[2] Greenleaf's first important role came in the late 1890s playing Herbert, the king's forester, in stock productions of The Prisoner of Zenda[3] and its companion piece Rupert of Hentzau.

His next Broadway performance was in The Pride of Jennico with James K. Hackett and Bertha Galland staged at the Criterion Theatre in 1900.

[5] Later that year, he played the role of Myrtle May's lover in a road production of The Parish Priest with Daniel Sully.

[6] During the first decade of the 20th century, Mace Greenleaf played leading roles in stock companies on both coasts and middle America.

Banning came from a very wealthy family that owned Catalina Island,[8] and was remembered at the time for an affair she had while married to her first husband that ended with the suicide of her lover.