Cornell, Katharine, 1893-1974

Katharine Cornell was born on February 16, 1893, in Berlin, where her father, Peter Cortelyou Cornell, a distant relation of Cornell University founder Ezra Cornell, was studying medicine. Later in 1893, Peter Cornell and his wife Alice Gardner Plimpton returned to their native city, Buffalo, New York with their daughter, Katharine. Her father practiced medicine in Buffalo, for several years, but he found his time and interest increasingly taken up with the family hobby. His father, S. Douglas Cornell had been an active member of a theatrical group called the Buffalo Amateurs and Peter and his brother Douglas and sister Lydia also participated in many of the group’s performances. In 1901 Peter Cornell gave up medicine to devote himself full time to the management of the Star Theatre. Early exposure to the productions her family was involved in, as well as touring companies that passed through Buffalo, particularly Maude Adams in Peter Pan, developed the beginnings in Katharine Cornell of a lifelong passion with the theater.

After attending private schools in Buffalo, Cornell went to Oaksmere School, in Mamaroneck, New York, where she participated in many theatrical productions. Determined to pursue a career on the stage, she moved to New York in 1916. After unsuccessfully auditioning for a role with the Washington Square Players—an organization which would later become the Theatre Guild, Cornell was allowed to sit in on their rehearsals as an apprentice. When an actress playing the bit part of the mother in Bushido: A Japanese Tragedy failed to show up for rehearsals, the company managers gave the one-line part to the young actress who’d become a constant presence at the rehearsals, and Katharine Cornell made her New York debut.

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