Sadie BROUGH probably won’t mean much to you. But Julia MARLOWE will. They were one and the same.
Ironton Evening Tribune September 4, 1938
Submitted by Barbara Madden for The Lawrence Register website
When the famous actress Marlow was a familiar figure to Irontonian’s she was a wisp of a child, about five years old. Her family, the Broughs, was a transient one, much like many others who, following the Civil War, were attracted to Ironton’s mills and foundries for work and daily bread. Sadie’s father was an itinerant shoe worker who brought his family to Ironton, Ohio in the early ‘70s.
Some have handed down the story through the generations that Sadie’s mother managed a saloon, but there is nothing in surviving annals to verify this. And Sadie herself is remembered as a youngster in wretched surroundings, poor and dirty, but even then, standing out from the crowd as a beautiful child.
In years to come, Sadie climbed above her family background and inferior heritage to become the greatest Shakespearean actress of her day, not as Sadie Brough, but as Julia Marlowe. She later married E.H. SOUTHERS, with whom she played in the Shakespearean drama.
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