Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899-1979) was the first woman elected to join The Lambs, around 1974, when the Club was celebrating its centennial. The all-male club had debated for twenty years to elect women as full members. Due to two main factors–the changing times of the era, and the fact that the club was in dire financial straits–The Lambs ended gender discrimination. Skinner was a perfect choice to be the first woman to join as she had an impeccable Broadway pedigree, she was a governor of the Actors’ Fund, and was the daughter of a Lamb.
Skinner was a celebrated and much-loved Broadway actress and writer. She made her stage debut in “Blood and Sand” (1921) with her actor-father, Otis Skinner. She recalled, “He came to me after the first night’s performance and made only one remark: ‘My child, you are an actress.’”
She and her father collaborated on her first play, “Captain Fury” (1925). In the 1930s she wrote and staged monodramas, including “The Wives of VIII” and “The Loves of Charles II.” She won acclaim in such plays as “Candida” (1939), “Lady Windermere’s Fan” (1946), and “The Pleasure of His Company” (1958), which she wrote with Samuel Taylor.
Her parents, Otis Skinner and Maud Durbin, were extremely popular theatrical celebrities. Otis, elected to The Lambs around 1885, starred with Edwin Booth and Helena Modjeska and had a successful career from the Gilded Age to the Depression. Her mother was a Missouri-born starlet, who transitioned from stage to silent screen. She also was a screenwriter.
Cornelia Otis Skinner was born on May 30, 1899, in Chicago, Illinois. She went to boarding school at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut. She acted in numerous school productions. She graduated in 1913. Cornelia then went on to attend Bryn Mawr, where she continued to act in theatrical productions. She left Bryn Mawr her sophomore year and moved to Paris to study at the Comédie Française, under Jacques Copeau of the Théatre Colombieux and at the Sorbonne and further pursue acting.
She began her career on the French stage in 1921 and appeared in several plays before embarking on a tour of the United States from 1926 to 1929. All of her productions in this tour were one-woman shows of short character sketches she wrote herself. Skinner also wrote poetry, comedy sketches, and satirical pieces.
Skinner was the author of fifteen plays and books, many of them non-fiction bestsellers. Among her books were “Soap Behind the Ears” (1941), “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” (1942) co-written with Emily Kimbrough, “Family Circle” (1948), “The Ape in Me” (1959) and “Madame Sarah” (1966), her celebrated biography of Sarah Bernhardt. Skinner also contributed to scores of magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. She told a reporter that she did most of her writing on trains and in hotel rooms during theatrical tours. “The more deadly the town and the worse the hotel, the more I get done.”
Skinner was popular on radio in the 1930s and early television in the 1940s and 1950s. She was known for her regal manner and usually was photographed in glamorous clothes and heavy necklaces.
Among her many charitable pursuits is that Skinner, like her father, was a member of the Actor’s Fund of America, and served on the board of governors for decades. She also supported the Actors’ Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey.
In 1928 Skinner married Alden Sanford Blodget, a banker and member of the Riding and Turf and Field Clubs. They had one son, Otis Skinner Blodget. She had two grandchildren, who also graduated from the Ethel Walker School: Claire W. Marshall, who graduated in 1967, and Elizabeth T. Ricketson, who went by “Lisa,” graduated in 1956.
Her final book was published in 1976, “Lindsay and Crouse” on the writing team of the fellow Lambs Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. In June 1977 Skinner visited The Players as a guest, as women were still not allowed to join (until 1989), to honor her friend, Beatrice Straight. She told reporters, “There is a saying that good actors are not good speakers. I want to prove that I was once a very good actress. So, I will not make a speech.”
Cornelia Otis Skinner died at age 80 on July 9, 1979, at home following a stroke. She is interred next to her husband in Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River, Massachusetts.
In 2022, in anticipation of its sesquicentennial, The Lambs commissioned notable painter Sonya Sklaroff to create a portrait of Skinner for the clubhouse. It was the first painting of a woman member of the club, as well as the first created by a female artist.
Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (2026)