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Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American stage actor and theatrical manager who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York.Winter, William. " Life and Art of Edwin Booth". MacMillan and Co. (New York, 1893). pp. 48–49. He is considered by many to be the greatest American actor of the 19th century. However, his achievements are often overshadowed in modern discourse by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of Junius Brutus Booth's three actor sons, Junius Jr. (who never achieved the level of stardom of his younger brothers), Edwin, and John Wilkes, spurred them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim. Politically Edwin was a Unionist; John supported the Confederacy and later became notorious as the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.DePuy, W. H. (1895). Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, Volume 4. Chicago: The Werner Company. p. 314.Titone, Nora. " My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy". New York: Simon and Schuster; 2010 cited. .
Junius Brutus Booth was "famously peculiar ... . Several sons succeeded him in his career ... and his idiosyncrasies: Edwin had an abiding fear of ivy vines and peacock feathers."Greenblatt, Leah, "Necromancers, Killers and Presidents, Summoned From the Pages of History: Did Abraham Lincoln, like John Wilkes Booth, ever find solace in spiritualism?," The New York Times, June 26, 2022 (review of Alford, Terry, In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits, New York: Liveright, 2022).
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 assassinated Lincoln, 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 performance, and the only time that the three brothers appeared 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 afterwards, Edwin Booth began a production of Hamlet on the same stage, which came to be known as the "hundred nights Hamlet", setting a record that lasted until John Barrymore broke the record in 1922, playing the Prince Hamlet for 101 performances.
From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedy. In 1863, he bought the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
After John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865, the infamy associated with the Booth name forced Edwin Booth to abandon the stage for many months. Edwin, who had been feuding with John Wilkes before the assassination, disowned him afterward, refusing to have John's name spoken in his house. He made his return to the stage at the Winter Garden Theatre in January 1866, playing the title role in Hamlet, which would eventually become his signature role.
In 1874, he played the titular role in Othello in Chicago, trading off with James O'Neill. Casting O'Neill, an Irish American actor who was called Black Irish because of his black hair, has been marked as one possible origin of disputes about whether the character Othello was meant to merely have black hair and swarthy skin, rather than to be of sub-Saharan African origin.
Booth was accomplished in many roles. In May 1876, while on tour in Toronto, Canada, he performed as Hamlet, Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, as Richard II, as Cardinal Richelieu in Richelieu, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing and as Othello on consecutive days at the Grand Opera House.
In 1869, Edwin acquired his brother John's body after repeatedly writing to President Andrew Johnson pleading for it. Johnson finally released the remains, and Edwin had them buried, unmarked, in the family plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore.
On April 23, 1879, Mark Gray, a traveling salesman from Keokuk, Iowa, fired two shots from a pistol at Booth. Booth was playing the title role in Richard II at McVicker's Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, during the final act of the William Shakespeare tragedy. Gray gave as his motive a wrong done to a friend by Booth. Gray's shots, which were fired from a distance of thirty-four feet, missed Booth, burying themselves in the stage floor. The would-be assassin was jailed at Central Station in Chicago. Booth was not acquainted with Gray, who worked for a St. Louis, Missouri dry goods firm. A letter to a woman in Ohio was found on Gray's person. The correspondence affirmed Gray's intent to murder Booth. A Startling Scene At M'Vickers Theatre, New York Times, April 24, 1879, pg. 1. The attempted assassination occurred on Shakespeare's supposed birthday My Thoughts Be Bloody, Nora Titone, Free Press, 2010, pg. 377. and came at a time when Booth was receiving numerous death threats by mail.
In 1888, Booth founded The Players, a private club for performing, literary, and visual artists and their supporters, purchasing and furnishing a home on Gramercy Park as its clubhouse.
His final performance was, fittingly, in his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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 name.
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 Grant'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 Lincoln's son was said to have been of some comfort to Edwin Booth following his brother's assassination of the president.
One of the best known is the 1955 film Prince of Players written by Moss Hart, based loosely on the popular book of that name by Eleanor Ruggles. It was directed by Philip Dunne and stars Richard Burton and Raymond Massey as Edwin and Junius Brutus Booth Sr., with Charles Bickford as Prescott, producer of their Shakespeare tour. The cast also includes Eva Le Gallienne, who plays Gertrude to Burton's Hamlet, and who is listed on the opening credits as "Special Consultant on Shakespearean Scenes". The film depicts events in Booth's life well before, and then surrounding, the assassination of Lincoln by Booth's younger brother.Shattuck, Charles H. " Shakespeare on the American Stage: From the Hallams to Edwin Booth". Educational Theatre Journal. Vol. 29, No. 4. (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Dec. 1977). p. 579.
