Keywords

Maude Adams (Actress), Salt Lake Theatre, Mormon Culture, Women, Performing Arts, Biography, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church)

Abstract

Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1872. Her mother, Annie Adams, was the daughter of first generation Mormons who trekked across the plains and an actress at the Salt Lake Theatre. Maude Adams began her acting career at the age of five in some of her mother’s plays. She continued to act into her adult years, achieving her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production. She became the highest-paid performer of her day. Discussed here is Adams’s career and her relationship with her Mormon relatives and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). “Maude Adams and the Mormons” appears as a chapter in the first volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

Original Publication Citation

J. Michael Hunter, "Maude Adams and the Mormons," in Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon, ed. J. Michael Hunter (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013), 1:132-141.