Katharine Cornell - Family and Childhood

Family and Childhood

Cornell was born into a rich and prominent Buffalo society family. Her grandfather, Samuel Garretson Cornell, came to Buffalo in the 1850s and was the founder of Cornell Lead Works. One of his sons, Peter, married Alice Gardner Plimpton who gave birth to Katharine while living in Berlin, Germany. Katharine's father was at the time studying medicine at the University of Berlin. Six months later, they returned to Buffalo and lived at 174 Mariner St in Buffalo, NY. As a child, Katharine was not considered conventionally pretty and was called Kit because she looked like a boy, a nickname that stayed for the rest of her life. Her relationship with her parents was troubled, one reason being her mother was an alcoholic. Later, Katharine would admit that she had an unhappy childhood.

Katharine would play act in her backyard with imaginary friends. As the Cornell family always liked being in plays, and her father was a noted amateur director, they encouraged Katharine. (Her father eventually gave up medicine to be a full-time manager for the Star Theater in Buffalo, and later the Majestic.) Soon she was playing in school pageants and plays, and she would watch family productions in her grandfather's attic theater, still standing at 484 Delaware Ave. She also played at the Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater, located at 508 Franklin St.

Cornell also loved athletics and was a runner-up for city championship at tennis, and an amateur swimming champion. In her memoir, she says, "An actress' best friend is a body which responds instinctively to thought." She attended the University of Buffalo (later the State University of New York at Buffalo).

Later, after Cornell had become famous, she would often bring her productions to Buffalo to be seen by friends and family. Although she never returned to Buffalo to live, her enthusiasm for the city and its inhabitants was well known. Biographer Tad Mosel states, "To show her affection for her hometown, she always walked slowly when she left her hotel, turning her head to smile on everyone on the street, missing no one, so they could feel close to her and be able to say when they got home that night, 'Katharine Cornell smiled directly at me.'" For the rest of her career, she would be greeted backstage by several family and friends from Buffalo on a Broadway opening night. Many of her productions were held at the Erlanger Theater on Delaware Ave. across from the Statler Hotel. The theater was demolished in 2007.