Sadie BROUGH probably won’t mean much to you. But Julia MARLOWE will.
They were one and the same.
Submitted by
Barbara
Madden
Ironton Evening Tribune September 4, 1938
When the famous actress Marlow was a familiar figure to Irontonians
she was a wisp of a child, about five years old. Her family, the
Broughs, was a transient one, much like many others who, in the period
following the Civil War, were attracted to Ironton’s mills and
foundries for work and daily bread. Sadie’s father was as itinerant
shoe worker who brought his family here in the early ‘70s.
Some have handed down the story through the generations that
Sadie’s mother managed a saloon, but there is nothing in surviving
annals to verify this. And Sadie, herself, is remembered as a
youngster in wretched surroundings, poor and dirty, but even then
standing out from the crowd as a beautiful child.
In years to come, Sadie climbed above her family background and
inferior heritage to become the greatest Shakespearean actress of her
day, not as Sadie Brough, but as Julia Marlowe. She later married E.H.
SOUTHERS, with whom she played in Shakespearean drama.
