\n<\/p>\n
A scene like this certainly never happened. But we really don\u2019t know much about the strange, short friendship\u2014or more?\u2014borne between \u201cAmerica\u2019s Sarah Bernhardt\u201d and the country\u2019s most infamous accused killer. As Monster<\/em> premieres, meet the woman said to have stolen\u2014and then broken\u2014Lizzie Borden\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n Though theatergoers may have considered her an overnight sensation, Nance O\u2019Neil had been chasing fame for most of her life. Per her New York Times<\/em> obituary, O\u2019Neil was born Gertrude Lamson in 1874 to a religious father who sternly opposed her career in showbiz. A teenaged O\u2019Neil nonetheless hustled a role at San Francisco\u2019s Alcazar Theatre by crashing a rehearsal and convincing the director to allow her to join the cast. Alcazar manager Arthur McKee Rankin later took the actress under his managerial wing, repeatedly changing her name until landing on \u201cNance O\u2019Neil.\u201d<\/p>\n Nance O’Neil, published 1897.<\/p>\n <\/span>Christine_Kohler\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Like many if not most working actresses of the Gilded Age, fame (and money) was always precarious for the undeniably beautiful but questionably talented O\u2019Neil. \u201cNance had a promising new New York premiere, then went off on a world tour, but she actually bombed in London,\u201d says Dr. Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh, theater professor at the University of Richmond and author of the essay Rebels of Their Sex: Nance O\u2019Neil and Lizzie Borden<\/em>. Rave reviews from her Boston debut in 1904 no doubt marked a welcome career upswing.<\/p>\n Somewhere in the audience was Lizzie Borden, a passionate playgoer who inevitably enjoyed the privacy dark theaters afforded\u2014giving her the chance to watch rather than being watched. Though she had been acquitted of murder a dozen years earlier, after her trial, Borden was largely ostracized by her ever-disapproving neighbors, who slowly came to realize that the local spinster was almost certainly guilty of a gruesome double murder.<\/p>\n Borden was captivated by O\u2019Neil, writes Michael Martins in the definitive history Parallel Lives<\/em>. So the lonely woman bravely reached out: \u201cUpon returning to her hotel, [Lizzie] penned a note to the actress expressing her high regard, and asked if she be allowed permission to call on her.\u201d She sent it with a bouquet of flowers, like either a fan or suitor might.<\/p>\n While Borden obviously knew about O\u2019Neil, did O\u2019Neil know about Lizzie Borden? Officially, according to a brief 1927 interview in The Sunday Standard<\/em> O\u2019Neil gave after Borden\u2019s death, she \u201cdid not know until some time after their brief friendship began\u201d that Borden had been accused of murdering her father and stepmother. Most historians aren\u2019t buying that for a second. \u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s even possible,\u201d says Cavenaugh. \u201cNance was a smart lady.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe Meet-Cute<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Honeymoon Phase<\/strong><\/h2>\n