She was tall and imposing, he short and dapper. Reed had married Frances Cotter in 1925, a year after his first marriage of ten years ended in divorce it was the first marriage for “Frankie,” who was twelve years younger than Reed. Reed Albee was the rich-man’s son-type he worked as an assistant general manager in the company until he retired the year he and his wife adopted their son. Consisting of over 400 theaters, the Keith-Albee circuit, which later merged with other theaters to form RKO (the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation), made the elder Albee millions, subsequently inherited by his son. Keith in a chain of vaudeville theaters located throughout the U.S. Albee’s grandfather, Edward Franklin Albee II (1857-1930), was co-founder and partner with B.F. The Albee’s were an old American family, having immigrated to Maine in the seventeenth century an ancestor was one of the original minutemen in the Revolutionary War.
Reed and Frances Albee became his foster parents, bringing him to their home in Larchmont, New York when he was only 18 days old they officially adopted him on February 1, 1929, and changed his name to Edward Franklin Albee III. Although Albee knew he was adopted by the age of six, and therein lay the beginning of his alienation, he only learned the few details of the circumstances of his birth and adoption after his adoptive mother’s death in 1989: his biological father abandoned his mother Louise Harvey and she gave up her son Edward Harvey to an adoption agency two weeks after his birth. The following Biography was written by Lincoln Konkle, a founding member of the Society and Professor of English at The College of New Jersey.Įdward Albee was given up for adoption shortly after his birth Main Washington D.C.