American stage actress, writer, theatre owner and producer, regarded as one of the great actresses of the American theatre. Cornell was the first performer to receive the Drama League Award, for Romeo and Juliet in 1935. She is noted for her major Broadway roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic. The couple formed C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company that gave them complete artistic freedom in choosing and producing plays. Their production company gave first or prominent Broadway roles to some of the more notable actors of the 20th century, including many British Shakespearean actors.
Her most famous role was that of English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Other appearances on Broadway included in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter (1927), Sidney Howard’s The Alien Corn (1933), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1934), Maxwell Anderson’s The Wingless Victory (1936), S. N. Behrman’s No Time for Comedy (1939), a Tony Award-winning Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (1947), and a revival of Maugham’s The Constant Wife (1951).
Cornell was noted for spurning screen roles, unlike other actresses of her day. She appeared in only one Hollywood film, the World War II morale booster Stage Door Canteen, in which she played herself. She did appear in television adaptations of The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Robert E. Sherwood’s There Shall Be No Night. She also narrated the documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, which won an Oscar.
Primarily regarded as a tragedienne, Cornell was admired for her refined, romantic presence. Her appearances in comedy were infrequent, and praised more widely for their warmth than their wit.
She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York. She married McClintic on 8 September 1921 in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. The couple eventually bought a townhouse in Manhattan. It is generally acknowledged that Cornell was a lesbian, and that McClintic was gay, and their union was a lavender marriage. She was a member of the “sewing circles” in New York, and had intimate relationships with Nancy Hamilton, Tallulah Bankhead, and Mercedes de Acosta, among others.
McClintic died on 29 October 1961 of a lung haemorrhage, shortly after the couple had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. As he had always directed Cornell in every production since their marriage, she decided to retire from the stage altogether. Cornell died of pneumonia on 9 June 1974 in Tisbury, Massachusetts (on Martha’s Vineyard), aged 81.
Link to Wikipedia biography