The Indispensable Indian: Edwin Forrest, Pushmataha, and Metamora

Edwin Forrest, then a not-yet-famous actor, spent the summer of 1825 living in the greater New Orleans area among the Choctaw. It has been alleged that he spent these months with his friend Choctaw chief Pushmataha. From this relationship, Forrest learned how to play “Indian,” acquiring knowledge that informed his later interpretation of the title character in John August Stone's 1829 play Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags. Accounts of Forrest's time with Pushmataha appear in biographies of the actor and critical assessments of his acting. In none of these texts is the fact of their relationship disputed.

From Broadway Tabernacle to the Gettysburg Battlefield: Did Edwin Forrest Influence Abraham Lincoln?

“Threescore years and two have now elapsed since our fathers ventured on the grand experiment of freedom.” So said the renowned actor Edwin Forrest in a Fourth of July address at New York City's Broadway Tabernacle in 1838. The similarity to the start of the Gettysburg Address in 1863 is striking: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty.”

Joseph Jefferson: Dean of the American Theatre. By Arthur Bloom. Savannah, GA: Frederic C. Beil, 2000; pp. 506. Illustrations. $35.00 hardcover.

The first question to pose of Arthur Bloom's fine new biography of Joseph Jefferson is, Why did it take so long? Not Bloom's work, which has been long awaited for the obvious reason of its exhaustive research, but, rather, why has it taken until the new millennium for any scholarly biography to be written of arguably America's most popular comedian of the nineteenth century? Modern studies of Edwin Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Charlotte Cushman have appeared alongside hosts of books on lesser figures, but, for Jefferson, readers had to be content with appreciations by friends such as William Winter, Francis Wilson, daughter-in-law Eugenie Paul Jefferson, and granddaughter Eleanor Farjeon. And, of course, there was the Autobiography. That most delightful of all theatrical memoirs may explain the absence of biographical treatment. It seemed to be all there, a life retold with more charm than any historian could muster.

“Forbid Them Not“: Child Actor Labor Laws and Political Activism in the Theatre

Political activism among actors has become common in twentieth-century America, from patriotic support for war bonds in the two world wars to antiwar declarations during the Vietnam era; from campaigning for presidential hopefuls to more recent environmental activism. We may forget, then, that actors, wary of social disapproval, traditionally had maintained a low political profile in America. The spread-eagle rhetoric of Edwin Forrest may have made his Democratic sympathies well known in antebellum America, but the subsequent actions of John Wilkes Booth only reinforced actors' belief that they were best served by political quietism.