dereham who becomes Sister Miriam at a foundling's home in London. A success, it was still going so strong after three months that an extra matinee was added.

Broadway 1915-1930

Spong returned to the United States in late April 1915, sailing on the RMS Lusitania on its last full journey. The ship's sinking on its return voyage affected her personally, for the purser was a friend she had known since childhood, while Charles Frohman was a longtime colleague. She had not planned to work on this trip to America, but was persuaded to take on the lead in a revival of Candida when Dorothy Donnelly dropped out of the production just before the opening.

Her next Broadway role was another unfortunate work, The Angel in the House, which a reviewer termed "Incoherent", "pathetic", "boring" and said some "first nighters" left before the end. Spong was an Irish widow and 17-year-old Eva Le Gallienne a Cockney servant during 1847 for Bunny, which had a much better reception. For Caesar's Wife in 1919, the reviewer noted Spong was "restored to an earlier slimness". She really came into her prime as a comedy character during 1922, with her "flirtatious Countess" in Fédora, while for Manhattan, according to Lawrence Reamer, "her skill adds distinction to any part in which she appears".

The pinnacle of her later career came with playing Princess Beatrice in The Swan, a comedy by Ferenc Molnár which starred Eva Le Gallienne and Basil Rathbone. It was a major success on Broadway during 1923–1924, with Spong as a pushy noble mother trying to foist her unethusiastic daughter off on a seemingly oblivious crown prince. She had another personal success with The Right Age to Marry, where a critic said Spong "steals the show" as a "designing woman of uncertain years". After some forgettable flops, Burns Mantle said "Hilda Spong does nicely playing a disagreeable dowager" in The High Road. A popular if mildly sensational 1929-1930 hit was Young Sinners, where Burns Mantle said Spong's part was "authoritatively played" in this work reminiscent of Strictly Dishonorable.

Last performances

Spong maintained her position as a principal actress in her last years on the stage. After a miserable 1934, where she appeared in two successive flops, her final performances were in successful productions. She played "a ribald doctor" in One Good Year, but withdrew from that long-running production in early January 1936, after seven weeks. For The Lady Has a Heart in 1937, she played a countess, while for her final Broadway production she played a speaking role in the musical Higher and Higher. In September 1944, she was in the episode "Her Master's Voice", on the Arthur Hopkins Presents radio program, broadcast over WEAF-FM.

Drama school

The Hilda Spong Theatre School was located at 9 East 59th Street in Manhattan during October 1936. The earliest public mention of it comes from November 1935. Spong was director of the school, which was associated with the Little Theatre Movement. She spoke on the subject, alongside Daniel Frohman and Rollo Peters, at an annual dinner for the Westchester Drama Association. An advertisement for the school from December 1936 listed classes in fencing (led by Giorgio Santelli), dancing, singing, and diction, the last of which Spong taught. Among the performers known to have attended her dramatic school were Malcolm Atterbury and Gary Merrill.

Personal life and character

In her Declaration of Intention for naturalization as a US citizen, Spong gave her birth date and birthplace, said she was a British national, had no spouse and no children, and had emigrated to the US in November 1898. At age 57, she gave her physical description as brown hair, hazel eyes, height 5 ft 7 in (170 cm) and weight 150 pounds (68 kg).

“Domesticity!– oh, that's all very well, and I simply adore children, but deliver me from a husband, for a good while to come. Of course, a man is tremendously useful, sometimes: in fact, you cawn't get along without one to manage your affairs for you, so someday I suppose–– but, oh heaven's! I've got to go on, and there I go shivering like a leaf again. Please do not roast me in the paper, will you– that's a dear.” —From a 1907 Hilda Spong backstage interview

Spong was exceptionally close to her parents, who lived with her until their deaths. Her mother travelled on tours with her, even to Australia in 1911. Spong had a small poultry farm on her rural Long Island property. She named the chickens after her famous contemporaries in the theatrical world. When her father once asked what was for dinner, Spong replied "Maude Adams". While on tour in Sydney during March 1912, a masked man put a ladder up to her boarding room window at 2 am and started to climb it. Spong was awake, and heard the noise. She always slept with a small revolver under her pillow, having been taught to shoot by her father and older brother. Spong fired two shots at him from the open window, causing the intruder to jump off the ladder. She fired three more shots as he ran for the front gate of the yard. Plain clothes detectives in the area, due to a rash of burglaries committed by a masked man, pursued but were unable to catch him. While in Adelaide, Spong gave an interview in 1912 which expressed her reservations about female suffrage and prohibition, both of which she had seen on tour in New Zealand.

Her younger brother Charles H. Spong, who had followed their father into scenic design, also emigrated to the United States. He worked in theatres in Philadelphia, and named his daughter Hilda. Her other three brothers had remained in Australia; she met with them on her 1911-1912 tour.

Actress Minnie Dupree left a legacy to Spong in her will when she died in 1947. Dupree, who had declared bankruptcy in 1933, left her entire estate to friends who had stood by her in adversity. Spong, who was already living in Ridgefield, Connecticut, was the only stage figure mentioned.

Death and legacy

Hilda Spong died two days after her 80th birthday, on 16 May 1955, at Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she had lived many years. The New York Times said in her obituary: "Because she was professional in her attitude toward acting, she continued to study singing and rarely spent a day without reading Shakespeare. As Miss Spong grew older, she turned to the parts of older women without the fuss often shown by actresses at this stage of their careers". Her obituaries had several errors. Some said she was born in Melbourne, others that she was on the stage for 65 years, ignoring her absence from acting since 1944. Many cited her last stage performance as The Lady Has a Heart in 1937, rather than Higher and Higher in 1940.

Stage credits

Australia and New Zealand

United Kingdom

North America

Filmography

• Divorced (1915) - A five-reel silent film from Equitable Motion Picture Corporation. Spong had the starring role.
• A Star Over Night (1919) - A two-reel short, made by the Stage Women's War Relief Fund, starred David Belasco, with Spong in a supporting role.
• Supper at Six (1933) - A Mentone musical short, starring Maude Odell, with Spong featured.

Notes

External links

• at IMDb
• at the Internet Broadway Database
• photo gallery; New York Public Library Billy Rose coll.