Edwin Arden Edwin Arden Edwin Hunter Pendleton Arden (February 4, 1864 – October 2, 1918) was an American actor, theatre manager, and playwright. Arden was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Mary Berkley Hunter and Arden Richard Smith.. After a common-school education he travelled west and worked in a number of different jobs, including as a mine-helper, cowboy, railroad brakeman, clerk, reporter, and theatre manager. In 1882, he made his debut as an actor with Thomas Keene's Shakespeare company. The next year, in 1883, he married Agnes Ann Eagleson Keene. Their only child, daughter Mildred Arden, also became an actor. Around this
Cecil Arden Cecil Arden Cecil Arden (December 15, 1894 – September 4, 1989) was an American mezzo-soprano and contralto opera singer active over the early decades of the twentieth century. Cecile Alexia Hart was born in New York City to Benjamin and Mildred Hart. Her father was real estate broker originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and her mother a native of Springfield, Illinois. Little is known of Arden's early life other than that she studied under the Italian Arturo Buzzi-Peccia and that there are photographs of her singing at a patriotic event on the steps of New York’s Federal Hall National Memorial