Sculptures Carved in Snow

The out-of-date reference was almost fifty years old when it was written, and the book containing it had been out of print for eighty years when I ran across the phrase, “roared like Booth and Barrett.”  This is one of the downsides to being a historian, references in old books are frequently so obscure as to lose all meaning.

Booth and Barrett?  This didn’t ring any bells.  I knew that a "Booth" killed Lincoln and that a "Barrett" is a type of rifle with such a ridiculously large recoil that you would swear you had put the wrong end of the rifle up to your shoulder.  Obviously, this turned out not to be the right answer. 

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, combines and trusts were common.  Large groups of businesses combined to control a market, to set prices, and to eliminate the competition.  The Booth-Barrett Combine was sort of like that, but in a unique field.  Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett were the two greatest actors of their day, and when they combined to form a partnership, they were an unbeatable combination that established traditions on the stage that live on.

Edwin Booth was perhaps the greatest actor of his day.  His father, Marcus Junius Booth was a famous English tragedian who, after moving to the United States in 1821, became the most famous actor of his day.  He was equally famous, or perhaps, infamous, for his alcoholism and drunken exploits (including a sadly prophetic death threat on the life of his personal friend, President Andrew Jackson).  His sons, Edwin, John Wilkes, and Junius Jr., would all become famous as actors before the Civil War.

The most accomplished actor of the Booths was Edwin, who performed on stages across the United States and Europe, and was famous for portraying Hamlet and Macbeth.  Edwin Booth was a world-renowned actor, but a horrible businessman.  He attempted to run his own theater in New York, but—despite his popularity with theater-goers—his bad management and spectacularly bad judgement in hiring brought him bankruptcy in just a few years.

Which brings us to Lawrence Barrett, another Shakespearean actor, who had also performed in both Europe and America.  Barrett said the theater was an art form where the actor carved "sculptures in snow".  While Barrett was also recognized as a great actor, even he admitted that he was no Booth, and his finely tuned business sense told him that the American theater market was not developed enough to sustain two great Shakespearean actors.  Since there wasn’t enough business for two separate touring acting companies, he offered a partnership to Booth in order to create one great acting company.

Together, they toured the country, giving over 250 performances in the thirty-week season (roughly Fall through Spring) and divided the proceeds, with Booth receiving 60% of the profits.  Barrett, besides acting alongside Booth, managed the entire tour: hiring actors and support staff, managing bookings, arranging travel and hotels, and providing the publicity—quite an undertaking in a time of limited communications.

As Booth would later admit when complimented on his good work under Barrett’s management:

Good work, eh?  Well, why should I not do good work, after all Barrett has done for me.  Why I never knew what c-o-m-f-o-r-t spelled before....I go in and dress, and smoke, and then act.  That’s all, absolutely all, that I have to do, except to put out my hand and take my surprisingly big share of the receipts now and then.  Good work, eh?  Well, I’ll give him the best that’s in me, he deserves it.

It was a rather large touring company with fifteen actors, six actresses, a child actor and his mother, a manager, four advance men, a treasurer, and a valet for Mr. Booth.  Minor actors, stagehands, and seamstresses would be hired locally as needed.  Booth and Barrett would travel in a specially-prepared Pullman car that included a dining room, sleeping compartments, and a library, while the rest of the company traveled in coach.  Despite the logistical nightmare, Barrett proved to be a genius in managing the touring company, and the profitable partnership lasted five years.

Barrett, sensing that the public would be eager to see the two famed actors, immediately raised the price of admission to the theaters from the usual price of $2 a seat, to $3.  A private box could be secured for $10 to $30.  Whenever possible, Barrett would book theaters that promised a percentage of the gate instead of a flat fee.  Barrett’s confidence in the public response paid off handsomely, the pair of actors, who would alternate roles every night, played to sold out performances with people paying as much as $1 each for standing room in the aisles.  Booth received the unheard-of salary of $250,000 a year.  (Neither Booth nor Barrett ever received nearly as large a salary touring independently.). 

Wherever Booth and Barrett played, the theaters were sold out.  On occasion, the orchestra was moved behind the stage in order to put in additional seats out front.  Don't think of this as Kenneth Branagh and Patrick Stewart play Macbeth—think of it as a rock concert with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. 

According to the newspaper reviews from the towns where the two actors performed, the plays were wondrously received.  In many ways, these performances permanently fixed the popularity of classical theater in America.  In places far removed from the eastern theater markets, local performance companies staged annual Shakespeare revivals long after Booth and Barrett had  stopped touring.

Not surprisingly, the Booth-Barrett Combine was not popular with other professional actors.  Not only did business drop at competing theaters in the towns where the duo performed, but theater business dropped for weeks before and after the two performed.  The performances became highly-anticipated events, where theater-goers hired coaches, bought new clothes, and staged parties after the plays.  Since most theater-goers were middle class, this annual extravagance meant saving funds for weeks before and after the actual event.

When advertising posters went up showing Booth as Hamlet, standing with his right arm extended with three fingers pointing skyward, Maurice Barrymore—a rival actor and patriarch of the famous acting clan—joked that it was Booth announcing the new price of tickets.

With his newfound wealth, Edwin Booth bought a brownstone on Gramercy Park in New York City, where he established a permanent club for actors, men of letters, and patrons of the arts.  The founding fifteen members of the Players Club included Booth, Barrett, Mark Twain, and William Tecumseh Sherman.  The club, still at the same location, recently celebrated the 184th birthday of Booth.

After they toured for five years, the health of both men had declined and they left the stage.  Booth spent his last years in his private apartment at the The Players Club, where his apartment remains as both a shrine and a museum to the founder.  It includes a poker table much favored by Mark Twain, and the skull Booth used to portray the remains of Yorick.  The skull once sat atop the neck of a horse thief whose last request—just before he was to be hanged—was that his skull be given to Junius Booth for use in Hamlet.