Theatre & dance / Literature / Press & broadcasting
Edith Meiser
1898–1993 · actress, playwright, radio writer
Detroit-born actress and writer who brought Sherlock Holmes to American radio in 1930 and appeared in more than 20 Broadway shows.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
New York City, New York
aged 95- Detroit years
- 1898–1910s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Meiser was born in Detroit, the daughter of Edward Meiser, a business executive at the Detroit Free Press for 57 years, and studied at the Liggett School before schools in Dresden and Geneva and then Vassar College. After college she acted with the Theatre Guild, on vaudeville circuits and in Jessie Bonstelle's summer stock company before her Broadway debut in 1923; she went on to more than twenty Broadway shows, from The Guardsman and the Garrick Gaieties to The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1960. Given a Sherlock Holmes book by a ship's purser at fifteen, she spent more than a year finding a sponsor for a radio series, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes premiered on NBC on October 20, 1930, with William Gillette as Holmes. She wrote hundreds of Holmes radio scripts and later a Holmes comic strip, and also wrote Helen Hayes's first radio serial and mystery novels. She died in New York in 1993.
Highlights
- Daughter of a longtime Detroit Free Press executive; studied at the Liggett School
- Acted in Jessie Bonstelle's summer stock company
- Created radio's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, premiered October 20, 1930
- More than 20 Broadway appearances, including The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1900s–1910s
University Liggett School
The Detroit girls' school she attended; its successor, University Liggett School, is now in Grosse Pointe Woods.