Evening star., 1933-11-12

talking about lot of things that
time swallowed up many years ago
He will tell you about Joe Jefferson and his
Rip Van Wrinkle; about the days when Minnie
Maddern Fiske was dazzling girl in her teens
and Otis Skinner was a kid trying to make
good about the days when Shakespeare was
regularly played to packed houses, and it was
the fashion of actors to tear passion to rags
and declaim with all the force they could
muster.
But mostly he will talk about Edwin Booth
who was the greatest of them all-the great
est actor, by common agreement that America
ever produced, and one Of the greatest Ham,
lets that ever lived
Booth has been dead for decades, but his
fame still lives, and that means something
when you stop to figure that an actors fame
is about the most fleeting kind of fame there
is. novelist, a composer dramatist, a
painter-they leave something for future gen.
erations to read or listen to or look at and
as long their work lasts they will be remem-
bered. But actor deals with the most per-
ishable commodity there is-human emotion;
and when he dies there is nothing left, except
memories in the minds of theatergoers, a few
dusty programs, and inconsequential
echoes in the draughty wings of old theaters.
T HE Tooth anniversary of Booths birth is
being celebrated this Fall on November 13,
and because he was one actor who outlived his
generation, and did not get forgotten as soon
as he had left the stage his life and the things
he did are worth looking at anew.
His friends used to say that Edwin Booth
the greatest of Hamlets. also Hamlet N
real life; tragic, tortured figure, betrayed by
fate and fed upon heartbreak
Probably they overdrew it little. Booth was
kindly soul, with none of the Temperament"
that actors fourth his size are fond of dis
playing and he was not the kind to stalk about
morbidly muttering to himself about the rotten
hands life kept dealing him. But he did have
some atrocious luck, for all his tremendous
professional success, and that it served to rem
der a larger part of his life unhappy is beyond
question.
The worst blow that fate gave him came
from the hand of his brother, John Wilkes
Booth
Edwin Booth had just reached the heights
at the time of the Civil War. He had toured
the country, he had become famous, money
was rolling in In the Fall of 1864 he had won
q great success in New York by appearing III
"Hamlet" for 100 consecutive performance
record that has never been surpassed in
the American theater. John Barrymore equaled
1t in 1922, and then, out of respect for Booths
memory, refused to shatter it.
Anyway, Booth had had this great success
Interestingly enough, just before his record run
In Hamlet" began, he played in Julius
Caesar" with two brothers In the same cast
Junius Brutus Booth, 3D. was Cassius Edwin
himself Brutus and John Wilkes Booth
was Marc Antony. 1t was not long after that
that John wilkes Booths insane act In Ford's
Theater, here in Washington, was to cause
long gap in Edwin's dazzling career
1t was the night of April a. 1865, that
John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln to
death, vaulted onto the stage long enough To
fling Latin phrase at the astounded audience
it must have been terrihcally dramatic
scene, this troupers last appearance in
theater, what with the crack of his pistol, the
startled audience, his hourished dagger. his
last cry of defiance and his abrupt exit-and
fled off toward the south, to be hunted down
and slain in a burning barn by blue-coated
cavalrymen
CDWIN BOOTH Immediately retired from
l. the stage. He had had no connection with
his brothers act. Every one knew he had had
no connection with it. There was not the
slightest bit of rlnlor gossip to indicate that
he had known anything about it. But-he felt
that 1t would be wrong for him to go on with
his work before the public while that stain on
his fafMlys name was fresh in the public mind
so he retired.
He returned to the stage in January 1866