A History Buff Who Takes Past Personally

Fannie May Bradford liked to hum Scott Joplin tunes, sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and talk about her husband, Albert Sumner Bradford, the founder of Placentia.

“Albert was born in 1860 and he was a descendant of William Bradford, who sailed to America on the Mayflower and became governor of the Plymouth Colony,” Fannie Bradford said at a recent tea at her home, which was built for her family in 1902.

The woman, however, wasn’t the real Fannie Bradford. She died in 1910. This Fannie Bradford was Joan Lea, a 64-year-old Mission Viejo resident who portrays women from the turn of the century to tell stories about their lives.

Her repertoire includes portrayals of Gala Dali, Golda Meir, Helena Modjeska, Fanny Kemble and the wives of notable men, including William Rockefeller and William Vanderbilt. On request, Lea also becomes other women of interest but, she proclaims, she is no actress.

“I’m a history buff,” said Lea, who calls her presentations “Conversations With Famous Women.” “I’m crazy about history.”

She said her performances take her to libraries, museums, antique stores and thrift shops where she gathers pounds of information and buys materials to suit her characters in the appropriate attire.

Lea sews all her costumes, many of which include lace trims. Copying photographs, she puts together the outfit reproductions--flamboyant hats, fancy eyeglasses and shoes and some modest apparel. The clothing matches what the women she imitates would wear, according to the fashions of their time.

The research and preparation for each character “takes six months out of my life,” the white-haired Lea said. “It’s a whole lot of fun.”

Sharing her knowledge about the past, she said, teaches valuable lessons about the future.

“Everybody needs to learn history so they won’t make the same mistakes of the past,” she said.

She picks her subjects carefully.

“Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, succeeded in a man’s world because she was so smart and witty,” she said enthusiastically. “Mrs. Vanderbilt is the reason you can vote today. . . . Fanny Kemble, the proto-feminist who divorced a Southern plantation owner, contributed to the freedom of slaves by writing about their lives--how slavery looked, smelled and festered.”

Her style of bringing to life historical figures captures people’s attention, she said. “[Ralph Waldo] Emerson said, ‘There is no history, there’s only biography,’ ” Lea said. “I believe that.”

Joe Osterman, author, historian and member of the Saddleback Area Historical Society, said Lea “cast a spell” on her when she portrayed Mrs. Vanderbilt last year.

“She just reaches out and reels you in,” Osterman said.