Eleanor Phelps

Who was Eleanor Phelps?

Eleanor Phelps was an American theater, film and television actress from Roland Park, Baltimore, Maryland. She appeared in 17 Broadway theater productions.

Before going off to Vassar for college, Phelps attended Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore along with future actresses Margaret Barker and Mildred Natwick. In college she was a student of Hallie Flanagan at the Vassar Experimental Theatre and aspired to become a Broadway performer. Her father opposed her desire to appear on stage but her mom assisted her by introducing her to actor George Arliss. She visited Arliss at his elegant Beekman Place apartment and he also tried to discourage Phelps from acting.

She joined the University Players Guild for its first season of summer stock in West Falmouth on Cape Cod in 1928 along with Henry Fonda, Joshua Logan, Bretaigne Windust, Charles Leatherbee, Myron McCormick, Kent Smith, and others. On July 29, 1928, Broadway producer Winthrop Ames traveled from New York to Cape Cod specifically to see Phelps in the dress rehearsal for the University Players production of The Jest, a 1919 Broadway comedy by Sem Benelli. Perhaps his trip was occasioned at the suggestion of George Arliss who had starred as Shylock in Ames's Broadway production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice during the Broadway season just ended. In any event, Ames offered Phelps the role of Jessica in the post-Broadway national tour of Merchant of Venice. At the end of the University Players 1928 summer season, Phelps left Cape Cod to join Arliss and company and never returned to Falmouth. She loved more than anything being in a play by Mister Shakespeare.