- Date:
- 1868
- Original Format:
- Carte de Visite
- Item#:
- MES23593
- Photographer:
- Jose Mora
Elise Holt (1847-1873)
Born in London, the actress Elise Holt made her first stage appearance in 1863 at the Surrey Gardens, London, as a ballet dancer. She later debuted as a principal dancer at the Victoria Theatre. Horace (Harry) Wall, a theater manager, brought his English burlesque company to the U.S. in 1868 and opened in Boston. Holt, his star actress, made her U.S. debut at the Olympic Theatre in Boston, in the burlesque of "Lucretia Borgia, M.D.; or, La Grande Doctresse," by H. J. Byron. After performing "Lucretia Borgia" in New York and Philadelphia the company sailed to California where Holt married Hall. In 1873 Holt began a starring tour from New York to New Orleans, during which she contracted typhoid fever. She died at age twenty-six, leaving a little daughter and Hall, who committed suicide.