23 Facts About Sadie Martinot

Sarah Frances Marie Martinot was an American actress and soprano singer who performed on stage in dramas, musical comedy and comic opera.

Sadie Martinot's career began at the age fifteen as Cupid in Ixion; or, the Man at the Wheel and, but for a few years absence, she remained active on stage in America and abroad until 1908.

Late in her life Sadie Martinot fell victim to mental illness and spent her last few years confined to psychiatric institutions.

Sadie Martinot was born Sarah Frances Marie Martinot in New York City on December 19,1861, the daughter of William Alexander and Mary Lydia Martinot.

Sadie Martinot's father was the son of John P Martinot, a French immigrant who founded a successful wholesale firm dealing in imported silk products.

William Sadie Martinot worked for his father's firm and had served in the American Civil War and later as a New York City police detective who once brought charges of corruption against a NYPD police captain.

Sadie Martinot's mother was said to be of the family that once owned Randall's Island in Manhattan.

In March 1894 Sadie Martinot stated to the press that, though she would have been proud to have been raised under such a circumstance, she in fact was the daughter of Mary and William Alexander Sadie Martinot.

In 1876 Sadie Martinot joined Manhattan's Eagle Theatre as a $5-a-week walk-on player.

Sadie Martinot left The Boston Museum after actor-manager Dion Boucicault offered her a substantial raise to join him in England and her request for a modest salary adjustment was rejected by the Museum's management.

Sadie Martinot made her London debut on Boxing Day, 1880, at the Alhambra Theatre as the Spirit of the Bracken in the three-act comic opera Mefistofele II.

At the Fifth Avenue Theatre in January 1884, Sadie Martinot played Portia in the farce Distinguished Gentleman and that August at the Union Square Theatre she was Florence Nightingale Fletcher in Queena.

In December 1885 Sadie Martinot sailed for an engagement in Florence, where after a short period she came down with a strain of malaria commonly called Roman Fever.

Sadie Martinot returned to New York to star in the much anticipated comic opera Nadjy, but after a disagreement with the Casino Theatre stage manager, she withdrew from the production before the piece debuted.

Sadie Martinot remained active in theatre, in New York or elsewhere, well into the first decade of the new century in roles such as:.

At the time of her death Sadie Martinot was thought to be divorced from Nethersole.

Sadie Martinot was the author of a number of magazine articles over her career, a student of Wagnerian opera and an accomplished equestrian.

On January 5,1916, Sadie Martinot jumped unclad from a second story window of an apartment building on Fort Washington Avenue, New York.

Sadie Martinot did not, from press reports, appear seriously injured when she landed in an adjacent courtyard, though it was apparent she was mentally unstable.

Sadie Martinot was transported to Washington Heights Hospital and then later in the day transferred to the Psychiatric Ward at Bellevue Hospital.

In March 1918 Sadie Martinot was committed to the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane and later that year moved to St Lawrence State Hospital, Ogdensburg, New York.

At some point early in 1918 Sadie Martinot escaped her confinement and was eventually found in Washington, DC, disoriented and unable to recall her name.

Sadie Martinot died of heart disease five years later while still institutionalized at St Lawrence Hospital.