Edwin Forrest

Edwin Forrest (March 9, 1806 - December 12, 1872), was an American actor. Forrest was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of Scottish and German descent.

Acting career

Forrest made his first stage appearance on November 27, 1820, at the Walnut Street Theatre, in "Homes Douglas". He soon gained fame for portraying blackface caricatures of African Americans. Constance Rourke wrote that his impression was so believable he often mingled in the streets with African Americans unnoticed. He allegedly fooled one old black woman into taking him for a friend and then convinced her to join him in his stage performance that night.Rourke, Constance (1931). "American Humor: A Study of the National Character". Quoted in Watkins 83.]

New York success

In 1826 he had a great success in New York as Othello, and in 1829 he was featured as Metamora in the play "Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags" by John Augustus Stone.

He played at Drury Lane in the "Gladiator" in 1836, but his Macbeth in 1843 was hissed by the English audience, and his affront to rival actor William Charles Macready in Edinburgh shortly afterwards when he stood up in a private box and hissed Macready was fatal to his popularity in Britain. His jealousy of Macready resulted in the Astor Place riot in 1849.

In 1837 Forrest had married Catherine, daughter of John Sinclair, an English singer. By 1850, the couple sought divorce, after Forrest's affair with actress Josephine Clifton; he claimed that he had found a love letter to his wife from fellow actor George W. Jamieson. [Baker, Thomas N. "Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame". New York, Oxford University Press, 2001: 116. ISBN 0-19-512073-6] Forrest and Catharine separated in April 1849 and he moved to Philadelphia where he filed for divorce in February 1850, though the Pennsylvania legislature denied his divorce application. [Beers, Henry A. "Nathaniel Parker Willis". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913: 309.] The divorce became a "cause célébre" and the well-known writer Nathaniel Parker Willis was caught in the middle. Willis defended Catharine, who maintained her innocence, in his magazine "Home Journal" and suggested that Forrest was merely jealous of her intellectual superiority. [Beers, Henry A. "Nathaniel Parker Willis". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.: 311.] On June 17, 1850, shortly after Forrest had filed for divorce in the New York Supreme Court, [Beers, Henry A. "Nathaniel Parker Willis". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913: 312.] Forrest beat Willis with a gutta-percha whip in New York's Washington Square, shouting "this man is the seducer of my wife". [Baker, Thomas N. "Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame". New York, Oxford University Press, 2001: 115. ISBN 0-19-512073-6] Willis, who was recovering from a rheumatic fever at the time, was unable to fight back.Beers, Henry A. "Nathaniel Parker Willis". Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913: 313.] Willis's own wife soon received an anonymous letter suggesting that Willis was, in fact, involved with Forrest's wife.Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 112. ISBN 0465092888] Willis later sued Forrest for assault and, by March 1852, was awarded $2,500 plus court costs. Throughout the Forrest divorce case, which lasted six weeks, several witnesses made additional claims that Catherine Forrest and Nathaniel Parker Willis were having an affair, including a waiter who claimed he had seen the couple "lying on each other". As the press reported, "thousands and thousands of the anxious public" awaited the court's verdict; ultimately, the court sided with Catherine Forrest and Willis's name was cleared. [Yellin, Jean Fagan. "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Civitas Books, 2004: 113. ISBN 0465092888] The whole affair hurt Forrest's reputation and soured his temper. His last appearance was as "Richelieu" in Boston in 1871.

In his later years, Forrest lobbied for the rights of smaller theatres against the increasingly powerful conglomerated theatre companies, earning him the nickname "Little Man Edwin." His love of the theatre was unbounded, and he is one of the few whose memory survives to this day, for he used his considerable accumulated wealth to support his fellow actors, perhaps in appreciation of the fact that supporting actors need themselves to be supported as they get older.

This began in 1865, the year of Lincoln's assassination by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a time when the public held those in the acting profession in low regard, if not contempt. He sheltered actors at his summer home near Philadelphia, and in 1876, four years after his death at the age of 66, his will instructed that there should be formed the Forrest Home for retired actors in Philadelphia, which was to last for over one hundred years before being folded into the much larger Actors Fund facility in Englewood, New Jersey. There his name lives on, in the Edwin Forrest Wing.

See Lawrence Barrett's "Edwin Forrest" (Boston, 1881).

See also Edwin Forrest House.

References

External links

*Find A Grave|id=354
* [http://www.josephhaworth.com/edwin_forrest.htm Edwin Forrest biography and photo gallery]