page_title: George L. Fox (clown)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: George L. Fox (clown) / Career
caption_attribution_description: Carte de Visite portrait photograph of clown George L. Fox.
context_page_description: George Washington Lafayette Fox was an American actor and dancer who became known for his clown roles and who based the characterisations on his inspiration Joseph Grimaldi.
context_section_description: By the time Fox had reached the age of twenty his apprenticeship had failed, leaving him to return to the family business. He toured for a while with Howard and his sister as L. Fox, playing minor dramatic and comedic roles. He left their company in 1850 to try his hand as a low comedian at the Bowery’s National Theatre on Chatham Street. There he finally found his niche, becoming a popular headliner over the following seven years. For the remainder of his career Fox would play at venues that catered primarily to working-class audiences.
  In 1853 Fox directed and performed in the dramatization of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by his cousin George Aiken and performed the year before by his brother-in-law’s company at Peal’s Museum in Troy, New York. The cast that performed at the National included Fox as Phineas Fletcher; his brother Charles as Gumption Cute; brother-in-law George C. Howard as Augustine St. Clair; sister Caroline as Eva St. Clair; William J. Le Moyne as Deacon Perry; and Greene C. Germon as Uncle Tom.
  Inspired by the famous Ravel Brothers to undertake pantomime, he created a distinct place for that kind of entertainment in New York City, first at the National Theatre and later at the New Bowery Theatre, of which he was for a time both lessee and manager in partnership with James R. Lingard. Fox continued to surrounded himself with increasingly competent group of comedians and acrobats that included his brother, Charles Kemble Fox, who had become popular as an actor and a clown performer. Though often overlooked by the theater critics of the day, Fox’s popularity in burlesque houses could at the time be compared to that of Edwin Booth’s playing Hamlet, a role Fox also played except in a much lighter vein.
caption: Fox as Humpty Dumpty
exif: {}