Josephine Hall

Annie Josephine Hall (April 19, 1865 – December 5, 1920) was an American actress and soprano. She began her career performing in musicals and operettas produced by Edward E. Rice from 1883 to 1886, including the 1885 Broadway productions of Polly, or The Pet of the Regiment, and Billee Taylor at the Casino Theatre. She remained active on the stage in both plays and musicals into the early 1900s, often in works produced or created by Charles Frohman, with whom she was under contract for many years. According to her 1920 obituary in The New York Times, she was most famous for her performances of the song "Sister Mary Jane's Top Note" and for her appearances in the Broadway productions of The Girl from Paris (1896) and The Girl from Maxim's (1899).

Hall retired from performance in 1904. She briefly came out of retirement in 1910 to perform in Klaw & Erlanger's production of The Air King. She was the mother of Broadway producer Alexander A. Aarons, who had a longterm collaboration with Vinton Freedley. His father was the Broadway composer and producer Alfred E. Aarons. Hall married Alfred in 1899, nine years after Alex was born. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1911. She died in 1920.

The daughter of Albert A. Hall and his wife Marion J. Hall, Annie Josephine "Josie" Hall was born in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, in 1865. Her parents descended from early American settlers to New England and were very religious. They opposed their daughter's ambitions as an actress, and she ran away from home in order to have a stage career. Her sister, Frances Hall, also had a career on the stage as an opera singer.

In her early career Hall performed under the stage name Josie Hall. In 1883 she performed with Rice's Surprise Party, a theater troupe managed by producer Edward E. Rice, as the young maid Jeanette in Pop for performances in Maryland, Maine, and Ohio. On Christmas Eve of 1883 she made her New York stage debut in this show at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. She continued to tour in Pop in 1884 for performances in Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, and upstate New York. When the tour reached Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 1884, Hall quit the show along with other performers because the producers had not been paying the actors their salaries. In July 1884 she returned to Rice's reorganized company of Pop in which she succeeded May Stembler in the larger role of Adele Pop. The resumed tour included performances in Iowa, Massachusetts, and California.

After the conclusion of the 1883–1884 season, Hall was hired by Eugene Tompkins of the Boston Theatre to star in Zanita in the trouser role of Prince Huon. This original work was co-authored by Tompkins and Dexter Smith. Its premiere on September 16, 1884, received a glowing review in The Boston Globe. It played there until December 1884 when it toured to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. It then toured in the early months of 1885 to the Academy of Music in Baltimore and McVicker's Theater in Chicago.

By April 1885 Hall had joined a theater troupe headlined by Lillian Russell and managed by Rice, with whom she made her Broadway debut at the Casino Theatre as Sarah in James Mortimer and Edward Solomon's operetta Polly, or The Pet of the Regiment, on April 27, 1885. It played there through June 19, 1885. Immediately following this show, the same company remained at the Casino Theatre with a production of Billee Taylor in which Hall portrayed the part of Susan.

Hall remained with Rice's company for the 1885–1886 season as Eulalie in the revival of Rice's Evangeline, which had a lengthy run at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. When the production left New York for Chicago in May 1886, she did not continue with the show but returned to Rhode Island to spend the summer performing in the plays Under the Gaslight and The Two Orphans at the Providence Opera House. She later returned to Evangeline in May 1887 for a production produced by Rice at the Hollis Street Theatre in Boston.

In September 1887 Hall was with Rice's Surprise Party once again in a short-lived production of Eduard Holst and Woolson Morse's Circus in Town at the Bijou Opera House. She played a flying trapeze artist in this show.