Undena de Guibert Eberlein ("Jane Gilbert")

(1881 - 1937)

Eureka College student (circa 1900); actress

If one were asked to identify the professional actors and actresses who are somehow associated with Eureka College, the list might be a short one. The novice would identify Ronald W. Reagan (Class of 1932) and end the list there; more astute responses might include Frances McDormand, daughter of Eureka College alumnus Vernon W. McDormand (Class of 1953) and, more recently, Amanda Wycoff (Class of 1999). Few, if any, would name Undena de Guibert Eberlein, but she may have been the first professional actress to be associated with Eureka College.

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Undena de Guibert was raised in America's rural heartland during the heyday of the Populist Revolt. She later lived in New York City during the heady years of the Progressive Era that largely impacted and transformed the metropolitan scene. The radicalism of both movements—rural Populism and urban Progressivism—seems to have influenced in profound ways the political consciousness of Undena. In addition, to be coming of age as a college woman in the fin de'siecle era as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth helped to fashion a "new" woman who was a product of modern sensibilities.

Influenced by her mother, Mary (Ingels) de Guibert, who wanted her daughters Undena and Davida (b. 1885) to be able to get out of Iowa and make it to the bright lights of New York, Undena knew that her life had to be fabulous. She had witnessed the frustrated failures of her mother, who had aspired to be an artist and spent much of her life trying to learn how to speak French, and Undena vowed that her life would be one of dreams fulfilled.

When the family moved eastward—not to New York, but to LaFayette, Illinois, Undena de Guibert had the opportunity to attend Eureka College for a brief time, but she did not graduate from the school. Drawn by the demands of unfulfilled dreams, Undena moved to New York City where she lived a bohemian life in Greenwich Village while she studied acting at the Stanhope-Wheatcroft Dramatic School. In time, she became an accomplished actress on the New York stage and adopted the name "Jane Gilbert." She was a featured performer in the unique one-act plays that the May Tully vaudeville troupe performed.

Undena met and married Ernest August Eberlein (1876-1931), a poster artist and lithographer, and the couple had four daughters born over an eleven-year span from 1905 to 1916. The Eberleins moved from Greenwich Village to the newly-established community of Free Acres in 1919. (The family had "summered" there for three years, living in a tent.) They seemed to be happy in this quasi-utopian "artists' colony" located in Berkeley Heights Township, New Jersey. The Eberleins lived just a few houses away from the actor James Cagney and his wife Billie.

Free Acres had been established in 1910 by Bolton Hall, a New York businessman and reformer who was a disciple of the economist Henry George. Hall and George both disdained the idea of private ownership of property and they sought to establish a community that could be an idealized example of benevolence. Not surprisingly, the community attracted individuals whose politics was left-of-center as socialists and other non-conformists were drawn to Free Acres.

Undena continued to be active in theatrical circles as much as was possible for a mother of four young children. She continued to perform in some New York productions and she also organized theatrical events in the Free Acres community. The family's fortunes took a turn for the worse when Ernest's posters began to decrease in popularity as theatres made the transition from the use of lithographs to photographs in the advertising of forthcoming productions. As the family became more and more destitute, Undena ("Jane Gilbert") was forced to start sewing and making costumes for other performers in New York stage productions.

Tragedy, poverty, and despair troubled Undena in her final years. Ernest was broke when he died in 1931, and his family's poverty was unrelated to the Great Depression that was in full swing at the time. Undena and the children moved to Philadelphia in 1934 and lived there until her death in 1937. Her final years were filled with bouts of depression and it is said that she was insane by the time of her death.

Just as Undena's mother had wished a better life for her daughters, several of Undena's daughters did well in their own right. Janie Eberlein eventually became an actress and taught briefly at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Roxanne Eberline served as the private secretary to Adlai Stevenson and traveled with the presidential candidate and United Nations ambassador from 1954 to 1965.

Update: Thanks to the kind assistance of archivists in New Jersey, we have been able to obtain a photograph of Undena. More information about her and about the Free Acres community can be found at http://www.freeacres.org