Charles Melton Walcot

Background

Charles Melton Walcot was born on July 1, 1840 in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Charles Melton Walcot and his wife.

Career

He made his first appearance on the stage in Charleston, S. C. , in 1858 under the name of Brown but soon resumed his own name. Like many youthful stock actors, he began with old men's parts. In 1859 he played at the National Theatre, Cincinnati, in 1860-61 at Richmond, Va. , and in 1861-62 at the Winter Garden, New York, where he had character parts. He then appeared with Laura Keene at her theatre in Old Heads and Young Hearts and other plays. In 1864 Walcot played Horatio during the famous hundred-night run of Booth's Hamlet in New York. Three years later the Walcots moved to Philadelphia, where they remained, chiefly at the Walnut Street Theatre, for a number of years. In 1872, however, Walcot supported Charlotte Cushman and played Fagin to Lucille Western's Nancy Sikes. He later played at McVicker's, Chicago, and at the Madison Square and Palmer's in New York, and toured the entire country in Bronson Howard's The Banker's Daughter (1879). In 1887 the Walcots joined Daniel Frohman's famous Lyceum Stock Company in New York. There they enjoyed a period of long runs, with light work, great public favor, and the opportunity for domestic stability and social life. In an interview published in the New York Dramatic Mirror, April 18, 1896, Walcot contrasted conditions in the nineties with those of his youth, when he had to be able to support visiting stars in their repertoires, alternating, for example, Iago and Othello with Booth on successive nights, and getting up new plays constantly. His roles at the Lyceum included those of dignified or comic middle-aged or elderly men in plays like The Wife, by H. C. de Mille and David Belasco (1887), and The Princess and the Butterfly (1897) and Trelawney of the Wells (1898) by Pinero; he also appeared in Pinero's Lady Bountiful, in a revival of Old Heads and Young Hearts, and many of the other Lyceum plays. After the turn of the century his parts grew fewer, for the last of the stock companies had vanished. Early in the century he supported Otis Skinner for two years in The Duel. In 1908 he acted with John Barrymore, in 1909-10 with Henrietta Crosman. In the Empire Theatre revival of Trelawney of the Wells, January 1911, he again took his role of Sir William Gower. He was then seventy-one. His wife had died (June 2, 1906), and he sorely missed the companionship which had characterized both their domestic and artistic life. He spent his last years inactively in his home in New York, where he died.

Achievements

• He was an actor famous for plays such as The Princess and the Butterfly (1897), The Wife (1887), The Banker's Daughter (1879) and others.

Personality

In appearance he somewhat resembled his father, though his forehead was less doming and his face and aspect ruddier. In his Lyceum days he often wore a moustache, and offstage could have passed for a genial though dignified British squire. His dramatic schooling under such players as Laura Keene, Edwin Booth, and Charlotte Cushman had been thorough, and he had profited by it, adding to natural gifts as a comedian the skill to touch any required stop. In method he bridged a gap between the older, broad romantic acting and the new realistic method, and in his best years, at the Lyceum, he brought to the nascent new drama, with intelligent adaptability, the authority of the "old school. "

Connections

On May 31, 1863, he married Isabella Nickinson, a young actress of sixteen, and thereafter until her death they always appeared together.

Father:

Charles Melton Walcot

Spouse:

Isabella Nickinson