Olga Isabella Nethersole, CBE, RRC (18 January 1866Her birth was registered in Kensington in the first quarter of 1866 as Olga Isabella Enderby. – 9 January 1951) was an English actress, theatre producer, and wartime nurse and health educator.
Career Olga Isabella Nethersole was born in London, of Spanish descent on her mother's side. Her step-father was Henry Nethersole, a solicitor. She made her stage début at Theatre Royal, Brighton in 1887. In 1888, Nethersole began playing important parts in London, at first under Rutland Barrington and John Hare at the Garrick Theatre.
Nethersole toured Australia and the United States playing leading parts in modern plays, notably Clyde Fitch's Sapho, where she and her male costar Hamilton Revelle were arrested for "violating public decency" for which she was later acquitted. Her powerful emotional acting, however, made a great effect in some other plays, such as Carmen, in which she again appeared in America in 1906.
In 1904, Nethersole portrayed the lead role in La seconde madame Tanqueray at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris.Le Ménestrel Review 1904 Then she was at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in Magda, Sapho, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and an adaptation of a French play by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, Camille, an adaptation of a French play La Dame aux Camélias,Annales du théatre et de la musique de 1907 (p. 274) and The Spanish Gipsy, an adaptation of the French play Carmen de Mérimée in 1907.L'Aurore du 12 June 1907 Every summer, Nethersole spent a week at the house of playwright Edmond Rostand in Cambo les Bains. In 1907, she performed Rostand’s play La Samaritaine an English version of it to play it in London.Newspaper l'Aurore, 12 June 1907 In a conference at the Théâtre de l'Athénée on 17 November 1908, Robert Eude said that Olga Nethersole invented the soul kiss (an especially long kiss, of which actress Maude Adams was the recordwoman).Newspaper Comoedia, 18 November 1908 p. 2
Nethersole inspired the character of "Miss Nethersoll", an American dancer, in the French novel La Danseuse nue et la Dame a la licorne by Rachel Gaston-Charles (1908).Review Le Mercure de France, 16 September 1908 p. 306
World War I and later years During World War I, Nethersole served as a nurse in London and later established the People's League of Health, for which she received the Royal Red Cross (RRC) in 1920. She combined her theatre work with health work for the rest of her life. She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1936.
Death On 9 January 1951, Nethersole died in Bournemouth, England at the age of 84. Her brother, Louis F. Nethersole, was a theatrical manager, producer and press agent and one-time husband of the American actress and singer, Sadie Martinot.Sadie Martinot Dies Insane at 61. The New York Times, 8 May 1923, p. 7.
Selected stage roles Mary Magdalene, 5 December 1910 - December 1910 The Writing on the Wall, 26 April 1909 - May 1909 The Enigma, 8 February 1908 - 1 March 1908 I Pagliacci, 8 February 1908 - 1 March 1908 Sapho, 1908
Legacy Between 1885 and 1890, Olga Nethersole’s portrait was painted in Omaha, Nebraska by artist Herbert A. Collins.Biography of Herbert Alexander Collins, by Alfred W. Collins, February 1975, 4 pages typed, in the possession of Collins' great-great grand-daughter, D. Dahl of Tacoma, Washington
References
External links
Article about Olga Nethersole Olga Nethersole's photo section at the New York Public Library
People's League of Health papers at LSE Archives Olga Nethersole; PeriodPaper.com c. 1910