Maude Fulton Actress & Dancer

 Maude Fulton was a full-blown force of nature, a vaudeville sensation, a playwright, an actress, and a woman who played by her own damn rules.

Born in 1881, she tore through the theater world like a cyclone, dazzling audiences with her talent and leaving a string of controversies in her wake. Some called her brilliant, others a troublemaker, but one thing was certain: Maude Fulton was never boring.

Fulton first made waves in the early 1900s as a dancer, but it wasn’t long before she expanded her reach. She had a knack for writing, and her biggest success came in 1916 with The Brat, a play she wrote and starred in. The critics ate it up, and Hollywood came knocking. Silent film legend Alla Nazimova later adapted The Brat into a 1919 film, and a young Frank Capra directed another version in 1931.

But Fulton was more than just a playwright with a few hits under her belt. She had presence. She had style. One reviewer in The New York Times raved, “Miss Fulton commands the stage with a charm that makes her impossible to ignore.”

When she wasn’t writing, she was acting, appearing in films like The Beauty Shop (1922). But even as Hollywood came calling, she never fully left the stage behind.

She had a reputation for clashing with directors, co-stars, and producers. Some called her “headstrong,” others called her “impossible.” One Broadway insider reportedly said, “Maude Fulton doesn’t take orders—she gives them. You either fall in line or get out of her way.”

She had an on-again, off-again relationship with the press.

When critics adored her, she soaked it up. When they didn’t? Well, she wasn’t the type to stay quiet. One particularly biting review called her performance “overwrought and uninspired.” Fulton fired back: “Perhaps the reviewer should try acting sometime. It’s much harder than writing snide remarks.”

Fulton was linked to several men throughout her life, but marriage was never her strong suit. She tied the knot with fellow actor and playwright Robert Ober, but the marriage didn’t last. By the time the dust settled, she had moved on—some said too quickly.

The gossip columns had a field day with her love life. One paper hinted at an affair with a much younger leading man, writing, “Miss Fulton seems to have taken a keen interest in mentoring her co-star—after hours.”

She spent her later years on the fringes of the industry, eventually passing away in 1955. As one critic begrudgingly admitted, “Love her or hate her, Maude Fulton never let you ignore her.”

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