Josephine Brandell
Later in applications for passports and American citizenship she claimed that she was a British citizen born on 26 November 1891 or 1892 in Bucharest in Romania, the daughter of Phillip Brandell.
[1] Her father, a tailor by profession, immigrated to the United States of America, settling in New York City in 1895, with the rest of the family following him in 1897 and 1898.
[1] Josephine Brandell had ambitions of becoming an actress and attempted to break into show business on the New York stage while in her early teens but this was temporarily put on hold when in 1907 at the age of 19 she married dentist and naturalised American citizen Dr Bernard Black Brandeis (1879–1944), also from Romania.
The marriage made Brandell an American citizen[1] but it was short-lived with the couple divorcing in September 1910 following which she assumed the name 'Brandell', possibly to avoid anti-Semitic persecution.
[2][3] A soprano, 'Jenny' Brandell's first small role was in the comic-opera Nightbirds by Johann Strauss in which she toured Europe and America with Fritzi Scheff and gaining favourable press coverage for her performance.
[1] In 1913 Brandell played her first leading role in the revue Come Over Here, performed at the London Opera House.
On her numerous trans-Atlantic crossings one of her favourite ships was the RMS Lusitania, one of the most exclusive and fastest luxury liners of the time.
She and Mabel Crichton (who did not survive the sinking) became friendly with their tablemates: Max Schwarcz and Francis Bertram Jenkins.
In her written deposition to the authorities Brandell wrote: "Dear Sir, I am replying to your request in giving my statement to the best of my recollection about the sinking of the Lusitania.
Mr. Schwartz’s trying to calm me when Mr. E. Gorer, (the art dealer of Bond Street) rushed over to us and put a life-belt on me which was the means of my being saved and told me to be brave.
Somehow I caught hold of a deck chair which was floating near me and held on until I became numb when I was picked up by Mr. Harkness, the assistant purser, who afterwards told me he thought I was gone when he first looked at me.
Brandell never fully recovered from this tragedy, having been pulled nearly dead from the water and becoming hysterical when revived - consequently suffering for the rest of her life with nightmares.
This could not be considered until the War had ended but following her marriage to British stock broker John Ormiston Lawson-Johnson (1877–1955) on 19 May 1920 she gave up her American citizenship.
She had difficulty concentrating and could not put herself in other characters, therefore she appeared only sporadically in small roles and gradually faded from the acting scene.
During World War II Brandell founded the organization 'The American Friends of Britain' designed to foster understanding between the two nations.
