Gladys Egan (also credited as Gladys Eagan; May 24, 1900March 8, 1985) was an early 20th-century American child actress, who between 1907 and 1914 performed professionally in theatre productions as well as in scores of silent films. She began her brief entertainment career appearing on the New York stage as well as in plays presented across the country by traveling companies. By 1908 she also started working in the film industry, where for six years she acted almost exclusively in motion pictures for the Biograph Company of New York. The vast majority of her screen roles during that period were in shorts directed by D. W. Griffith, who cast her in over 90 of his releases.Graham, Cooper C.; Steve Higgins, Elaine Mancini, and João Luiz Viera. D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985, p. 240.Spehr, John C.; with Gunnar Lundquist. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996, p. 181. While most of Egan's films were produced by Biograph, she did work for other motion-picture companies between 1911 and 1914, such as the Reliance Film Company and Independent Moving Pictures. By 1916, Egan's acting career appears to have ended, and she no longer was being mentioned in major trade journals or included in published studio personnel directories as a regularly employed actor. Although she may have performed as an extra or in some bit parts after 1914, no available filmographies or entertainment publications from the period cite Egan in any screen or stage role after that year.Month-to-month searches between 1915 and 1920 for "Gladys Egan" and "Gladys Eagan" in Variety, The New York Clipper, other trade publications, The New York Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, and the Library of Congress database "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" found no references to her.
Early life and stage work Born in Manhattan, New York in May 1900, Gladys was the fifth child of seven children of Margarette (née Sheeran) and Thomas Francis Egan, both New York natives whose own parents had immigrated from Ireland."New York, New York City Births, 1846-1909," Gladys Egan, 24 May 1900, Manhattan, New York City; birth index of original records, New York Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm 1,953,782. FamilySearch archives (FSa)."Twelfth Census of the United States: 1900", digital image of original enumeration page, Thomas F. Egan family, 5 June 1900, Manhattan, New York; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C. FSa. By 1910, the large Egan family was living at 425 West 30th Street in Manhattan and was supported by Thomas's job as a "letter carrier" for the United States Postal Service."Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910", digital copy of original enumeration page citing household of Thomas F. Egan, 25 April 1910, Manhattan, New York; U.S. Census Bureau record, NARA, FSa.
The circumstances of young Gladys's entry into show business are uncertain, but by the age of seven she was performing on Broadway. In October and early November 1907, credited as Gladys Eagan, she portrayed the character "Ne-Ne-Moo-Sha" in the two-act musical comedy Miss Pocahontas, which was presented at the Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street in Manhattan."Gladys Eagan", cast member in Miss Pocahontas, Lyric Theatre, 28 October 19079 November 1907. Internet Broadway Database (IBDB), The Broadway League, Manhattan, New York. Retrieved 25 March 2021. During this period, the young actress was also a regular cast member in stage productions outside of New York.See "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" for various news items in searches of Glady Egan (and Eagan) between 1907 and the end of 1909. U.S. National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), Library of Congress (LC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Washington, D.C. In its November 23, 1907 issue, the weekly entertainment newspaper The New York Clipper lists Egan as a cast member in the Samuel S. & Lee Shubert Company's presentation of the play Shore Acres, which was scheduled for a three-week engagement in Boston."World of Players", The New York Clipper, 23 November 1907, p. 1101, col. 2. Internet Archive (IA), San Francisco, California. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
19081909 travels Throughout 1908 and into early 1909, Egan performed on tour in additional presentations of Shore Acres and in at least two other plays: Rip Van Winkle starring the popular New York actor Thomas Jefferson and The Wishing Ring featuring Marguerite Clark."Marguerite Clarke In Play: Appears in 'The Wishing Ring'", subscription access, The New York Times (Manhattan), 20 October 1909, p. 18. ProQuest Historical Newspapers (PHN), Ann Arbor, Michigan. In those tours, Egan received many accolades for her performances in towns and cities in California, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Montreal, Canada.News items announcing presentations of the cited stage productions can be seen in 19081909 online searches of the LC newspaper collection "Chronicling America". In his mixed assessment of Rip Van Winkle, reviewer Walter Anthony in the January 25, 1909 issue of The San Francisco Call focuses special attention on the production's child actors, noting that their portrayals of the play's characters as children were, in his opinion, far superior to the older versions of the same characters performed by adult actors. "Little Meenie [Egan] and Little Heindrich in the first act", he writes, "were good juvenile roles in the hands of Gladys Egan and Oscar Johnson, but not so good when their grownups selves appeared in the fourth act stagily and rhetorical.Anthony, Walter. "Jefferson Scores As Rip Van Winkle", The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, California), January 25, 1909, p. 5, col. 5. Chronicling America. LC. Retrieved March 27, 2021. A month later, when Rip Van Winkle was scheduled to be presented in Grand Junction, Colorado, the local newspaper heaped even greater praise on Egan:
