[2] During 1886, her father received a job offer from Robert Brough to be the chief scene painter for his theatre company, so the family moved to Melbourne, Australia.

[4] Adapted by Robert Buchanen from Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, the production with Spong in tow returned in June 1890 to the company's home venue, the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne.

[9] Spong had her first large dramatic part in May 1892, at the Princess Theatre production of Jo, adapted by J. P. Burnett from Charles Dickens Bleak House.

The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer said she played the love scenes well but lacked a strong stage presence in the more dramatic moments.

[20] Starting in July 1893, Spong was engaged by J. C. Williamson and George Musgrove to play "juveniles" for Edward O'Connor Terry's season in Australia.

[22] Artist Tom Roberts did a life-sized oil painting of Spong that was exhibited by the Art Society of New South Wales in August 1893.

[41] Spong had just finished the Brisbane engagement with Round the Ring,[42] when a four-wheeled cart she was riding in overturned on an banked road in Bowen Hills, Queensland, injuring her ankle and delaying her return to Sydney.

[43] When the Bland Holt Company visited Newcastle, a local paper said: "Miss Spong is not yet 20 years of age, but is tall and of an imposing appearance.

[46] It ran for two months, after which Spong went into a short-lived flop called The Kiss of Delilah, where the reviewer pronounced her performance "curiously uneven".

[54] The Frohman brothers made annual trips to Europe, picking up the North American rights to plays, and looking for talent to perform them.

During one such trip to England in September 1898, Daniel Frohman acquired rights to Trelawny of the 'Wells', then decided to recruit Hilda Spong to reprise her role.

[63] The reason for this switch in managers, according to one drama critic, was the delay in building the new Lyceum Theatre, leaving Daniel Frohman's company without a Broadway venue.

[71] Unfortunately, the vehicle Spong and Lawrence jointly chose for her first star turn was Lady Jim, a flawed work by neophyte playwright Harold R.

[74] Spong was then idle until April 1907, when she joined the Columbia Stock Company in Washington, D.C., and sued her former manager Lawrence for $4000 back pay.

[77] That same month she agreed to a forty-week tour at the United Booking Office for performing in vaudeville, with a one-act play called Kit, written for her by Cecil B.

[78] This was a western melodrama, in which Spong played Kit, a breezy big-hearted woman involved with a sheriff (Arthur Behrens) and a disguised thief (Walter Howe) who is actually her father, a justice of the peace.

[83][84] Spong was upset at the reception the play received in Minnesota and other locales, particularly one scene when her character first meets "the man" and they are instantly bonded in love.

[90] It was in September 1913 that Spong reappeared on a London stage after a fifteen year absence, in the first performance of George R. Sims' melodrama, The Ever Open Door.

[94] The ship's sinking on its return voyage affected her personally, for the purser was a friend she had known since childhood,[95] while Charles Frohman was a longtime colleague.

[96][97] Her next Broadway role was another unfortunate work, The Angel in the House, which a reviewer termed "Incoherent", "pathetic", "boring" and said some "first nighters" left before the end.

[100] She really came into her prime as a comedy character during 1922, with her "flirtatious Countess" in Fédora,[101] while for Manhattan, according to Lawrence Reamer, "her skill adds distinction to any part in which she appears".

[102] The pinnacle of her later career came with playing Princess Beatrice in The Swan, a comedy by Ferenc Molnár which starred Eva Le Gallienne and Basil Rathbone.

It was a major success on Broadway during 1923-1924, with Spong as a pushy noble mother trying to foist her unethusiastic daughter off on a seemingly oblivious crown prince.

[103] She had another personal success with The Right Age to Marry, where a critic said Spong "steals the show" as a "designing woman of uncertain years".

[105] A popular if mildly sensational 1929-1930 hit was Young Sinners, where Burns Mantle said Spong's part was "authoritatively played" in this work reminiscent of Strictly Dishonorable.

[114] An advertisement for the school from December 1936 listed classes in fencing (led by Giorgio Santelli), dancing, singing, and diction, the last of which Spong taught.

[115] Among the performers known to have attended her dramatic school were Malcolm Atterbury,[116] and Gary Merrill[117] In her Declaration of Intention for naturalization as a US citizen, Spong gave her birth date and birthplace, said she was a British national, had no spouse and no children, and had emigrated to the US in November 1898.

At age 57, she gave her physical description as brown hair, hazel eyes, height 5'7" (170 cm) and weight 150 pounds (68 kg).

Plain clothes detectives in the area, due to a rash of burglaries committed by a masked man, pursued but were unable to catch him.

The New York Times said in her obituary: "Because she was professional in her attitude toward acting, she continued to study singing and rarely spent a day without reading Shakespeare.