Anna Laura Fish, better known by the stage name Laura Don, was an American actress, stage manager, playwright and artist who died from tuberculosis while still in her early thirties.
12 Facts About Laura Don
1.
2.
Laura Don wrote the play A Daughter of the Nile, that found its greatest success after her death, and was the mother of the writer Glen MacDonough.
3.
Anna Laura Fish was born in Greenwich, New York, the daughter of Peter and Catherine Fish.
4.
Laura Don's father worked as a wheelwright and possibly had additional income that accounted for his family's comfortable circumstances.
5.
Laura Don was an accomplished landscape and portrait artist with at least one of her paintings exhibited at the New York National Academy of Design selling for $150.
6.
Laura Don next married a theatrical agent named Thomas B MacDonough, a union that in 1870 would produce their son Glen, born in Brooklyn, New York.
7.
Laura Don began her acting career with a traveling troupe performing in Brooklyn and later spent time with John Ellsler's company in Cleveland.
8.
On February 7,1881, Laura Don began a two-month run as Erima in Fresh, the American and on November 28 of that year she starred in the American debut of George Robert Sims' My Mother-in-Law, both staged at Abbey's Park Theatre on 932 Broadway, New York.
9.
All Miss Laura Don's versatility is called into play in A Daughter of the Nile.
10.
Circa 1884, Laura Don traveled to San Francisco to join the cast of Baldwin Theatre, then under the directorship of David Belasco.
11.
Laura Don later spent the better part of a year in Nice, France, in a vain attempt to regain her health.
12.
Laura Don eventually returned to her parents' home in Greenwich, New York, where she died on February 10,1886.