Amy Busby
Born
Amy Busby

January 19, 1872
Rochester, New York, U.S.
DiedJuly 13, 1957(1957-07-13) (aged 85)[1]
East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.[1]
OccupationActress

Amy Busby (January 19, 1872 – July 13, 1957) was an American actress.

Early life

Amy Busby was born in Rochester, New York, the daughter of Thomas Mark Busby and Eliza Ann Bennett Busby.

Career

Amy Busby went to New York City as a teenager, hoping for a career on the stage. Described as "a vastly pretty woman",[2] she was a protegee of actress Helen Barry for a time, and later was engaged by Stuart Robson and William H. Crane for their companies.[3] She appeared in London Assurance, Victor Durand, The Pembertons, The Henrietta, She Stoops to Conquer, Is Marriage a Failure? The American Minister, On Probation, Brother John, For Money, The Senator, and Arms and the Man.[4] Busby's Broadway credits included The Fatal Card (1894), Madame (1896), The Law of the Land (1896), and Secret Service (1896).[5]

Theatrical producer William Berkeley Enos took the professional name "Busby Berkeley" from Amy Busby, who was his parents' friend.[6] Sam Insull met his wife, actress Gladys Wallis, at an 1897 dinner party hosted by Amy Busby and Eugene H. Lewis.[7]

In the late 1880s Between The Acts, cigarettes ran an advertising campaign featuring actors and actresses on coloured lithograph collectors cards. Amy Busby was featured on one in a series issued from 1880 - 1892.[8]

Personal life

Amy Busby was rumoured to be engaged to actor William Gillette, but they did not wed.[9] She married several times. In 1892[10] she married English actor Aubrey Boucicault;[11] they divorced in 1893.[12] Her next marriage was to lawyer Eugene Howard Lewis, in 1897;[13] they had three daughters (Amy, Rosamund, and Eugenia) before his death in 1907.[14] She married again in 1908, to mining engineer Theodore Olynthna Douglas;[15] they had two daughters (Theodora and Ruth) before he died in 1920.[16] She was married a final time in 1923, to a man named John James Roy; they separated by 1938. Late in life, she enjoyed baseball as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers.[1] Amy Busby died in 1957, aged 85 years, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.[17][18]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Amy Busby Plays Full Career of Life" The Pocono Record (July 16, 1957): 15. via Newspapers.comopen access
  2. ^ "Our Gallery of Players CXLV: Amy Busby" The Illustrated American (October 20, 1894): 506.
  3. ^ "Amy Busby" Opera Glass (October 1895): 147-148.
  4. ^ "Amy Busby" Gallery of Players (Illustrated American Publishing Company 1894): 12.
  5. ^ Gerald Martin Bordman, Thomas S. Hischak, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (Oxford University Press 2004): 554-555. ISBN 9780195169867
  6. ^ Jeffrey Spivak, Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley (University Press of Kentucky 2011): 7. ISBN 9780813126432
  7. ^ Forrest McDonald, Insull: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Utility Tycoon (Beard Books 2004): 77. ISBN 9781587982439
  8. ^ "Amy Busby, from the Actors and Actresses series (N342), Type 4, issued by Thomas H. Hall Tobacco to promote Between the Acts Cigarettes". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  9. ^ "Miss Amy Busby Explains" New York Times (March 17, 1897): 7.
  10. ^ "To Be Married by the Mayor" Chicago Daily Tribune (January 9, 1892): 3.
  11. ^ Mary C. Francis, "The 'Alimony Poor'" The Scrap Book (August 1907): 383.
  12. ^ "Victory Bateman Exonerated" New York Times (December 15, 1893): 3.
  13. ^ "Miss Amy Busby Married" Washington Post (March 20, 1897): 7.
  14. ^ "Obituary Note" Electrical Review (March 9, 1907): 433.
  15. ^ "Amy Busby Lewis Married" New York Times (October 8, 1908): 9.
  16. ^ John William Leonard, William Frederick Mohr, Herman Warren Knox, Frank R. Holmes, 0infield Scott Downs, eds., Who's Who in New York (City and State) (Who's Who Publications 1918): 308.
  17. ^ "Amy Busby, Star of the '90s" Washington Post (July 16, 1957): B2.
  18. ^ "Amy Busby Dies; Retired Actress" New York Times (July 15, 1957): 15.

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