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Thomas Booth Biography & Facts

Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893) was an American actor who toured throughout the United States and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869, he founded Booth's Theatre in New York. Some theatrical historians consider him the greatest American actor, and the greatest Prince Hamlet, of the 19th century. His achievements are often overshadowed by his relationship with his younger brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Early life Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland, into the Anglo-American theatrical Booth family. He was the son of the famous actor Junius Brutus Booth, an Englishman, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues. He was the elder brother of John Wilkes Booth, himself a successful actor, who became notorious as the assassin of President 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. 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." Career In early appearances, Booth usually performed alongside his father, making his stage debut as Tressel or Tressil in Colley Cibber's version of Richard III in Boston on September 10, 1849. His first appearance in New York City was in the character of Wilford in The Iron Chest, which he played at the National Theatre in Chatham Street, on September 27, 1850. A year later, on the illness of the father, the son took his place in the character of Richard III. 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 title character for 101 performances. From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedies. 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 to have black hair and swarthy skin, rather than to be of sub-Saharan African origin. Later life Booth was married to Mary Devlin Booth from 1860 until her death in 1863. They had one daughter, Edwina, born on December 9, 1861, in London. He later remarried, to his acting partner Mary McVicker Booth in 1869, and became a widower again in 1881. 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. The attempted assassination occurred on Shakespeare's supposed birthday 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. Robert Lincoln rescue Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, 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. Robert Lincoln recalled the incident in a 1909 letter to Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine. 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 lett.... Discover the Thomas Booth popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thomas Booth books.