Biography

Stage actress. Forgotten today, she once ranked above the immortal Lilly Langtree in popularity. Morris was the highest page stage actress on Broadway during the 1870's-early 1890's. Her fee was a then-astounding $500 per night but her acting career was blindsided by back trouble. She left the legitimate stage for vaudeville, earning $800 per week in the Keith Ortheum theatre chain. She ultimately quit acting altogether and by 1905 became a successful writer.

Morris wrote in an article for the March 1904 issue of Metropolitan magazine, she recounted her encounter with Mark Twain. Morris included that the person who was intended to introduce her onstage had missed their train and couldn't attend the performance. Twain offered to introduce Morris instead, and the two walked to the stage, arm in arm. "Thus we made our entrance upon the stage," Morris wrote. "The applause was hearty and prolonged. I thought it was for him, and made no acknowledgment -- he thought it was for me and waited unresponsive. We looked reproachfully at each other -- then we both bowed. The audience understood and laughed happily.".

In 1910, Morris became blind, and experienced poverty. The house in which she had lived for 37 years was sold in 1914, and she moved to Whitestone, Long Island.

The Clara Morris School, located at 1900 St. Clair Avenue NE, was part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District until the building was torn down in 1968. Opened in 1868, the building was originally named the St. Clair School and held 16 rooms with "the windows, pointed in the Gothic manner.".

After nine years of training she played a leading lady at Wood's Theatre in Cincinnati in 1869. She then appeared in Halifax, Nova Scotia for a summer, and with Joseph Jefferson in Louisville, before going to New York City in 1870.