Laurette Taylor (born Loretta Helen Cooney; April 1, 1883[1] – December 7, 1946)[2][3] was an American stage and silent film star who is particularly well known for originating the role of Amanda Wingfield in the first production of Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie.

[4] She married her first husband, Charles Alonzo Taylor (born South Hadley, Massachusetts – died Glendale, California), on May 1, 1901, at age 18.

The play earned her and her husband about US$10,000 a week, made Taylor "the most generally worshiped [theatrical] star of her time", and cemented her reputation as a skilled actress.

[7] In 1917, she appeared in Out There (another vehicle written for her by Manners), playing "an obscure Cockney waif" who, "by patriotism and idealism", manages to become a uniformed Red Cross nurse.

According to Atkinson, the play version was "a sentimental comedy about a Brooklyn errand girl who taught a rich customer the secret of happiness.

"[7] Soon after, Taylor toured the nation with a revival of Peg o' My Heart, which reopened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on February 14, 1921, and ran for another 692 performances.

Taylor always starred in the kind of simple, formulaic plays which had delighted pre-World War I middle-class audiences, and her popularity waned.

[7] Attempting to change her course, Manners then wrote The National Anthem for her, a play with "high motives" which "rebuked and renounced the jazz generation."

Taylor seems to have enjoyed making One Night in Rome as she kept a personal print of the movie to show guests at her home, running it over and over again.

[citation needed] The play, a comedic dissection of a family whose theatrical excesses drive their unsuspecting visitors to distraction, was a major hit from the moment of its debut on August 6, 1925.

[citation needed] In 1938, she headed the cast in a revival of Outward Bound and did not appear again until her re-emergence in Williams's The Glass Menagerie in 1944; her performance received nearly unanimous rapturous reviews, and she won her the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Actress of the season.

Almost any actress in the famous role was assured of a resounding success; however, Taylor clung to the movie rights if she decided to appear in a film.

In preparing interviews for what became Broadway: The Golden Age, Rick McKay asked each person who had influenced him or her the most", and Laurette Taylor's name often was mentioned.

[citation needed] Writing after Taylor's death, Tennessee Williams paid tribute to "the great warmth of her heart", stating "There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.

A rare sound film clip of Taylor in a screen test made for David O. Selznick's studio is included in the documentary.

[citation needed] According to her daughter, Marguerite Courtney, Laurette destroyed all press books, letters, programs, photograph albums, and other memorabilia associated with her life with J. Hartley Manners upon his death in 1928.

Elsewhere in the Ransom Center's holdings is Taylor's screen test for David O. Selznick and extensive collections relating to Tennessee Williams.