Edith Ellis, a talented individual, was born in Coldwater, Michigan, to Edward C Ellis, a playwright and actor, and Ruth McCarty Ellis, an actress. According to Edith, she was born to the stage, and her first role was at the tender age of six. By the time she was ten, she had already become a star, with two plays written for her before she turned twelve.
Edith's early life was marked by her love for the stage, and she went on to head her own stock companies, both traveling and stationary, where she wrote, produced, directed, and acted in numerous plays. Her first writing attempt was out of necessity, when she and her brother, Edward, were stranded on the road after their stock company disbanded unexpectedly. The play was successful enough to pay their way home.
Edith's personal life was filled with love and drama. She married Frank A. Baker, and together they leased the Park Theatre and the Criterion Theatre in Brooklyn, where she directed plays for many years. They later moved to the Berkely Lyceum in New York, where she directed her own play, "The Point of View," which unfortunately never made it to Broadway.
Edith also wrote uncredited scenarios for silent films for Samuel Goldwyn. Her daughter, EllisBaker, followed in her mother's footsteps and became an actress. Edith's second marriage was to C. Becher Furness, a Canadian. She finally made it to Broadway by the age of thirty-four with her play, "Mary Jane's Pa," which ran for a respectable 120 performances.
Edith continued her career as a playwright and director on Broadway through seven more productions until mid-1925. Although none of her later efforts were particularly wildly successful, her 1925 play, "White Collars," enjoyed two film adaptations by MGM in 1929 and 1938. Her earliest film adaptations were sold to Vitagraph and Myron Selznick.
As Edith's theatrical career began to wind down in the mid-1930s, she took up an avid interest in channeling the dead. She claimed to transcribe works by none other than George Washington, whom she claimed demanded she transcribe his definitive autobiography in a receptive transcendent state, as well as common citizens such as a New England farm boy named Wilfred Brandon, supposedly killed in the Revolutionary War. These oddly entertaining works attracted enough attention to warrant several printings, including "Incarnation: a Plea from the Masters," first edition 1936, 1951 reprint, and UK/European editions.
Edith was plagued with vision problems by her sixties and died at what is generally believed to be the age of eighty-four, although her birth date is in dispute.
