Josephine Victor (born Josephine Gunczler; June 28, 1885 – 1963) was a Hungarian-born American stage actress, director, and playwright.

Early life

Victor was born in the Tokay Hills in Hungary in 1885, and moved to New York City as a child. She may have attended the Wheatcroft School of Acting on a scholarship."Josephine Victor in Joan of Arc Play"
''Evening Public Ledger'' (June 15, 1918): 11. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...

She used her brother Victor's first name for a surname when she began acting. She began performing with the

Howard Kyle Howard Kyle (April 22, 1861 – December 1, 1950) was an American stage and screen actor and lecturer active for over 50 years. He was a founding member and one-time recording-secretary of Actors' Equity and a sixty-year member of The Players ...

Company,Alan Kreizenbeck
''Zoe Akins: Broadway Playwright''
(Greenwood Publishin 2004): 171-172. and made headlines as early as 1906, when her costume caught fire on stage, and she doused the flames without breaking character.

Career

On Broadway she debuted in ''The Secret Orchard'' by Channing Pollock (1908), and appeared in ''

The Temperamental Journey ''The Temperamental Journey'', originally titled ''Such Is Life'', is a 1913 play by Leo Ditrichstein, adapted from ''Pour Vivre Heureux'' by André Rivoire and Yves Mirande. It is a three-act comedy with three settings and twenty characters. The ...

'' (1913), ''The Yellow Ticket'' (1914), ''The Bargain'' by Hermann Georg Scheffauer (1915), ''Just a Woman'' by

Eugene Walter Eugene Ferdinand Walter, Jr. (November 30, 1921 – March 29, 1998) was an American screenwriter, poet, short-story author, actor, puppeteer, gourmet chef, cryptographer, translator, editor, costume designer and well-known raconteur. During his y ...

(1916), ''Martinique'' by Laurence Eyre (1920), ''Dolly Jordan'' by

Ben Iden Payne Ben Iden Payne (5 September 1881 – 6 April 1976), also known as B. Iden Payne, was an English actor, director and teacher. Active in professional theatre for seventy years, he helped the first modern repertory theatre in the United Kingdom, was a ...

(1922), ''The Cup'' (1923), ''Judgment Day'' by

Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays '' The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...

(1934), ''Wise Tomorrow'' (1937), and finally ''Summer Night'' (1939). She is credited as director of one play, ''Doctor X'' (1931), a "mystery thriller". She toured the United States with a vaudeville show in 1921. She also appeared on the London stage, in ''Pelican'' by

F. Tennyson Jesse Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse Harwood (born Wynifried (Winifred) Margaret Jesse; 1 March 1888 – 6 August 1958) was an English people, English journalist, author and criminologist. Early life She was the second of three daughters of the Rev. Eu ...

(1924), and in a few films. Victor was also a playwright. In 1910 she co-wrote a play, ''Ashes'', with Eleanor Maud Crane. Later, as Josephine Victor Reid, she wrote ''The Prize Pig's Tea-party'' (1934), a play, ''How to Get Rich'' (1930). She also co-wrote two plays, ''Clay Pigeon'' (1936, with Marjorie Paradis) and ''Read about Laura Keene'' (1937, with I. S. Strouse). She collaborated with Laurence Eyre on creating the 1920 play ''Martinique'', but was not credited as its co-author.

Personal life

Josephine Victor married Francis E. Reid, a publicist and drama critic. She was widowed in 1933.A. H. Phillips
"Obituary: Francis E. Reid '87"
''Princeton Alumni Weekly'' 34(November 3, 1933): 157. She died in 1963, aged 78 years.

Filmography

References

External links

*The

National Portrait Gallery (London) The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world th ...

ha
four photographs of Josephine Victor
all portraits from 1924 by

Bassano Ltd Alexander Bassano (10 May 1829 – 21 October 1913) was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. He is known for his photo of the Earl Kitchener in the ''Lord Kitchener Wants Y ...

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Josephine Victor
at IBDb
portrait
with Helen Ware and Henrietta Metcalf 1923 {{DEFAULTSORT:Victor, Josephine 1885 births 1963 deaths Hungarian actresses American actresses Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the United States