Edwin Booth
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Edwin Booth
Born: Edwin Thomas Booth November 13th, 1833 near Bel Air, Maryland
Died: June 7, 1893 (agedÊ59)
Occupation: Actor
Edwin Thomas Booth (13 November 1833 - 7 June 1893) was a famous 19th century American actor. He was born near Bel Air, Maryland into the English American theatrical Booth family. Booth toured throughout America and to the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespeare; in 1869 he founded Booth39;s Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time. Some theatre historians consider him the greatest American actor and Hamlet of the 19th century.
Early life
Booth was the son of another famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin and his brother, Thomas, after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius39;s colleagues. John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, was Edwin39;s younger brother and was also an actor.
Career
In his early appearances he usually performed alongside his father, making his stage debut as Tressel in Richard III in Boston, Massachusetts in 1849. Two years later, Edwin had his first starring role, standing in for his supposedly ailing father as Richard.
After his father39;s death in 1852, Booth went on a worldwide tour, visiting Australia and Hawaii, and finally gaining acclaim of his own during an engagement in Sacramento, California in 1856.
Before his brother assassinated the president, Edwin had appeared with his two brothers John Wilkes and Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. in Julius Caesar in 1864. John Wilkes played Marc Antony, Edwin played Brutus, and Junius played Cassius. It was a benefit show and the only time that the brothers would appear together on the same stage. The funds were used to erect a statue of William Shakespeare that still stands in Central Park just south of the Promenade. Immediately following the brothers Booth appearance in Julius Caesar, Edwin Booth commenced a production of Hamlet on the same stage that came to be known as the 39;39;hundred nights Hamlet39;39;, setting a record that lasted until John Barrymore infamously broke the record in 1922, playing the title character for 101 performances. From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theater in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedies. In 1865, Booth purchased the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
After Lincoln39;s assassination in April 1865, the infamy associated with the Booth name forced Booth to abandon the stage for many months, a period dramatized in the 1955 Richard Burton movie Prince of Players, which was adapted from the biography of the same name by Eleanor Ruggles. Edwin, who had been feuding with his brother for a period before Lincoln39;s assassination, disowned him afterward, refusing to have John39;s name spoken in his house. He made his return to the stage at the The Winter Garden Theatre in January 1866, playing the title role in Hamlet. Hamlet would eventually become Booth39;s signature role. In 1867, a fire damaged The Winter Garden Theatre, resulting in the building39;s subsequent demolition.
Booth39;s Theatre
After the fire at The Winter Garden Theatre, Booth built his own theatre, an elaborate structure called Booth39;s Theatre in Manhattan, which opened on February 3, 1869 with a production of Romeo and Juliet starring Booth as Romeo, and Mary McVicker as Juliet. Elaborate productions in Booth39;s Theatre followed, but the theatre never became a profitable or even stable financial venture. The panic of 1873 caused the final bankruptcy of Booth39;s Theatre in 1874. After the bankruptcy, Booth went on another worldwide tour, eventually regaining his fortune.
Later life
Booth was married to Mary Devlin from 1860 to 1863, the year of her death. He and Mary Devlin had one daughter, Edwina, born in 1862. He later remarried, wedding his acting partner, Mary McVicker in 1869, and becoming a widower again in 1881.
In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John39;s body after repeatedly writing to President Andrew Johnson begging for it. Johnson finally released the remains, and Edwin had them buried, unmarked, in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
In 1888 Booth founded the Players in New York City, a club for actors and others associated with the arts, and dedicated his home to it. His final performance was, fittingly, in his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy. He died in 1893 at the Players, and was buried next to his first wife at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Edwin Booth and Robert Lincoln
In an interesting coincidence, Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln39;s son, Robert, from serious injury or even death. The incident occurred on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. The exact date of the incident is uncertain, but it is believed to have taken place in late 1864 or early 1865, shortly before Edwin39;s brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated President Lincoln. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine.
39;39;The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name39;39;.
Booth did not know the identity of the man whose life he had saved until some months later, when he received a letter from a friend, Colonel Adam Badeau, who was an officer on the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant. Badeau had heard the story from Robert Lincoln, who had since joined the Union Army and was also serving on Grant39;s staff. In the letter, Badeau gave his compliments to Booth for the heroic deed. The fact that he had saved the life of Abraham Lincoln39;s son was said to have been of some comfort to Edwin Booth following his brother39;s assassination of the president.
Legacy
The Players39; Club still exists at his home, at 16 Gramercy Park South. There is a chamber in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky called 39;39;Booth39;s Amphitheatre39;39; so called because Booth actually entertained visitors there. Booth left a few recordings of his voice preserved on wax cylinder. One of them can be heard on the Naxos Records set Great Historical Shakespeare Recordings and Other Miscellany. Booth39;s voice is barely audible with all the surface noise, but what can be deciphered reveals it to have been rich and deep. Memories of Booth can still be found around Bel Air, Maryland. In front of the court house is a fountain dedicated to his memory. Inside the post office there is a portrait of him. Also, his family39;s home, Tudor Hall, still stands and was bought in 2006 by Harford County, Maryland, to become a museum. A statue of him stands in Gramercy Park in New York City near his mansion.
Influence on acting
Edwin39;s acting style was a reaction against that of his father39;s. While the senior Booth was, like his contemporaries Edmund Kean and William Charles Macready, strong and bombastic, favoring characters such as Richard III, Edwin played more naturalistically, with a quiet, more thoughtful delivery, tailored to roles like Hamlet.
Modern dramatizations of Booth39;s life
There have been several modern dramatizations of the life of Edwin Booth, on both stage and screen. One of the most famous was the film The Prince of Players of 1955, with a screenplay by Moss Hart based loosely on the popular book of that name by Eleanor Ruggles, directed by Philip Dunn, starring Richard Burton and Raymond Massey as Edwin and Junius Brutus Booth, Senior, and also featuring Charles Bickford and Eva Le Gallienne (in a cameo playing Gertrude to Burton39;s Hamlet); the script depicted events in Booth39;s life surrounding the assassination of Lincoln by Booth39;s younger brother. Austin Pendleton39;s play, Booth, which depicted the early years of the brothers Edwin, Junius, and John Wilkes Booth and their father, was produced Off Broadway at the York Theatre, starring Frank Langella as Junius Brutus Booth, Senior, called 39;39;a psychodrama about the legendary theatrical family of the 19th century39;39; by the New York Times; Pendleton had adapted this version from his earlier work, 39;39;Booth Is Back39;39;, produced at Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, 1991 - 1992.
39;39;The Brothers BOOTH!39;39;, by W. Stuart McDowell, which focused on the relation of the three Booth brothers leading up to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was workshopped with David Strathairn, David Dukes, Angela Goethals, Maryann Plunkett, and Stephen Lang at The New Harmony Project, and at The Guthrie Theatre Lab in Minneapolis, and presented in New York at Booth39;s former home on Grammercy Park, The Players and at the Second Stage Theatre in New York; and was premiered at the Bristol Riverside Theatre outside Philadelphia in 1992. A second play by the same name, 39;39;The Brothers Booth39;39;, which focuses on 39;39;the world of the 1860s theatre and its leading family39;39; was written by Marshell Bradley and staged in New York at the Perry Street Theatre in 2004. 39;39;The Tragedian39;39;, by playwright and actor Rodney Lee Rogers, is a one man show about Booth that was produced by PURE Theater of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2007. It was revived for inclusion in the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival in May and June of 2008.