Peggy Allenby's New York
Welcome!
My name is Peggy Allenby. Well, not really. I was born Eleanor Fox, but I've been using the stage name of "Peggy Allenby" since 1921, and that's how most people know me. I started out in the theater in New York City as an amateur when I was a teenager, and got my first professional job in the chorus line of a Broadway show in 1917. I've been on stage on Broadway, in travelling shows, and in regional stock companies; later I went into radio and television. Throughout my life I lived mostly in New York, starting way back in my childhood at the tail end of the Gilded Age, through the Jazz Age of the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, and the fifties and sixties.
I've lived through and seen a lot, and on this blog I want to share with you some of the stories of my life, my career, my family's roots in New York, and the many fascinating people I knew there.
Click on the links below to see my photos and blog posts.
Blog posts
Posted on 7 July 2023
After my first show, My Lady's Glove, closed I got another part in a much more successful show called Maytime. Like My Lady's Glove, it was produced by the Shubert brothers and featured the music of Sigmund Romberg. It even had the same male lead, Charles Purcell. It was very popular with a lot of the soldiers who were coming through New York on their way to deployment to France.
Posted on 26 June 2023
My first role on Broadway was in the chorus line of an operetta called My Lady's Glove, presented at the Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street in 1917. The show was produced by the Shubert brothers and included some original songs by Sigmund Romberg. Although I had been in amateur productions while I was in high school, I didn't get this role until I was twenty-one years old, and had spent several years working in a dress shop while auditioning for parts.
Posted on 25 May 2023.
While I knew my Grandfather Fox well, I never got to know my mother's father, who died in 1897 when I was one year old. He was born in England but became an important newspaper editor in New York state and New York City.
Posted on 19 April 2023.
My grandfather John Fox was an immigrant, a successful businessman, and a Democratic politician in New York City. I was raised in my grandfather's household.
Posted on 3 April 2023.
My mother, Constance Levien, always wanted to be an actor, and actually had a role on Broadway in 1893. She had a major influence on me and my desire to perform on the stage.
Note
Obviously this blog is not actually written by Peggy Allenby, who died in 1966. I am writing it in the first person in order to give the reader a perspective on her life and relationships that is easier to comprehend. It is not fiction and I have made an attempt to ensure that everything in it is historically "accurate." However, history always involves framing and interpretation, and I have no claim to any special ability to understand and interpret Peggy's life. Feel free to read it any way you like, to accept or reject my interpretations, and to construct your own understandings of Peggy.
-- The author