1. Helena Modjeska is regarded as the greatest actress in the history of theatre in Poland.
22 Facts About Helena Modjeska
1. 2.
Helena Modjeska was a member of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association and was mother of a prominent Polish-American engineer Ralph Modjeski.
3.
Helena Modjeska was born in Krakow, Poland, on 12 October 1840.
4.
Helena Modjeska's parents were Karol Mizel and Katarzyna Golc, both of whom came from German mining families that arrived at the end of the 18th century to work in the mines in Szczakowa.
5.
The basis of this speculation was likely the resemblance in appearance and life paths between Modjeska and Sanguszko's acknowledged daughter, Helena, who was an actress, renowned for both her beauty and scandalous lifestyle.
6.
Helena Modjeska discovered many years later that they had not been legally married, because he was still married to his first wife when they wed.
7.
Later, when acting abroad, she simplified her name to "Helena Modjeska", which was easier for English-speaking audiences to pronounce.
8.
Later that year Helena Modjeska left Zimajer, taking their son Rudolf, and returning to Krakow.
9.
Helena Modjeska's family belonged to the untitled landed gentry.
10.
Helena Modjeska was a member of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.
11.
The utopian experiment failed, the colonists went their separate ways, and Helena Modjeska returned to the stage, reprising the Shakespearean roles that she had performed in Poland.
12.
On 20 August 1877, Helena Modjeska debuted at the California Theatre in San Francisco in an English version of Ernest Legouve's Adrienne Lecouvreur.
13.
Helena Modjeska was seen by theatrical agent Harry J Sargent who signed her for a tour on the east coast where she made her New York debut.
14.
Helena Modjeska then spent three years abroad, mainly in London, attempting to improve her English, before returning to the stage in America.
15.
In 1893, Helena Modjeska was invited to speak to a women's conference at the Chicago World's Fair, and described the situation of Polish women in the Russian and Prussian-ruled parts of dismembered Poland.
16.
Helena Modjeska suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed in 1897, but recovered and soon returned to the stage, continuing to perform for several additional years.
17.
Helena Modjeska died at Newport Beach, California on 8 April 1909, aged 68, from Bright's disease.
18.
Helena Modjeska's remains were sent to Krakow to be buried in the family plot at the Rakowicki Cemetery.
19.
Arden, Helena Modjeska's home from 1888 to 1906, is a registered National Historic Landmark.
20.
Helena Modjeska was a character in the novella My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather.
21.
Scholars Joanna and Catharina Polatynska have posited that Helena Modjeska might have been Arthur Conan Doyle's model for the character Irene Adler, the only woman that Sherlock Holmes came close to loving.
22.
In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Doyle mentions Adler having been prima donna of the fictional Imperial Opera of Warsaw in the same years when Helena Modjeska was at the peak of her theatrical career in Warsaw, and the fictional character's personality recalls that of the actual actress.