Mary Mannering was an English actress, born in London. She studied for the stage under Hermann Vezin. She made her debut at Manchester in 1892 under her own name of Florence Friend.
Biography
Born Florence Friend, she was the daughter of Richard Friend and Elise Whiting. She was induced by producer Daniel Frohman to come to New York in 1896. In the United States, she began playing as "Mary Mannering". Mannering's American debut, in the title role in Henry V. Esmond's The Courtship of Leonie, was at Daniel Frohman's original Lyceum Theatre on December 1, 1896. Other plays with the Lyceum company included Sydney Grundy's The Late Mr. Castello on December 14, 1896, Frances Hodgson Burnett and George Fleming's The First Gentleman of Europe, Louis N. Parker's The Mayflower, and Arthur Wing Pinero's The Princess and the Butterfly, The Tree of Knowledge by R.C. Carton, Trelawny of the 'Wells' by Pinero, Americans at Home by Grace Livingstone Furniss, and John Ingerfield by Jerome K. Jerome. In 1900 Mannering starred at Buffalo, N. Y. and then in the Broadway debut of Janice Meredith, in the title role opposite Robert Drouet who played Colonel Jack Brereton in the four-act play based on a novel of the same name by Paul Leicester Ford. Thereafter, she played leading parts in White Roses ; The Truants ; The Independent Miss Gower ; A Man's World and The Garden of Allah.
Personal life
She married James K. Hackett, the Lyceum company's leading actor, on May 2, 1897, though the marriage was not announced until January 1898. They had a daughter, Elise, in 1904. She later married Frederick E. Wadsworth. She died, a widow, on January 21, 1953 at Los Angeles.
Publications
Blum, Daniel C., Great Stars of the American Stage #Profile 9, c.1952
Brown, Thomas Allston, A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901, Volume III, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903.
Moses, Montrose J., "Famous Families of American Players: No. 3 - The Hacketts", The Theatre Magazine, v.V n.47, January 1905, pp. 13–16.
