Superstar

The wild life and long legacy of Philadelphia actor Edwin Forrest, America’s first native-born stage legend.

Edwin Forrest, the 19th- century Philadelphia actor, was arguably the first American superstar. Critics praised him, politicians wanted him to run with them and working men fought — even died — defending him. If he were alive today, his popularity would equal Paul Newman’s, Warren Beatty’s and Ricky Martin’s put together. Like Newman and Beatty he was a matinee-idol actor who dabbled in politics. Like Martin, he represented the rise of ethnic groups who had recently immigrated. And he was as scandal-plagued as any modern superstar; with his ill-fated marriage and ill-tempered feuds, not to mention the infamous riot he inspired, he’d warrant at least a weeklong retrospective on E! True Hollywood Story.

But if Forrest’s name is remembered by the average Philadelphian in the year 2000, it’s as that theater on the 1100 block of Walnut Street, which is named after him. More knowledgeable fans are aware of the statue of Forrest in the lobby of the Walnut Street Theatre. Though there remains a small and fervent coterie of Forrest aficionados (some of whom are quite well known themselves), to most people Forrest’s talent, fame and highly melodramatic life are an unknown quantity.

Beginning this week, Will Stutts hopes to change that when his new play, Edwin Forrest, opens at the Independence Studio of the Walnut Street Theatre. Imagining what took place when Forrest sat for the aforementioned statue, it retraces the actor’s remarkable career through dialogue between Forrest and sculptor Thomas Ball.

The career is worthy of note not just for the mark it made on theater history. Looking back at the life of Edwin Forrest, one can discover the early stirrings of a national self-image, a definition of "Americanness" that still persists today.

U.S. Prime

The street just off Second and South where Edwin Forrest was born is now known, appropriately enough, as American Street. But in 1906 it was George Street, named for George Washington. Forrest’s father, an immigrant from Scotland, worked as a clerk at the First Bank of the United States. He died of consumption when Edwin was 12 years old. Edwin, or Ned as he was called, got a job working with a ship chandler. Two years later, in 1820, he made his theatrical debut at the Walnut playing Norval in John Home’s Douglas.

Even at that early age he attracted positive critical notice.

"We were much surprised at the excellence of his elocution," said a critic from The Aurora, a Philadelphia newspaper. "His self-possession in speech and gesture, and a voice that, without straining, was of such volume and fine tenor as to carry every tone and articulation to the remotest corner of the theatre."

But good reviews weren’t enough, at least not for William Wood, the manager of the Walnut. He called Forrest into his office and told him that theater was a commercial business and needed star actors to draw audiences. Forrest, in Wood’s estimation, lacked that star quality and the Walnut would not re-engage him.

Forrest was only 14. Any qualities that he lacked he clearly could develop as he matured. Except one: his nationality. Wood didn't say specifically that's what was missing, but he didn't talk to Forrest about training his voice or stage presence. And Forrest, altogether reasonably, assumed that the missing quality was English birth. No wonder Forrest became wary of British actors and in later years, after some provocation, began to wage his personal Revolutionary War against the British.

A mob of Forrest supporters gathered on the street and tried to break down the doors of the theater. Troops fired on the crowd, killing 22 people.

The United States was 45 years young. Jefferson and Adams were still alive. Most actors working in America were British or British-born. Even the few that were native-born copied the English acting style. But Forrest had grown up reading Shakespeare at home; the plays of Shakespeare weren’t precious artifacts to him, but his own birthright.

At age 16 the fledgling actor joined a company that toured Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington and then New Orleans, where he stayed for a year, had great success on stage and — more evidence of his precocity — had an intense romance with an older, French-American actress.

Appearing in Albany, Forrest met the most famous Shakespearean of the era, the British Edmund Kean (1787-1833), playing Richmond to Kean’s Richard III. Kean was so impressed that he got Forrest the role of Iago opposite his own Othello, first in Albany, then in New York City. According to Forrest’s letters, he received a standing ovation "with deafening applause," and a salary increase to $40 a week.

Kean urged Ned to move to England and continue his career there. But Forrest stayed in America and, within one year, in 1826, took on the title role in Othello at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theatre. At age 20, he was a star.

