Renée Adorée as ‘Jeanne Marie’ in The Flaming Forest, at the height of her Hollywood fame. c1926. Public domain photo from University of Washington: Special Collections, J. Willis Sayre Collection, via Wikimedia Commons.[Cropped]

---

The Five Second Version
Born Emilie Louise Victoria Reeves, Renée Adorée was not an Australian actor, but neither was she French, as is usually claimed. She spent 10 months in Australia on a spectacularly successful tour in 1918, in the days before Hollywood. Arguably, this was where her “French” stage persona emerged. Renée was hardly alone in constructing a past that suited her. Hollywood’s “Golden Age” saw numerous actors embrace personas that had little to do with their lived experiences. Her marriage certificates and her death certificate contained numerous inaccuracies – that have gone on to become part of her confused narrative. In 2022, almost 90 years after her death, writers Paul Van Yperen and Ivo Blom identified and published her real name. Renée is credited with more than 40 films made in the US, before her very early death from tuberculosis in October 1933.
Amongst her many real accomplishments for someone so young – she was an accomplished dancer and could play the piano, spoke several languages fluently and was extremely well travelled for the era.^[1]Photo of Renée on the piano, Picture Play Magazine, December 1929, p74-5 She was in fact, a British subject.

---

Understanding the pretence

Why would someone with an English father and a Belgian mother, go to extremes to disguise their parentage? This writer contends that what might have started out as just an exotic stage name, grew rapidly and without much planning to become a life story, very much shaped by early experiences in wartime Australia. In that country, an emerging sense of national identity and a high level of jingoism saw Australians seek “the destruction of …[Germany] with ever deepening hate and conviction.”^[3]Bill Gammage (2010) p7 In this environment, no one owned up to a German birth and others disregarded any German ancestry. Ivy Schilling(1892-1972) became Ivy Shilling, while the family of Australia’s leading wartime General, John Monash(1885-1931), had long since dropped the spelling Monasch and downplayed the fact they could all speak German as fluently as English.

Like Merle Oberon’s claim to be born in Tasmania, it was a little white lie that grew and grew.

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The headline for Renée Adoree’s first extensive interview, conducted in Australia in March 1918.^[4]The Green Room Magazine, 1 March 1918, p1. State Library of NSW</figcaption></figure>

---

Renée’s ^[5]the name Renée is used throughout parents were London-born James Reeves (1866-c1913) and Belgian-born Victorine nee Schreiber (1865-1937). James and Victorine married in Paris in April 1891.^[6]James Reeves and Victorine Schreiber, Paris Marriages, 4 April 1891. Entry 498 This record indicates both were “artiste au cirque d’hiver” [artists at the winter circus], at Rue Amelot in Paris. The Winter Circus continues today in Paris as a leading venue for circus arts, and is also famous for its history of equestrian acts. It is also very likely that James and Victorine were connected with a large touring circus – like Eduard Wulff’s Continental Circus.^[7]Surviving programs for Wulff’s circus indicate a show of spectacular horse acts, clowns and acrobats However, the births for all three Reeves children – Victor [born 1896], Emilie (Renée) [born 1897] and Mira [born 1898] – took place in Hamburg, Germany, not “on the road” as is often claimed.[See record and translation below]^[8]Note that the family’s official residence at the time of each birth was variously given as London, Amsterdam and Hanover – the first two of which match the known movements of Eduard … Continue reading The irony is, as Yperen and Blom note, their births in Hamburg Germany did not make them citizens of that country. Rather, at that time, they were legally British subjects because their father was. Renée knew this. In December 1918, when she completed an Alien certificate for the US Department of Labor, she acknowledged her German birth, but added “British Subject” – which was true.^[9]Emily Reeves, Alien Certificate card #5828, December 1918

What we know of her childhood

We know little of Renée’s childhood beyond her own commentary. However, from later evidence, we know that she was a competent pianist, and like her sister Mira grew up to be genuinely multi-lingual, probably fluent in French, Spanish and German in addition to English. In her first interviews in Australia in 1918, Renée said her father was an expert horse trainer^[11]She did not use the term “horse whisperer” but that seems to be what she meant for the circus – and a clown – and she had joined the act a