The opening scenes of Prince of Players are very similar to scenes in the earlier 1946 John Ford western My Darling Clementine. In that movie, the character of Granville Thorndyke (as acted by Alan Mowbray) is an obvious nod to Booth's father Junius, and the scenes portray essentially the same sequence where the great actor has to be retrieved from a bar and dragged back to the theatre where he is overdue to give a performance in front of a restless audience.
In 1958, José Ferrer produced, directed, and played the title role in a play Edwin Booth. It ran for three weeks.
In 1959, the actor Robert McQueeney played Booth in the episode "The Man Who Loved Lincoln" on the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series, Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston as the fictitious undercover agent Christopher Colt, who in the story line is assigned to protect Booth from a death threat.
In 1960, the anthology series television series Death Valley Days broadcast "His Brother's Keeper", in which Booth visits a small town after the Lincoln assassination, with one of the town's influential citizens trying to have him run out of town.
In 1966, Martin Landau played Edwin Booth in the episode "This Stage of Fools" of the NBC western television series, Branded, starring Chuck Connors as Jason McCord. In the story line, McCord takes a job as the bodyguard to the actor Edwin Booth, brother of the presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
The Brothers BOOTH!, by W. Stuart McDowell, which focuses on the relationships of the three Booth brothers leading up to the assassination of Lincoln, was workshopped and given a series of staged readings featuring 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 later presented in New York at the Players' Club, the Second Stage Theatre, and the Boston Athenaeum. It was given its first fully staged professional production at the Bristol Riverside Theatre outside Philadelphia in 1992.Buettler, John J. (March 19, 1992). " The Brothers Booth is one of Riverside's Best Premieres". The Bristol Pilot. March 19, 1992.Bolinsky, Ken. " Brothers Booth! is a Play with Merit at the Riverside". Philadelphia Courier Times. A second play by the same name, The Brothers Booth, which focuses on "the world of the 1860s theatre and its leading family"Dr. Clive Swansbourne, quoted on the cover of The Brothers Booth by Marshal Bradley. (Authorhouse, 2004). was written by Marshell Bradley and staged in New York at the Perry Street Theatre in 2004.
Austin Pendleton's play, Booth, which depicts 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 Sr. In a review, the play was called "a psychodrama about the legendary theatrical family of the 19th century" by The New York Times.Brantley, Ben (January 24, 1994). " Acting Up a Storm As a Stormy Actor Known for Acting Up". The New York Times. Pendleton had adapted this version from his earlier work, Booth Is Back, produced at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1991–1992 season.
The Tragedian, by playwright and actor Rodney Lee Rogers, is a one-man show about Booth that was produced by PURE Theatre of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2007. It was revived for inclusion in the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival in May and June 2008.Bryan, William (January 23, 2008). " Theatre Review: The Tragedian" Charleston City Paper.
A play by Luigi Creatore called Error of the Moon played off-Broadway on Theatre Row in New York City from August 13 to October 10, 2010. The play is a fictionalized account of Booth's life, hinging on the personal, professional, and political tensions between brothers Edwin and John Wilkes, leading up to the assassination of Lincoln.Salz, Rachel (August 30, 2010). " Redrawing a Picture of Lincoln's Assassin". The New York Times.
In 2013, Will Forte played Edwin Booth in the "Washington, D.C." episode of the Comedy Central series, Drunk History, created by Derek Waters.
In 2014, Edwin Booth was played by Gordon Tanner in The Pinkertons episode, "The Play's the Thing" (S1:E3). In the episode, both the "Hundred nights Hamlet" and Edwin's rescue of Robert Lincoln are mentioned.
In 2023, Tyrants, an original musical about the life of Edwin Booth, was presented at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C. With music and lyrics by Alexander Sage Oyen and a book by Nora Brigid Monahan, the musical starred A.J. Shively as Edwin Booth, under the direction of John Simpkins.
Booth was portrayed by Nick Westrate in the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries series Manhunt.
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