Doris Keane — Heroine of 2,730 Romances (1920) 🇺🇸

Miss Keane has recently returned from London where during the last five years she has been the heroine of 2,000 Romances. And there were anyway 730 performances of the same play to her credit in her New York and Chicago seasons, before she packed up her marmoset and her hoop skirts and went over the ocean to play. Now people have grown so used to thinking of her and Romance in one breath, that they won't let her do anything else. As soon a "Mother Macree"-less McCormack Sunday concert!

Since David Wark Griffith and Miss Keane have set out to make a motion picture production of "Romance" every one is waiting eagerly to see how our international star will fare at the hands of the screen. It has not been particularly kind, as we all recall, to a number of our more mature, though still very beautiful, actresses. Miss Keane's husband, Basil Sydney, will appear as her leading man — as he did in London. She intends to make this picture her one and only adventure into filmland.

Romance, by Edward N. Sheldon, is the story of La Cavallini, an opera singer who loves a clergy-man. It is said to have been founded on a romance in the life of Jenny Lind. What will those showmen who contend that "a costume picture can't get across — the public won't stand for it" say to the 2730 profitable performances of Romance?

Miss Keane was born in Michigan, and educated in New York, Paris and Rome. She made her stage debut in 1903 in Whitewashing Julia. Clyde Fitch's The Happy Marriage was her first starring vehicle. Arsène Lupin, Decorating Clementine and The Lights o' London are other pieces in which she will be remembered.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, July 1920