May Buckley


May Buckley was an American actress on stage from childhood into the late 1930s, and in silent films in 1912-1913. Her private life was often in newspaper headlines, especially in 1901, when a man who claimed to be her husband shot at her in a hotel dining room, wounding one of her dining companions.

Early life

Marie Uhl was born in San Francisco, California, "of a theatrical family", daughter of Ernest Uhl and Marie Featherston Uhl. Her mother died during Marie's birth. Her father's friend, actor Dion Boucicault, gave her the stage name "May Buckley" when she was a child actor.

Career

May Buckley was active on the Broadway stage, with roles in Hearts are Trumps, Caleb West, The Price of Peace, A Japanese Nightingale, The Shepherd King, The Galloper, The Right of Way, Cameo Kirby, Where There's a Will, The Little Damozel, The Unwritten Law, Pigs, These Days, Tell Me Pretty Maiden. She also appeared on the London stage.
Buckley appeared in more than twenty short silent films in 1912 and 1913, including Paid in His Own, The Poor Relation, In Dis-a-Countree, Betty and the Doctor, Mother Love, His Wife's Mother, Rice and Old Shoes, Hello, Central!, The Sacrifice, A Complicated Campaign, Won by Waiting, The Railroad Engineer, Darby and Joan, The Honeymooners, A Modern Portia, The Runaways, What the Driver Saw, The Back Window, The Derelict's Return, Until We Three Meet Again, The Man in the Street, The Toils of Deception, and Miss 'Arabian Nights'.
During World War I she was one of the organizers of the Stage Women's War Relief Association, holding benefits to raise funds for a disabled soldiers' home. In the 1920s and 1930s she was active in the Catholic Actors' Guild.

Personal life

Buckley's first husband was Frank Baruch, also known as Frank Clayton or Frank Cormier; they married in 1894 and divorced in 1897. In 1899, against her contract under manager Charles Frohman, she married millionaire Wilmot H. Garlick. They separated the following year. She was possibly married to Robert Hayden Moulton, before he shot at her and wounded one of her dining companions in New York in 1901. In 1908 she married fellow actor Charles Walter Martin-Sabine, also known as Charles W. S. Martin, in Denver. They divorced in 1910. In 1912, she was sued by another actress for alienation of affections, concerning her co-star, actor John Halliday.

Unknown death date

The only known source of her death is Silent Film Necrology, Vazzana, c.2001 which states she died on or thereabout c.1941. Another possible hit is that she died June 29 1962 and that she's buried under her real name "Marie H. Uhl" as the entry has no date or place of birth and the place of burial is in New Haven Connecticut not far from New York theatre district Broadway. However her last Broadway credit is from 1937.

Filmography