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Amy Busby

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Amy Busby
Born
Amy Busby

January 19, 1872
DiedJuly 13, 1957(1957-07-13) (aged 85)[1]
OccupationActress
Spouses
(m. 1892; div. 1893)
Eugene Howard Lewis
(m. 1897; died 1907)
Theodore Olynthna Douglas
(m. 1908; died 1920)
John James Roy
(m. 1923; sep. 1938)
Children5

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

Early life

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

Career

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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

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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

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  1. ^ a b c "Amy Busby Plays Full Career of Life" The Pocono Record (July 16, 1957): 15. via Newspapers.comOpen access icon
  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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