His salary in January 1827, at the Walnut, was $200 a night. Within a few more years, it reached $500 a night. He became the highest-earning actor in the world in the entire 19th century, making more than Kean, the popular British actor William Macready or any of the Booth family. He toured the United States and Europe, but kept returning to Philadelphia as his home base. This was America’s main city for theater at the time. His productions played at the Walnut, the Arch Street Theatre — in the middle of the 600 block — and the Chestnut Street Theatre — on the 1200 block — and at the Academy of Music, which, in those days, was frequently used for drama.

Rejecting the more reserved acting style favored by the British, he pioneered an extroverted, heroic approach. ("He had head tones that splintered rafters," rhapsodized the New York World.) He triumphed as Spartacus, Damon in Damon and Pythias and the anti-British Irish rebel, Jack Cade. But it was his interpretations of the great Shakespearean tragic heroes that made history.

"He soared above all the Hamlets of the day," wrote critic James Rees in 1827, who later praised the "Roman manliness, the haughty dignity" of the actor’s fiery Coriolanus. His Othello, Macbeth and King Lear were said to be fierce as well. Congratulated for his playing of Lear, Forrest once replied indignantly: "For God’s sake, sir, I do not play Lear. I am Lear!"

Dramatic Differences

Forrest’s bold and brassy style echoed that of the upstart nation itself. He was a cultural rebel, striking a blow against British tastes that echoed the political rebellion of a half-century before.

Like that revolution, this one also culminated in violence.

William Macready was Forrest’s chief British acting rival, the epitome of elegant English stage traditions. Forrest’s followers — known as Forresters — called Macready effete. They bragged about their hero’s "manly," barrel-chested build and his virile voice. They praised his "vital, burly Americanism."

Anglophiles showed their opinions of Americans by calling Forrest’s acting "vulgar and arrogant." Macready’s friends included Wordsworth and Dickens. Forrest said he was proud to be the friend of plain working men. Think, perhaps, of Sir John Gielgud vs. the young Marlon Brando.

When Forrest appeared in London’s Princess Theatre in 1845, Macready’s partisans hissed him. To get even, Forrest bought a box seat to a Macready Hamlet in Edinburgh and stood up to hiss the Brit.

Matters escalated when Macready came to America for the 1848-49 season. Forrest partisans disrupted a Macready performance at our town’s Arch Street Theatre. Macready sent notes of protest to newspapers like The Pennsylvanian, and Forrest responded with a note calling Macready "a superannuated driveller."

Macready, at age 56, wrote, "I cannot stomach the United States as a nation. Let me get [out] from this country and give me a dungeon or a hovel in any other, just so I be free of this."

The Macready-Forrest feud exacerbated the anti-British sentiment that still festered among Americans. A few months later, both actors brought productions of Macbeth to New York City, a mile away from each other.

At Macready’s opening night at the Astor Place Opera House on May 7, 1849, Forresters got into the theater and threw objects on the stage, knocking over props and temporarily halting the play. At Macready’s next performance, on May 10, guards were ready and they stopped young people who tried to get into the theater without tickets. A thousand Forresters gathered on the street and tried to break down the doors. They threw stones at the theater’s windows and carried signs and leaflets saying "Workingmen: Shall Americans or English aristocrats triumph?" The mayor of New York called troops to disperse the mob. They fired on the crowd, killing 22 people; 100 were arrested. A newspaper profile said they were stevedores, pipe fitters, sailmakers, plumbers, butchers. The working class, in other words. They were mostly young, and the mayor said that many were gang members. Macready, in disguise, fled the theater and the United States. He retired from acting two years later.

Of course, British-American tensions have subsided since Forrest’s day. And Bernard Havard, the British-born producing artistic director of the Walnut, points out that, while the English didn’t like Forrest, "they respected him." To this day he’s the only American actor to have a picture hanging in the venerable Garrick Club in London’s West End.

Forrest Fact

Near the start of his career, Forrest played Hamlet’s mad scenes artificially, as if he were feigning madness. This was counter to the prevailing tradition that Hamlet actually went insane. Forrest later changed and played the madness as real. It’s interesting to note that our generation validates Forrest’s first instincts and sees Hamlet as a rational man who pretends to be mad.

Forrest Fact

Forrest was so well liked he gave the main oration at the Democratic-Republican Convention on July 4, 1838, when that party’s leader, the less charismatic Martin Van Buren, was president of the United States.

Part 2