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Glad Moffatt
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13 cm of textual records.
48 photographs: b&w, incl. 5 negatives; 25 x 20 cm or smaller.
1 printed drawing: col.; 23 x 17 cm.
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Biographical history
Gladys Irene Moffatt (1891-1972), singer and vaudeville performer, was born February 24, 1891 in Halifax to Alexander Moffatt and Emma (Hicks) Moffatt. She started acting as a child for the Halifax Stock Company, of Halifax, Nova Scotia. She then performed light opera with the Robinson Opera Company among others before going into vaudeville in 1908 as part of a comic duo “Harrison and Moffatt”. Gladys married her partner, Charles Aloysius Harrison in Saint John, New Brunswick on June 12, 1908. They performed in Halifax, Truro and Amherst as well as in Saint John, Montreal and Ottawa. In 1909 they emigrated to the United States. They divorced in 1915. In the 1920s she changed to a singing act accompanied by piano player Walter Mohr, then with Jerry Clebb. From 1921 to 1923 she went on a tour, performing her vaudeville act in major cities in New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Nebraska. She performed under the names “Glad Moffatt: Glad Singer of Glad Songs”, “Glad Moffatt: The Sunshine Girl”, “Gladys Moffatt The Charming Song Bird” as well as simply Glad/Gladys Moffatt. She married Thomas S. Myatt (1884-1956) on 23 March 1938 in Halifax. She died in May 1972 in Bedford and is buried in Nine Mile River.
Custodial history
The records were discovered in a house at Kinsac Lake in the 1970s after the property was purchased by Dennis R. Bedley. The house had been owned by Gladys Moffatt from 1952 to 1970. Mr. Bedley donated them in 2016.
Scope and content
Documents Glad Moffatt’s music career as a vaudeville performer in the early 20th Century and consists of: newspaper clippings of performance reviews and theatre show ads (1914-1930); 2 scrapbooks of news clippings with photographs and correspondence enclosed (1908-1935); a travel diary detailing expenses and earnings on a tour of major cities in the South and Southwest United States (1921-1923) with a tax return for 1922, some photographs and correspondence enclosed; work contracts with B.F. Keith and other management companies (1920-1928); theatre programs and advertising flyers where she performed (1916-1929); personal and business correspondence (1920-1933); publicity photographs and personal snapshots [1910?-1929?]; song lyrics and notes-to-self [1920s?]; and some invoices and receipts (1923-1925).