Frances Nordstrom

Biography

Frances Nordstrom was a popular stage actress and comedian who became a successful comedic playwright. Early in her career she was billed as "The Young Woman with the Mahogany Hair" Frances was born in 1883 in Texas and was probably raised in Washington D.C., where her mother, Texas native Mollie Dwyer Nordstrom, worked for the Library of Congress. Frances had a younger sister, Marie Nordstrom, who would also become an actress of some note. Her father, Charles C. Nordstrom, hailed from Perry, Maine and was a Captain in the US Army. Charles was a veteran of the Civil and Indian Wars and may have been the source of the infamous phrase "The only good Indian is a dead Indian", when he confided to writer Edward Ellis that he once overheard General Sheridan tell an Indian that the only good Indians he ever saw were dead. Sheridan would later deny that he had ever made such a remark. On 8 November, 1905 Frances married James Spottswood, who at the time was a player with the New Orleans Grand Opera House Stock Company. Frances had just completed the New York run of the play "The Man on the Box" when Spottswood sent her a telegram asking her to come to New Orleans and marry him. Frances wired back "Sure". This marriage ended around 1910. By 1915 Frances was married to fellow stock player, William Pinkham, who later doubled as her theatrical agent. Her marriage to Pinkham disintegrated in 1922 after he was caught having an affair with Zoe Barnett, a young stage actress of the day. Their divorce was finalized in 1924. Frances would continue to write for the stage and films well into the late 1930s. In Florence Oakley Stone's 1956 obituary, mention is made of a dramatic school in Los Angeles that she, David Hartford and Frances operated for a number of years. A short list of some of her more popular plays may include "The Magic Glasses: A Speculations in Specs" (1919), "The Ruined Lady" (1920), "Lady Bug" (1922), "Telling Tales" (1925) and "Lady Behave" (1937).