Thomas, A. E. (Albert Ellsworth), 1872-1947

A.E. Thomas, playwright.

Actress Carroll McComas was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the daughter of Judge Charles Carroll McComas, a direct descendent of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Alice Moore McComas, a writer, actress and suffragist. McComas began her career as a whistler in vaudeville when she was thirteen.

Her first "regular production", as she called it, was in Charles Frohman's The Dollar Princess . For the next few years she played in both drama and musical comedy and was a success in the title role of Miss Lulu Bett . Her association with Walter Hampden brought other successful roles in The Jolly Roger, Cyrano De Bergerac and The Ring of Truth .

In 1930, Ms. McComas left the theater to marry Selskar Gunn, vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation . After her husband's death in 1944, she returned to the stage appearing in the USO tour of Our Town with Raymond Massey . Other roles were in Arms and the Man, Design for a Stained Glass Window and as an ANTA guest artist in The Glass Menagerie . Her last New York appearance was in 1959 in The Innocents . McComas also appeared on television playing the Nurse opposite Susan Strasberg in Romeo and Juliet and in numerous motion pictures, including Jamaica Run and The Miracle Worker . Carroll McComas died in 1962 of a heart attack.