May Irwin

Born June 27, 1862 in Whitby, Ont., Canada, and died in 1938. Famous actress and singer and celebrated stage comedienne at the turn of the century, she had started her professional career at 13, singing duets with her sister Flo at a Buffalo theater. A voluptuous, jolly blonde, she became a Broadway star in 1895 in the "Widow Jones" and in the following year made screen history when she repeated for the Edison cameras a kissing scene from that play with her stage partner John C. Rice. "The Kiss", although just a brief episode from the play, became one of the most famous of the early American films, gaining much notoriety after being denounced as immoral by members of the clergy.