Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–79) was an American actress and playwright. A gifted actress, she wrote and performed numerous one-woman monologues that were unique to her time. Her literary output was diverse—she wrote comical essays about herself, detailed studies of women from a wide range of social and economic backgrounds, memoirs, and biographies.
Born in Chicago, Skinner was the daughter of actors Maud and Otis Skinner. She was best known for the one-person evenings of character sketches and monologues, which she created and performed in New York, London, and on tour from 1925 to 1961. Noteworthy among her one-woman creations were The Wives of Henry VIII (1931,) The Loves of Charles II (1933,) Mansion on the Hudson (1935,) and Paris ’90 (1952.)
Skinner’s notable plays include the successful The Pleasure of His Company (1958; with playwright Samuel A Taylor.) The memoir Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1942; with Emily Kimbrough) became a popular 1944 film.
A respected character actress in plays, Skinner appeared in Broadway productions, which included Lillian Hellman’s The Searching Wind (1944,) Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1946,) and as Lady Britomart in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1956.)
Skinner’s humorous autobiographical books include Tiny Garments (1932) and Soap Behind the Ears (1941.) Family Circle (1948) is autobiographical. Madame Sarah (1967) chronicled the life of the French actress Sarah Bernhardt.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Cornelia Otis Skinner
Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Sin, Women
It’s not that I don’t want to be a beauty, that I don’t yearn to be dripping with glamour. It’s just that I can’t see how any woman can find time to do to herself all the things that must apparently be done to make herself beautiful and, having once done them, how anyone without the strength of mind of a foreign missionary can keep up such a regime.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Fashion
Woman’s virtue is man’s greatest invention.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Women
There are compensations for growing older. One is the realization that to be sporting isn’t at all necessary. It is a great relief to reach this stage of wisdom.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Age
That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Food, Eating
It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner
Topics: Evolution
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Anita Loos American Actor
Arthur Wing Pinero English Playwright
Philip Wylie American Dramatist
Richard Carlson American Actor
Katharine Hepburn American Actor
Dorothy Parker American Humorist, Journalist
Harvey Fierstein American Actor
Will Rogers American Humorist, Actor
Sylvester Stallone American Actor
Woody Allen American Film Actor, Director