Langbord, Eva 1910-1999 : Eva Langbord, casting director and actress, was born in Toronto ca. 1910, the daughter of Russian-born Jews who had come to Canada from England. She was educated at the Clinton Public School, Peretz Shule, and Harbord Collegiate. She began her stage career in Toronto at the Standard Theatre and Hart House, where she was directed by Edgar Stone; she also studied under Herman Voaden She won a scholarship to the Neighbourhood Playhouse in New York around 1933, where she furthered her studies in drama. She also studied dance under Martha Graham. She spent the next two decades in New York, trying to establish a career in theatre. She appeared in a supporting role in Orson Welles's Broadway production of Archibald MacLeish's Panic, 1935, opposite Burgess Meredith, and later that year got her big break with a chance to play the lead in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (inspired by the Sacco-Vanzetti case) at the Martin Beck Theatre. Although critically acclaimed in this role, she found it difficult to find stage work and resorted to radio work, script research and modelling. She did appear in Elmer Rice's Broadway hit, Two on an Island, in 1940. She repeated her role in Winterset when it became the first full-length play to be televised in the U.S. in 1945 and played in Suspect opposite Orson Welles that same year. She worked in summer stock with Lillian Gish in 1948. In 1951 she became involved in a project to raise money to establish a dinner theatre in Toronto. This failed, but the following year Langbord was invited back to Canada to help establish the fledgling CBC television. In 1952, Langbord joined the CBC. Expecting to help produce its television shows, because of her American experience, she was initially given the job of production assistant to Sydney Newman and Silvio Narrizzano. She subsequently set up the CBC's casting and script bureau, which she ran until her retirement in 1974. In her search for Canadian talent to act in CBC's television productions, she travelled across Canada holding auditions, and became associated with the Dominion Drama Festival, the national association of little theatres which promoted theatre in Canada. She was a member of the founding committee which established the National Theatre School in Canada. Langbord was also involved in casting Canadian films on a free-lance basis and was asked to jury the Yorkton Film Festival in Saskatchewan. She died on May 5, 1999. Death date from obituary in the Globe and Mail, May 6 1999.
