Izetta Jewel
Toronto Daily Star, September 18 1928
The television drama that was broadcast on September 11 1928 was The Queen's Messenger. It appeared at 1:30 pm and 11:30 pm that day on six octagonally-shaped televisions set up around the studio for newspaper journalists to view.
Izetta Jewel (1883-1978), who played the leading role in the production, first appeared on the stage in 1900. She appeared regularly in a variety of roles until 1914, when she quit to marry William Gay Brown Jr., a congressman who was 27 years her senior. Brown died unexpectedly of a heart attack two years later, which left Ms. Jewel the widowed mother of a baby girl and the inheritor of a sizable fortune.
She went on to become a supporter of women's voting rights and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1922, losing the Democratic Party's nomination in West Virginia. In 1924, she became the first woman to second a candidate at a party national convention when she spoke on behalf of candidate John W. Davis at the Democratic Convention. In 1927, she married Hugh Miller, the dean of engineering at Union College.
In later years, she became a breeder of milk cows, then relocated to California, taking a daily swim in the ocean well into her eighties. She passed away ten days before her 95th birthday.
Mortimer Stewart, the director of the television production, doesn't seem to have directed anything else of note.
Created November 10, 2025.