May Allison

Biography

Rising Fawn, Georgia, greeted her arrival as the fifth and final chord in the Allison family—Dr. John and Nannie’s late-inning surprise. From that Appalachian hush she traveled to flickering stardom, trading magnolia shadows for California klieg lights while her widowed mother kept house beside her until the last breath was drawn. A New York chance encounter after Quirk’s funeral steered her into the steady orbit of C. N. Osborne; the two welded their lives for more than four decades, settling first in Cleveland’s winter-bright snowscape and later salt-air winters in Tucker’s Town, Bermuda. Between coast and island she championed the Cleveland Symphony, its programs blooming under her quiet patronage until Osborne’s death in 1982 closed the final reel of her own long-running feature.