Viola Allen was born in the south, but went to Boston when three years
of age. She was educated in that city and at the Bishop Strachan
school, Toronto, Canada. Her début was made at the Madison Square
theater, New York, in Esmeralda, in 1882. During the season of 1883
and 1884 she was leading lady for John McCullough, and afterward
played classical and Shakespearian rôles. She was a member of the
Empire theater stock company in 1892, but her principal success was in
creating the character of Gloria Quayle, in The Christian, which had a
long run in New York in 1898, succeeded by a tour through the principal
cities of the country. Miss Allen’s private charities are many, and she
is identified with those phases of church work which have to do with
the bettering of the conditions of the poor.