In other news coverage about Egan's stage work in 1909, The Salt Lake Herald in Utah described the "little" actress as "one of the stars of the performance" of Rip Van Winkle and judged her acting style as highly effective for her age. "The emotional tremor in her voice as she expostulated over the ejection of her father", observed the newspaper, "was truly mindful of the great actresses who get their names in big letters on the billboards.""Amusements", The Salt Lake Herald (Salt Lake City, Utah), 26 February 1909, p. 10, col. 6. Chronicling America, LC. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
Film career In 1908 and 1909, when Egan was having success on the stage, she also ventured into acting in the rapidly expanding industry of motion pictures. Her initial screen performance was for the Biograph Company in the Summer of 1908. Contrary to some current online filmographies relating to Egan, published biographies of D. W. Griffith, production records included in the 1985 reference D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company, and other period sources cite the drama short Behind the Scenes as her first work for the New York studio.Graham and others. "Behind the Scenes", D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company, p. 24. The eight-minute short, directed by Griffith, was filmed in two daysAugust 10 and 13, 1908at the company's main studio at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan.Stern, Seymour (compiler). "The Adventures of Dollie", An Index to the Creative Work of David Wark Griffith. New York: Gordon Press, 1944, pp. 5-6. Released on September 11, the film was promoted by Biograph in advertisements as "a true and pathetic story of life in Stageland, where all that glitters is not gold.""Behind the Scenes", advertisement, The Show World (Chicago), 12 September 1908, p. 22. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
The Adventures of Dollie In the cinematic history of the United States, the 1908 Biograph short The Adventures of Dollie is deemed notable because it is generally recognized as D. W. Griffith's debut film as a director.Simmon, Scott. The Films of D. W. Griffith. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 6. Some online references also cite The Adventures of Dollie as Gladys Egan's first film as a screen actor. She is not listed as a cast member of that production in any of the previously noted sources or in the catalog profiles of surviving copies of the short preserved in the UCLA Film Archives and the Library of Congress."Adventures of Dollie/American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.", catalog, UCLA Film & Television Archives, Los Angeles, California; "Adventures of Dollie", film catalog record with playable copy of the 1908 short, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Retrieved March 27, 2021. As presented in those copies of The Adventures of Dollie, the child actress who portrays the title character does not appear to be Egan, who by the Summer of 1908 was eight years old. The girl in the film looks younger than that age, and her short hairstyle and facial features do not resemble those of Egan at the time. Even the previously cited reference D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company, which among its many sources includes performance credits for Egan drawn from the studio's production records, does not credit her or any other child actor for the role of Dollie. Instead, that reference indicates that the performer is unknown, applying only a question mark ("?") to the title role.Graham and others. "The Adventures of Dollie", D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company, p. 20. Egan herself also made no mention of this film in a self-compiled 1965 list of her leading roles.
Continuing work at Biograph, 19081913
Despite any issues regarding the identity of Egan's first film, her initial work for Biograph must have impressed Griffith because he cast her in dozens of productions over the next five years, mostly in melodramas. A few examples of Egan's films are Behind the Scenes (1908), Romance of a Jewess (1908), After Many Years (1908), The Lonely Villa (1909), The Country Doctor (1909), The Seventh Day (1909), The Rocky Road (1910), The Broken Doll (1910), His Trust Fulfilled (1911), Conscience (1911), A Child's Remorse (1912), The Painted Lady (1912), Fate (1913), and Red and Pete, Partners (1913)."Gladys Egan", catalog, American Film Institute (AFI), Los Angeles, California. Retrieved March 23, 2021. By the end of 1913, she had performed in at least 100 Biograph releases working for Griffith as well as for some of the company's other rising directors such as Herbert Brenon, Frank Powell, Anthony O'Sullivan, Edward Dillon, and Mack Sennett.
In her 1925 autobiography When the Movies Were Young, silent-film actress Linda Arvidson, who was also D. W. Griffith's first wife, recalls Egan's work for the legendary director at Biograph: