The deaths of two actresses widely different generations have been recorded, yet both made their debut in the sime year. Born in New Or-Jeans in 1859 Mrs. Brown-Polter made her first professional appearance at Brighton in 1887. Her romantic beauty and her dramatic power attracted attention and after her frst bow to London on the Haymarket stage in the same year, she became! tone of the leading actresses of the British stage, for although she returned to her own country to aet_with the late Kyrie Bellew from 1887 to 1892, It was mainly in London and the provinces on the other side of the Atlantic that she found chief favour. She toured in India, Australia, and China before returning to London in. 1892" end South Africa saw her in 1007. "Miss Florence Smithson, 25] years younger than the American-born Belress, actually made her first appearance in pantomime as a child of three in ker father's production of Dick Whittington in 1887. After much valuable training with the paternal company, she was given the lead in "The Cingalec", a play which became the subject ofa famous lawsuit for plagiarism. Later in "The Blue Moon", she further established her reputation as a singer and actress, and was rewarded by the transfer of that play to the Lyric Theatre where London frst applauded her. Robert Courtneidge took her for the "Dairymaids" and from his hands came her: most famous, success in "The Arca dians" in which her husband, the late Dan Rolyat made his name. After the War she appeared mostly in musie-halls and variety theatres. Possessed of an exceptionally sweet voice and much charm of personality, Miss Smithson missed the greater heights, Dut to the generation immediately before the War she was always an attractive artist
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