Background
Frank Maguire Mayo was born on April 18, 1839 on Essex Street, Boston, and at the age of fourteen went to California with his parents by way of Cape Horn. When he became an actor he discarded his family name, McGuire.
Frank Maguire Mayo was born on April 18, 1839 on Essex Street, Boston, and at the age of fourteen went to California with his parents by way of Cape Horn. When he became an actor he discarded his family name, McGuire.
Frank's first speaking part was the waiter in Raising the Wind, at the Adelphi Theatre, San Francisco, July 29, 1856. He lost his next job, at Maguire's Opera House, when as a super in Pizarro, he ruined a scene by mistaking a cue and cheering Rolla too soon. Junius Brutus Booth, Jr. , the Rolla of the production, was so enraged that he insisted on Mayo's dismissal. Then Mayo acted for five weeks in George Chapman's company at Sacramento, but quit when no pay was forthcoming, went the rounds of the towns and mining camps with Charles Wheatleigh's troupe, and fell in with Edwin Booth, for whom he played De Mauprat in Richelieu. Finally, in 1863, he returned to Maguire's as leading man in the same company from which he had been so ignominiously expelled. He finished his San Francisco engagement June 14, 1865, sailed for New York by the Panama route, and made his Eastern début August 8, 1865, as Badger in The Streets of New York, a part that he had originated on the Coast. Theatre-goers were astonished and delighted by the artistry with which he transformed Boucicault's crude sketch into something theatrically fine, and from then till his death Mayo was one of the most popular actors on the American stage. His first New York appearance was as Ferdinand in The Tempest, at the Grand Opera House, March 31, 1869. He appeared often, and with much satisfaction, in the leading roles in Münch-Bellinghausen's Ingomar, Sheridan Knowles's Virginius, Bulwer Lytton's Richelieu, and other favorites of that class, of which his own Nordeck (1883), written in collaboration with John G. Wilson, was a characteristic example. Hamlet and Macbeth were in his regular repertory, and he was also an excellent Iago and Richard III. He was most popular, however, and was probably at his best, in American character parts. Two of these are inseparably associated with his interpretation of them. Davy Crockett, which was written for him by Frank Hitchcock Murdoch, was first put on September 23, 1872, at the Opera House, Rochester, New York, of which Mayo was the manager. It was then hardly a success, but Mayo tried it again from time to time, and after a few years it became extremely popular. On June 9, 1879, he began an English tour with it at the Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool. After its 2, 000th performance Mayo lost track of the number of times he appeared in it. In its final form the play may have been as much his work as it was Murdoch's. Mayo was the author, also, of the stage version of Mark Twain's Puddin'head Wilson, which was first played at Proctor's Opera House, Hartford, April 8, 1895. His interpretation of the title role was a masterpiece of restrained humor and mellow realism. He gave his last performance of the play at the Broadway Theatre, Denver, June 6, 1896. Two days later he died of heart disease on a train near Grand Island, Nebr. He was buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia.
Mayo was married to Mary D. Mayo. They had three children.