Virginia Fox Brooks

Virginia Fox Brooks (January 29, 1893 – 1971), also known as Virginia Fox-Brooks Vernon or Virginia Vernon, was an American actress, playwright, translator, and journalist. With her husband, Frank Vernon, she translated dramatic works into English. During World War II, she worked with the Entertainment National Service Association (ENSA) to produce shows for the troops. Early life Virginia Fox Brooks was born January 29, 1893, the daughter of Joseph Brooks, a theatre manager. (Some sources give her birthdate as 1894 or 1899.) Her parents were from Tennessee and Virginia. She studied music in France with Jacques Isnardon at the Paris Conservatory, and toured in Europe with singer Yvette Guilbert as a young woman. "If I ever do anything really fine," Brooks said of Guilbert in 1919, "I feel that I shall owe it to her, to the privilege of daily association with so marvelous an artist, to all that I have learned through my intimate friendship with her." Stage and writing Fox Brooks sang at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. She appeared on Broadway in The Adventures of Lady Ursula (1915), Trilby (1915), Ghosts (1915), The Great Lover (1915–1916), Getting Married (1916-1917), Sinbad (1918–1919), and The Passing Show of 1918. She also appeared in the London productions of The Great Lover (1920–1921), and The Love Match (1922). With her husband, Frank Vernon, she co-wrote the English versions of French and Russian plays, including Simon Gantillon's Maya (1928), René Berton's After Death (1928), Vladimir Kirshon's Red Rust (1930), Alfred Savoir's Little Catherine (1931), The Poet's Secret (1933), Henry Bordeaux's Shattered (1935), Quet's (1935), and Sacha Guitry's Villa for Sale (1963). She also adapted Journey's End into French with Lucien Besnard (1930), Laurence Housman's Victoria Regina (1937) into French with André Maurois, and translated Noel Coward's Private Lives into French in 1933, and she went on to translate other works by Coward, including Blithe Spirit.