In the Theatre

[18thVirginia]

Robert Knox Sneden began his part in the Civil War as a private in Company E of the 40th New York, camped on the outskirts of Washington, D. C., in Virginia. A watercolorist, Sneden would document his time with the Army of the Potomac and later in Andersonville with hundreds of watercolor paintings and a memoir written in the 1870s.

A manuscript based on his journals was published as Eye of the Storm, a Civil War Odyssey. He writes about going to the theatre while his company is camped at Alexandria in November 1861:

"Captain John M Cooney of the 38th New York Regiment made plans and started the work on a Log Theater for the amusement of men an officers in the camps of the bridge. Many officers subscribed to a certain amount of work for this purpose . Axe men were detailed to chop down every tree on Fowle's Plantation and the neighboring one to get suitable logs for a build to hold 1,500 to 2,000 men.The warehouses of Alexandria long since empty were to furnish the flooring. Sails from the vessels now rotting at the wharves were to be used inside over the logs for walls, while the house painters and artists were at work designing scenery to be painted on ship sails for canvas. There were more volunteers for these works than wanted and nearly every soldier now would sooner work hard all day digging on the new redoubt than go on picket." Eye of the Storm, a Civil War Odyssey, p. 6

We all know about certain actors at Ford's Theater in April, 1865, but it seemed interesting to see what was happening in theaters around the country during the War.

Pvt. Sneden describes his trip to take in theatrical entertainment in January 1862:

Willard's Hotel corridors are full of colonels, majors, and generals as usual. Very few privates were to be seen anywhere. Had good supper at Gantier's and went to the Variety Threatre in the evening. The provost guard took several officers from the audience during the performance as they could not show their passes, having overstayed their limit. The knowing ones borrow a suit of civilian clothes from a friend when they overstay their time, and unless the lynx eyed of a guard don't recognize them they are not questioned of course. All men and officers in uniform are compelled to show their passes to the officer of the provost guard or go to the central guard house in arrest until he can get the marshall to let him off. The theatres are visited every night about 9 p.m. by this guard. Citizens are not bothered at all. Eye of the Storm, a Civil War Odyssey, p. 9.

Ford's Theater, Washington, 1860s.

 

[18thVirginia]

Theater companies existed in most of the major cities on the East Coast and in New Orleans. The manager of a company was quite powerful and often made changes in scripts as well as controlling the cast. Plays were changed often, even daily and traveling stars often worked with local company casts.

Wages were decent in the theater, with beginning actors starting at $3-6 a week and leading men and ladies going up to $35 to $100 a week. Women's roles depicted fragile and dependent females, when in contrast, the actresses of the day had to be strong and resilient to learn a new role in several days and travel by train or riverboat when necessary.

One of the popular plays during the war was Uncle Tom's Cabin.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Cool thread! This never comes up. The thing is it must go right over my head, anyway, all the ' actor' and ' actress' photos in LoC and archives. What was Lincoln doing at Ford's Theater anyway? Must have been an extremely popular pastime.

One of the first things we hear about JW Booth is how he was from a more famous family of actors but the conversation tends to stop there.

Love to know more, like were actresses considered famous women with a cache attached in this era or were they still laboring under unfavorable social distinctions?

 

[18thVirginia]

Photographers developed a clientele among the ranks of actors. Many of the photographs from Mathew Brady are of actresses of the era. The development of the cheap photographic technique of CDVs and their immense popularity provided actors with the ability to get their face out to the public.

Many of the "Civil War Women" photographed by Mathew Brady were actresses.

 

[18thVirginia]

Laura Keene, Brady, LOC flickr.

Laura Keene was a British actress who had the lead in Our American Cousin on the fateful night at Ford's Theater. Keene entered the theater after her husband went to prison and she was left with 2 children and no employment. Entering into her aunt's theater, she became a successful actress and a powerful theater manager as well.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Did someone just bump a Laura Keene thread? Must find link to bring here, thanks 18th!

