William J. Florence

Who was William J. Florence?

William Jermyn Conlin better known by his stage name William J. Florence, was a US actor, songwriter, and playwright. Florence was one of a select number of Americans to win the ribbon of the French Societe Histoire Dramatique. He was also co-founder with Walter M. Fleming of the Shriners, a Masonic Order.

Born of Irish parents and raised in New York City, Florence worked at various jobs before becoming a call boy at the Old Bowery Theater. While working to support his widowed mother and her seven younger children, he rehearsed plays at night, and in 1850 he began to do dialect impersonations. In 1853 he married Malvina Pray, and thereafter the two generally appeared together on the stage — he usually as an Irishman and she as a Yankee. From Malvina's observation of wealthy American on vacation abroad, Florence asked Benjamin Edward Woolf to write The Mighty Dollar, that the couple would perform in over 2,500 times during the mid-1870s and well into the 1880s.

Conlin was fond of Florence, Italy, where he had an apartment for his trips abroad, and adopted the city for his stage name. At some point after he became famous under this name, he secured the legal right to it.