Lydia St. Clair
Special thanks to Gretchen Lieb at Vassar College Libraries for her help in tracking down sources!
Lydia St. Clair was born on December 19, 1898, in Teplitz-Schönau, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic). She was a leading stage actress in Frankfurt and then Paris. When the Nazi army invaded France in the spring of 1940, she left for the United States. By early 1941 she had received great acclaim for her performance on Broadway in Elmer Rice’s play Flight to the West.
In June of 1941, St. Clair served as an instructor at the Vassar Summer Institute of Euthenics. While there she taught a four-week seminar on acting alongside Hallie Flanagan Davis. According to one of the students who attended the seminar, St. Clair "had a great objective talent in being able to combine cold-blooded criticism with friendliness... We felt we received a training in basic technique of acting and emotional control which we wouldn't have gotten anywhere else in the world."
Afterwards, she appeared on Broadway in Dorothy and Howard Baker’s controversial play Trio in 1944 and Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo in 1952. Throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s she also acted in numerous Hollywood films, including The House on 92nd Street in 1945 (a still of her as Johanna Schmidt is pictured here). She passed away in 1970.
Sources:
Bacon, Marion, ed. "Activities of the Departmens: Drama Division." Vassar Quarterly 15 Jan. 1942: 20. Vassar Newspaper Archives. Web. 26 May 2016.
“Obituaries.” Variety Magazine, 4 Feb. 1970, p. 71.
Orodenker, Maurie. "Trio." Billboard 11 Nov. 1944: 28+. Print.
Seigneur, Erica. "The Vassar Summer Institute." Vassar Encyclopedia. Vassar College, 2007. Web. 26 May 2016.
"St. Clair Will Guide Actors at Seminar." Vassar Miscellany News 11 Jun. 1941: 1. Vassar Newspaper Archives. Web.
"Ten Students Take D.P. Summer Course at Vassar, Housekeeping on Side." Vassar Miscellany News 1 Oct. 1941: 1. Vassar Newspaper Archives. Web.
StartFragment EndFragment