 

[18thVirginia]

Our American Cousin debuted in 1858 at Laura Keene's theater in New York. It's a British farce in 3 acts about a boorish American who travels to England to inherit the family estate and his dealings with the English aristocrats he encounters there. British actor Edward Askew Southern played one of the comic parts in the play, which had great success during the latter part of the 19th Century.

Edward Askew Southern as Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin.

 

[18thVirginia]

Here's a thread which goes into greater detail about Laura Keene. http://civilwartalk.com/threads/laura-keene.3665/

By the mid 19th Century, JPK Huson, being an actress no longer carried the stigma of sin and social ostracism for women that it once had and was a respectable career. Many of the women did come from theatrical families, like Laura Keene, and women were more accepted as professionals within the confines of that world.

"Because the theatre has been remarkably free-thinking, women in the profession have always been relatively equal to their male colleagues. Bad managers have absconded with their salaries equally; audiences booed them equally; they starved equally between engagements; and their contributions to the traditions of the theatre have been equally forgotten."


Turner, Mary M. 1990. Forgotten leading ladies of the American theatre : lives of eight female players, playwrights, directors, managers, and activists of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

Ada Clifton in the role of Pocahontas.

 

[John Hartwell]

View attachment 78283

 

[18thVirginia]

Some theaters of the era:

Niblo's Garden in New York

Grover's National Theatre, Washington, D. C.

 

[John Hartwell]

Little Cordelia's mother, Cordelia Fox Howard, as Topsy:

There's an interesting description of this production here.

 

[18thVirginia]

 

[18thVirginia]

http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/19thcenturyactors/id/17

Actor Harry Beckett in costume for a production of the burlesque Forty Thieves.

 

[donna]

This thread is really neat. Thanks for posting. Love to learn about the theater, actresses and actors of this time frame.

 

[18thVirginia]

Little Cordelia's mother, Cordelia Fox Howard, as Topsy:
View attachment 78343
There's an interesting description of this production here.

Thanks, John Hartwell.

 

[18thVirginia]

This thread is really neat. Thanks for posting. Love to learn about the theater, actresses and actors of this time frame.

Glad you like it, Donna. I did some community theater and can attest to the fact that working onstage is tough, demanding work, because you repeat your actions over and over to get the "blocking" correct. You go back offstage and start all over, again and again and again. In those days, with the enormous dresses that women wore, it must have been ever more physically strenuous.

There's a story about Fanny Davenport getting her dress caught in a chair and being unable to untangle it and dragging it offstage with her. Talk about upstaging the other actors when you're no longer on stage! Here's a photo that I colorized a bit--I'm just playing at it to give some ideas about the dress--because any actress loves a costume more than anything.

These are sort of loud colors, but I've seen a photo of Princess Eugenie in some kind of gypsy outfit and many women of the age copied her for balls and I'd imagine "in the theatre."

 

[18thVirginia]

New Orleans Theatre and Ballroom, 1838

 

[Aussie Billy Sherman]

good thread here. Interesting to learn more about Fords and the actors who worked there.

 

[18thVirginia]

Adah Isaacs Menken was the highest paid actress of her time. Born in a suburb of New Orleans in 1835 to a mixed race creole father and mother, she claimed to have been born various other places, France and had lived in Cuba, to Jewish/Spanish/French parents. Menken lacked great acting talent, but had a gift for languages, becoming fluent in both French and Spanish as a child. She performed as a dancer in both New Orleans and Cuba.

In Texas, she would become an actress and embark on the first of several marriages with a musician. She married Alexander Isaac Menken and they moved to Cincinnati, where she performed in the theater and gave literary readings and transformed herself into having a Jewish background. Eventually, she worked in New York and San Francisco and toured throughout the country. For awhile she was married to a famous boxer.

Menken became famous by playing in Mazeppa, which features a scene in which a man is stripped, tied to a horse and sent off to die--usually using a dummy. Menken performed the stunt herself in nude tights onstage on a horse. Her acting scandalized theater goers, but she was successful in both New York and San Francisco, then took the play to London and Paris. She married again and had other affairs as well, but died at age 33 in Paris in ill health and poverty.

In The French Spy

 

[18thVirginia]

Adah Isaacs Menken in Mazeppa