St. Clair Bayfield (2 August 1875 – 19 May 1967) was an English stage actor, best known as the long-term companion and manager of amateur operatic soprano Florence Foster Jenkins.
With a fine voice and physical presence, he became involved in amateur theatricals, leading eventually to his joining a professional company touring Australia. His diary of time spent in Melbourne is included in the "Bayfield Archive" preserved at Lincoln Center, New York. He next acted with a company headed by the impresario William Ben Greet, who abandoned his cast to penury in a remote corner of the United States. That led to the establishment of Actor's Equity, of which Bayfield was a founding member.[3] His subsequent stage career involved regular appearances on Broadway for several decades, usually in works by British playwrights. In 1909, he began a vague "common law" relationship with amateur operatic soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, seven years his senior, that lasted the remainder of her life. The couple lived for many years in an apartment on 37th Street in Manhattan, New York.[4] Bayfield joined the Ben Greet Players in a revival of Twelfth Night that took the troupe to 56 Pennsylvania towns in 65 days during the summer of 1914. Also in the group was Sydney Greenstreet.[5]
Bayfield lived with Jenkins and managed her career for 36 years.[4][6] After Jenkins' death in 1944, he married a piano teacher, Kathleen Weatherley, in 1945. They lived in Larchmont, New York, where he died in 1967.
^Florence Foster Jenkins, Nicholas Martin & Jasper Rees, Pan, 2016, p. 73
^"Caroline McWilliams wins Bayfield Award". Equity News. February 1977. p. 84. ...St. Clair Bayfield, who died in 1967 at nearly 92 years of age, was a charter member of Equity, having joined in 1913.
