Introduction
Clara Morris (March 17, 1849 – November 20, 1925) (her birth date is sometimes given as 1846/48) was an American actress.
Biography
Born in Toronto, Canada, her real name was Morrison. She was reared in Cleveland, Ohio, where at the Academy of Music she became a member of the ballet and afterward leading actress.
She went to New York in 1870 as a member of Daly's company. In 1872, she made a sensation in L'Article 47. Other successes followed and she became known as an actress distinguished for spontaneity and naturalness. She was married to Frederick C. Harriott on November 30, 1874; he died in May 1914.
For some years after 1885, she devoted herself mainly to literary work, writing: Little Jim Crow, and Other Stories of Children (1899); A Silent Singer (1899); Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections (1901); A Pasteboard Crown (1902); Stage Confidences (1902); The Trouble Woman (1904), fiction; The Life of a Star (1906); Left in Charge (1907); New East Lynne (1908); A Strange Surprise (1910); and Dressing Room Receptions (1911).
In her book Life on the Stage: My Personal Experiences and Recollections she recounts her meeting with John Wilkes Booth the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.
Complete blindness overtook her in 1910, and her old age was embittered by poverty. The house in which she had lived for 37 years was sold in 1914, and Morris moved to Whitestone, Long Island.