Adah Issacs Menken: The Great Menken

Not all the women who migrated to California during the Gold Rush were prostitutes and gamblers.  The women who played the frontier theaters---singers, dancers and actresses—had a head start on the road to success simply because they were women; in the West that alone was enough to attract a crowd. There were other ways of getting rich off the earnings of the Forty-Niners.  One was acting on stage.  In those early days of San Francisco when money flowed as if it came out of a tap, One o