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THE INCOMPARABLE ADAH MENKEN
A Southern Actress Who Won International Fame
In the Jewish section of the
famous Fere Lachaise Cemetery in
Paris there stands a granite eol-
umn. One side hears the words:
“thou knowest”, and its other side
the inscription: “Adah Isaac Men
ken,horn in Ixmisiana, United States
of America, died in Paris, August
10, 1868.” Under that slab of
grey stone lie the mortal remains of
the first American whom all Paris
loved, flu* incomparable Adah Isaac
Menken dancer, actress, poetess,
sculptress and Jewess a magnetic
and colorful personality who com-
1 lined in herself the talents of a
Dorothy Parker, the bravado of a
Mac West, the daring of an Amelia
Karhart and the physical attraction
of a Peggy Hopkins Joyce. In her
day this beautiful, exciting and bril
liant woman was the toast of two
continents, but today, a hundred
vears after her birth, she is virtually
unknown.
Horn in New Orleans in 1885, she
was the oldest daughter of an Irish
immigrant merchant and his Creole
wife. Christened Dolores Adelaide
McCord, she was something of a
child prodigy. Before she was nine
she knew Latin, English, French
and Spanish and when she was
twelve had translated the Iliad in
to French. Schooled in the dance,
her grace and beauty won her a
stage engagement in a dancing act
at the French Opera House at New
Orleans. Still in her teens, she
appeared with her sister Josephine
under the name of Bertha Theodore.
Bernard Postal recalls the turbu
lent career oj the American Jewish
Beauty, Adah Isaac .tfenken, the
C ome-1 n-1 o-See-.Ife-Somettme-
Girl" of the ’60s, who was a most
interesting personality as you will
discover.
Leaving the theatre for a while,
she went to work as an F.nglisb
and Spanish teacher in a girls’
school. Peaching was dull business
to her and in 18/>4 she joined a
“traveling hippodrome" and l>ecamc
a proficient equestrienne. Adah
soon tired of being a circus per
former and in 1853 she appeard as
premiere danseuse at the opera
house in Mexico City. On her
way back to the United States she
spent some time at Liberty, Texas,
editing a weekly newspaper. There
she was captured by Indians, es
caping death by a ruse.
When she was ^1 she met Alex
ander Isaac Menken, a devout
Jewish musician and merchant from
Nashville. They fell desperately
in love and were married in Galves
ton April 3, 18a(). Adah publicly
embraced Judaism and although
By Bernard Postal
she was later divorced from Men
ken, never abandoned her Judaism.
It was then that she adopted fhc
name Adah Isaac Menken, a name
which subsequently brought her
the title of “the divine Jewess.”
Marital ties l>egan to bore her lni-
fore long and she permitted a
quarrel with her husband over her
taste for cigarettes to break up
their marriage. After her divorce
she never saw Menken again.
Soon after she made her debut as
an actress in Milman’s tragedy,
“Fazio”, in New Orleans. Later
she played with a Shakespearean
troupe, supporting the famous
tragedian, James Murdoch, and
also appeared in Havana. Although
her acting received increasingly
impressive notices, she <1 id not
really get warm praise as an actress
until she ap|>eared in Albany on
June 7, 18(51, in a revival of "Ma-
zeppa.” Instantly she was a suc
cess. Critics raved over her pale
l>eauty, her form, her dark hair
and flashing eyes. Invitations
poured in for her to play in every
city of America. Her fame also
spread to the Continent. During
the 18fl0\s there was scarcely a
person who had not heard of her
sensational performance in “Ma-
zeppa", in which she rode up a
mountain strapped to the back of
a white horse. In previous per
formances of “Mazeppa" the cus
tom had been to use a man or a
dummy in the thrilling horse-leap
scene, but Adah wanted the sensa
tion to he hers. In this scene she
wore tights, the first woman in the
history of the American stage to do
so. The effect on the public was
startling. She became the center
of an international controversy.
Moralists and purists denounced
her and demanded her arrest, w hile
art lovers ralliral to her support.
It was at this time that she
married John C. Heenan, then the
heavyweight champion of the world.
Later she also Irccame the wife of
Orpheus Keer, the satirist of the
Civil War, and James Barclay,
California shipping magnate and
Wall Street promoter. But none of
her marriages equalled in happiness
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