It’s the birthday of author, actress, and playwright Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901-1979), known for the monodramas she wrote and performed and for a bestselling book co-written with her friend Emily Kimbrough, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1942), a true and hilarious account of their trip abroad in the 1920s when they were extremely naïve young women.

Skinner was born in Chicago, Illinois, to parents who were both actors: Otis Skinner, a highly regarded actor of his generation, and Maude Durbin Skinner, a leading lady in his company. Maude left the stage when Cornelia was born; the family traveled widely during Skinner’s childhood, both in the U.S. and Europe. Skinner studied at Bryn Mawr College, where by her own ready admission she was a lukewarm student.

Skinner made her acting debut on Broadway with her father’s company when she was just 20. Within a few years she began writing herself monologues, which she developed into the monodramas she performed in the 1930s, portraying many different characters with great skill. She finally achieved Great Actress status in 1939 with a role in Candida by George Bernard Shaw.

In Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Skinner recounts her first trip to Europe alone with a friend—or sort of alone; her parents are always on the same continent in order to swoop in as needed. They are not infrequently needed, as Skinner and Kimbrough in their naïveté tend to invite trouble and misunderstanding. At one point they spend the night at a French brothel, mistaking it for a boarding house; the elaborately decorated rooms, garishly dressed women, and luridly made up “land lady” do not tip them off as to the true nature of the place, and indeed, it isn’t until later in the book, at the Cluny Museum, that they learn for the first time the Facts of Life—thanks to an epiphany while viewing Leda and the Swan. (This is one of those books, so detailed and real and extremely funny, that I have returned to over and over again throughout the years. You can’t make this stuff up, and Skinner is awfully good at poking fun at herself.)

Skinner wrote other books as well, including the very well-regarded biography, Madame Sarah, about actress Sarah Bernhardt (1967). Skinner once said that she couldn’t have chosen between acting and writing, but added, “Acting is less painful than writing and faster.”

Have a brilliant Wednesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.