Marta Abba (25, June 1900 – 24 June 1988) was an Italian actress, was considered as the muse of the playwright Luigi Pirandello. Life and career Abba was born in Milan, and was the sister of another actress, Cele Abba. At the age of fourteen, Abba tried to enter the Academy of Drama Lovers in Milan (in Italian: Accademia dei Filodrammatici). However, she had to wait a year before getting accepted since she was too young. She attended it during three years, then she was cast by dramatist Sabatino Lopez and she began performing together with the acting company headed by Enrico Reinach in Milan. After their meeting in 1925 and until his death in 1936, Marta Abba was the stimulus to the playwright Luigi Pirandello's creativity. She was an aspiring young 25-year-old actress when she met the 58-year-old playwright, whose wife had been confined to a mental asylum in 1919. From their correspondence, it comes out how she not only inspired him but she also gave the writer confidence, in his work. Their relationship was complex but contributed much to the Italian theatre. Pirandello was obsessive in pursuit of what could be presumed to have remained an unconsummated affair. Marta was the true great actress for whom he had been waiting after his earlier bitter disappointment with Eleonora Duse. Luigi Pirandello's and Marta Abba's letters to each other have been translated into English. Marta Abba and Pirandello teamed up in 1925, and she appeared in many of his productions at the Rome Arts Theater. In 1930, Abba founded her own theatrical company and specialized in staging the works of Pirandello and other European playwrights like George Bernard Shaw, Gabriele d'Annunzio and Carlo Goldoni under the direction of prestigious directors like Max Reinhardt and Guido Salvini. Her Broadway theatre debut was in the play Tovarich at the Plymouth Theatre, (10/15/1936 - circa. 8/1937) in the role of Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. Marta Abba's screen début in Broadway was in Loyalty of Love, in 1937. In January 1938, she married a wealthy Cleveland polo player, Severance Allen Millikin and settled down in Cleveland, Ohio until 1952, when she divorced and returned to Italy. After her marriage, she performed summer stock at Cain Park Theatre in Cleveland Heights, Ohio in two productions: "Divorcons" by Sardou (August 21–24, 1941) and Pirandello's "Right You Are (If You Say You Are)" (July 22–25. 1942). For