Elderly American actress. Her parents were Vermont farmers. In 1899 she married local butcher, 20 year old Wallace C. Hale and they had 2 girls, Allene and Mildred. About 1897, he took a job as a travelling agent for the Monarch Book Company of Philadelphia. While working in Chatham, NY he was staying at the Windsor Hotel. About 2 AM it burned to the ground. Everyone escaped except Wallace who succumbed to asphyxiation in a hallway. Allene was 7 and Mildred was only 5 months old.
Frona took in boarders in 1900. One was a well-to-do concert pianist from England (of Russian parents) just a year older than Frona. They married in June of 1901 and he worked as a "lecturer of the arts" and professor of music. They moved to Buffalo, NY where he lectured and taught piano and music composition. He went by the name "Baron Rudolph Von Liebich". A Vermont newspaper reported that Immanuel Baron Von Liebich, pianist/composer for Queen Victoria had died in London in 1900 and the title reverted to Rudolph Von Liebich of Burlington, VT. He and Frona had 2 sons (1904 & 1907). The younger son died at age 10. The couple must have been successful since they had a live-in maid.
They divorced some time between the 1910 Buffalo, NY Census and the 1920 Los Angeles Census where Frona is a divorcee (motion picture actress) living with her motion picture actress daughter, Allene and her motion picture director husband, Louis William Chaudet. Also living in the house is Frona's widowed mother, her divorced movie actress daughter (Mildred Hopkins and daughter) and her son Rudolph Liebich Jr.
Frona's daughter Allene married successful director Chaudet in October of 1919 just after the release of her first known film, Wm Seiter's short comedy, "Honeymooning" with Mr. & Mrs. Carter DeHaven. Besides being a "photoplayer" in the 1918 LA City Directory, her daughter Allene was a talented pianist/harpist.
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