page_title: Walker Whiteside
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Walker Whiteside / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Actor Walker Whitestone
context_page_description: Walker Whiteside was an American actor who had played Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Shylock while still in his teens.
context_section_description: While in his teens or earlier, Walker Whiteside attended acting classes under the tutelage of Professor Samuel Kayzer of the Dramatic Conservatory of Chicago.  His ability there to play roles that would appear to be beyond his years soon drew local media attention as the boy tragedian of Chicago. In October 1884, the not yet sixteen-year-old actor hired Alderman Ford, a theatrical agent from Kansas City and, on November 17, made his professional stage debut in Richard III at Chicago's Grand Opera House. Walker found the experience both terrifying and exhilarating, but knew immediately he had found his calling.
  He spent much of the following decade or so with Shakespearean companies, touring primarily America's Midwest, before making his New York premier in April 1893 at the Union Square Theatre, playing Hamlet and the title part in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Richelieu. In 1894, Whiteside again performed Hamlet for the debut season of the Grand Opera House in Traverse City, Michigan. By the dawn of the 20th century, and barely into his thirties, Walker had played Hamlet in some 1,400 productions.
  In the late 1890s, Walker began to swing away from classic production in favor of more contemporary and thus more profitable plays.  On January 31, 1901, just fifteen minutes after the final curtain call of Walker’s play Heart and Sword, the Coates Opera House in Kansas City caught fire and burned to the ground. By the time the fire had spread from the boiler room, the building had been evacuated, forcing Walker’s company to abandon their theatrical gear to the flames. Later, Walker signed with Shipman Brothers in New York, performing romantic and classic plays under their banner until he was able to recoup his losses.
  Walker’s first Broadway hit was in 1909, playing David opposite Chrystal Herne  in Israel Zangwill’s The Melting Pot. The play ran for 268 performances at the Comedy Theatre on West 41st Street, and nearly as long a few years later, when he reprieved his role at the Queen’s Theatre in London.
  Walker's performance as Wu Li Chang in the play Mr. Wu was so popular that before the premier of a later play he had his press agent release a statement announcing "Mr. Whiteside wishes it known far and wide that this time he is not acting as a sinister Chinaman, educated at Oxford, who wears poison fingernails." Walker played several Asian characters over his career, some evil, at least one not, that were probably comparable to those portrayed in films made in Hollywood over the first half of the twentieth century. Walker Whiteside also appeared in the film adaptation of The Melting Pot in 1915 and three years later in the spy film, The Belgian, directed by Sidney Olcott.
  The remainder of Walker's career would be a successful combination of performances on the road and on Broadway. During this period, his leading lady for seven seasons was New Orleans native Sydney Shields. For whatever reason, Walker had several plays that had popular runs on the road that he never brought to Broadway. Until his retirement in 1935, Walker had  a large following among Mid-American audiences who considered him one of their own.
caption: Whiteside, 1907
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