Edwin Booth
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Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893), was a famous 19th century American actor. He was born near Bel Air, Maryland into the British American theatrical Booth family. Some theatre historians call him the greatest American actor and Hamlet of the 19th century.[citation needed]
Early life
Booth was the son of another famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. Edwin's younger brother John Wilkes Booth, also an actor, assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Interestingly, Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son,[1] Robert, from serious injury or even death by pulling him up onto a train platform in Jersey City after Robert had fallen.
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 father'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 murdered 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 first and last time that the brothers would appear together on the same stage.
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 Lincoln'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 (ISBN 0-8371-6529-6). He made his return to the stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in January 1866, playing the lead in Hamlet. Hamlet would eventually become Booth's signature role.
In 1867, a fire damaged the Winter Garden Theatre, resulting in the building's subsequent demolition. Booth then built the Booth Theatre (completed in 1869) and continued a renowned acting career. The panic of 1873 caused the bankruptcy of the Booth Theatre in 1874. After the bankruptcy, Booth went on another worldwide tour, eventually regaining his fortune.
Booth was married to Mary Devlin from 1860 to 1863, the year of her death. He & Mary Devlin had one daughter, Edwina, born in 1862. He later remarried, wedding Mary McVicker in 1869, and becoming a widower again in 1881.
In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John's body after repeatedly writing to the president begging for it. The president finally released the remains, and Edwin had them buried, unmarked, in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery near 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 at Mount Auburn Cemetery next to his first wife, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Legacy
The Players' Club still exists at his home, at 16 Gramercy Park South.
There is a chamber in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky called "Booth's Amphitheatre" - so called because Booth actually entertained visitors there.
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 childhood 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
Edwin's acting style was a reaction against that of his father'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.