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Authors: Boze Hadleigh
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first American women to head an acting company. She and her company were punished via guilt by association. John’s brother Edwin was forced into temporary retirement. Theaters across the country were closed, and hundreds of actors lost their livelihoods, as preachers and newspapers denounced the entire profession as heading for hell. As recently as the 1960s when actor Ronald Reagan ran for California governor, his rival proclaimed that, “An actor killed Lincoln.”
After Lincoln died, before dawn, Laura Keene and her fellow actors were arrested for conspiracy. Although Edwin Booth later made a comeback, Keene tired of fighting the taint of Lincoln’s assassination. Her fortunes dwindled in her remaining eight years, and she briefly found work as a lecturer, dying of consumption in 1873 at fifty-four. One of Keene’s theatrical innovations had been spending significantly on advertising. J.H. Stoddard, a popular actor of the era, deemed her “the greatest stage manager I have ever known.” In 1867 she was one of the first American managers to encourage native talent by offering the then-considerable sum of $1,000 for the best play written by an American.
P.S. John Wilkes Booth’s violent action hurt numerous individuals outside of the theater, as well. One was a Dr. Mudd, at whose home the fleeing assassin stopped to have his broken leg set. Mudd had no idea who Booth was or what he’d done. But after the episode came to light, the doctor was imprisoned for life, his sentence eventually commuted because of his services at the jail during an epidemic. The innocent physician’s predicament gave rise to the popular expression, “Your name is Mudd.”
Q : Who is or was the most sexual personality on Broadway?
A : Some may have matched director-choreographer Bob Fosse in quantity, but no one probably surpassed him. Richard Adler, composer of
Damn Yankees
, stated, “There is nobody who knows anything about Fosse who doesn’t know about his sex life. He made it very public; he just didn’t care. How he portrayed himself in [the film]
All That Jazz
is playing down what he was really like. This man was sexually insatiable!”
Q : Was
Carrie
the musical really as bad as they still say?
A : On a superficial level,
Carrie
resembled a more recent teen-centered movie-into-musical,
Hairspray
. Of course, the latter doesn’t have a blood-spattered heroine or a religious-fanatic mother whom she offs by fadeout.
Carrie
’s unlikely source was Stephen King’s 1974 novel, made into a hit film in 1976. Betty Buckley, the movie’s kindly gym teacher, enacted Carrie’s monster mom in the Broadway musical twelve years later.
Carrie
was the most expensive flop in Broadway history, losing $8 million for its British and West German investors. First performed in England, it originally starred Barbara Cook, who had the insight or luck to bolt the production pre-Broadway. (Reviews were terrible, and a stage accident reportedly almost decapitated her.) Cook had been attracted by the music. The Broadway reviews, even worse than the British ones, focused more on the plot and dramatics than the score or the elaborate staging.
The show aimed too (non-) squarely at the MTV crowd rather than average theatergoers, and didn’t have time to find its audience, nor for word-of-mouth to spread.
Carrie
played less than a week—reserve funds to keep it running had already been eaten up. Theater historian Ken Mandelbaum observed
Carrie
’s jarring mix of “often breathtaking sequences and some of the most appalling and ridiculous scenes ever seen in a musical. It alternately scaled the heights and hit rock bottom … and unlike so many flops, was not dull for a second.”
Q : When was Broadway’s golden era?
A : The 1920s was the Great White Way’s most exciting, pioneering, and booming period. America’s participation and victory in “the Great War” (World War I) provided energy and optimism. Prosperity had reached the masses,
After Lincoln died, before dawn, Laura Keene and her fellow actors were arrested for conspiracy. Although Edwin Booth later made a comeback, Keene tired of fighting the taint of Lincoln’s assassination. Her fortunes dwindled in her remaining eight years, and she briefly found work as a lecturer, dying of consumption in 1873 at fifty-four. One of Keene’s theatrical innovations had been spending significantly on advertising. J.H. Stoddard, a popular actor of the era, deemed her “the greatest stage manager I have ever known.” In 1867 she was one of the first American managers to encourage native talent by offering the then-considerable sum of $1,000 for the best play written by an American.
P.S. John Wilkes Booth’s violent action hurt numerous individuals outside of the theater, as well. One was a Dr. Mudd, at whose home the fleeing assassin stopped to have his broken leg set. Mudd had no idea who Booth was or what he’d done. But after the episode came to light, the doctor was imprisoned for life, his sentence eventually commuted because of his services at the jail during an epidemic. The innocent physician’s predicament gave rise to the popular expression, “Your name is Mudd.”
Q : Who is or was the most sexual personality on Broadway?
A : Some may have matched director-choreographer Bob Fosse in quantity, but no one probably surpassed him. Richard Adler, composer of
Damn Yankees
, stated, “There is nobody who knows anything about Fosse who doesn’t know about his sex life. He made it very public; he just didn’t care. How he portrayed himself in [the film]
All That Jazz
is playing down what he was really like. This man was sexually insatiable!”
Q : Was
Carrie
the musical really as bad as they still say?
A : On a superficial level,
Carrie
resembled a more recent teen-centered movie-into-musical,
Hairspray
. Of course, the latter doesn’t have a blood-spattered heroine or a religious-fanatic mother whom she offs by fadeout.
Carrie
’s unlikely source was Stephen King’s 1974 novel, made into a hit film in 1976. Betty Buckley, the movie’s kindly gym teacher, enacted Carrie’s monster mom in the Broadway musical twelve years later.
Carrie
was the most expensive flop in Broadway history, losing $8 million for its British and West German investors. First performed in England, it originally starred Barbara Cook, who had the insight or luck to bolt the production pre-Broadway. (Reviews were terrible, and a stage accident reportedly almost decapitated her.) Cook had been attracted by the music. The Broadway reviews, even worse than the British ones, focused more on the plot and dramatics than the score or the elaborate staging.
The show aimed too (non-) squarely at the MTV crowd rather than average theatergoers, and didn’t have time to find its audience, nor for word-of-mouth to spread.
Carrie
played less than a week—reserve funds to keep it running had already been eaten up. Theater historian Ken Mandelbaum observed
Carrie
’s jarring mix of “often breathtaking sequences and some of the most appalling and ridiculous scenes ever seen in a musical. It alternately scaled the heights and hit rock bottom … and unlike so many flops, was not dull for a second.”
Q : When was Broadway’s golden era?
A : The 1920s was the Great White Way’s most exciting, pioneering, and booming period. America’s participation and victory in “the Great War” (World War I) provided energy and optimism. Prosperity had reached the masses,
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