Edwin Booth
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Image:Edwinbooth.jpg Edwin Thomas Booth (November 13, 1833 – June 7, 1893), born near Bel Air, Maryland, was a famous 19th century American actor. He was the son of another famous actor, Junius Brutus Booth, who named Edwin after Edwin Forrest and Thomas Flynn, two of Junius' colleagues.
Edwin's younger brother John Wilkes Booth, also an actor, assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Ironically, Edwin Booth saved Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert, from serious injury or even death by pulling him up onto a train platform after Robert had fallen.
Edwin Booth made his stage debut in Richard III in Boston in 1849. In his early appearances he usually performed alongside his father. Two years later, Edwin had his first starring role, standing in for the elder Booth.
After his father's death in 1852, Booth went on a worldwide tour, visiting Australia and Hawaii, and finally gaining acclaim of his own during a performance run in Sacramento, California in 1856. He would eventually be recognized as the preeminent American actor of his day. Some theatre historians call him the greatest American Hamlet and the greatest American actor of the 19th century.
From 1863 to 1867, Booth managed the Winter Garden Theater in New York City, mostly staging Shakespearean tragedies. In 1865, Booth purchased the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
After Lincoln's assassination, the infamy associated with the Booth name forced Booth to abandon the stage for many months, a period dramatized in the 1955 Richard Burton movie Prince of Players, which was adapted from the biography of the same name by Eleanor Ruggles (ISBN 0837165296). He made his return to the stage at the Winter Garden in January 1866, playing the lead in Hamlet. Hamlet would eventually become Booth's signature role.
In 1867, a fire damaged the Winter Garden Theatre, resulting in the building's subsequent demolition. Booth then built the Booth Theatre (completed in 1869) and continued a renowned acting career. The panic of 1873 caused the bankruptcy of the Booth Theatre in 1874. After the bankruptcy, Booth went on another worldwide tour, eventually regaining his fortune.
Booth was married to Mary Devlin from 1860 to 1863, the year of her death. He later remarried, wedding Mary McVicker in 1869, and becoming a widower again in 1881.
In 1888 Booth founded the Players' Club in New York. His final performance was as his signature role of Hamlet, in 1891 at the Brooklyn Academy. He died in 1893 at the Players' Club he founded. He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.
The Players' Club still stands, and holds a portrait of Booth by the American painter John Singer Sargent.
There is also a chamber in Mammoth Cave in Kentucky called "Booth's Amphitheatre" - so called because Booth actually entertained visitors there.