Junius Brutus Booth was an American actor. He was father of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U. S. President Abraham Lincoln.
Background
Junius Booth was born on May 1, 1796, in London, England, the son of Richard Booth, a lawyer, and the grandson of John Booth, a silversmith. His mother had been a Miss Game or Gam. The Booths were related to the Wilkes family and shared the radical views of John Wilkes. In his youth Richard Booth ran away from home to join the American Revolutionists although he only got as far as Paris; in his later years he is said to have kept in his drawing-room a picture of George Washington before which he insisted that all visitors should bow in reverence.
Education
Junius Brutus Booth early showed an embarrassing multiplicity of talents, especially for painting, poetry, sculpture, and female seduction. After learning the art of printing, studying a little law, and contemplating the career of a midshipman, he finally, when seventeen years old, and much against his father's will, went on the stage.
Career
Junius Booth’s first appearance was with an amateur company in a temporary theatre in Tottenham Court Road in the part of Frank Rochdale in Colman's John Bull, but he soon obtained regular employment with a company of comedians under Penley and Jonas at Peckham and later at Deptford. His début with them was in the rôle of Campillo, a minor character in The Honeymoon, on December 13, 1813. During the next year, after a severe illness, he accompanied the same company on a tour of some months in Holland and Belgium. In the summer of 1815 he filled an engagement with the Worthing and Brighton Theatres, in the ensuing season played unimportant parts at Covent Garden, and then filled another engagement at Worthing and Brighton. His appearances as Fitzharding in the comedy of Smiles and Tears, as Bertram in Bertram, and as Sir Giles Overreach, all aroused favorable comment so that he was engaged to appear at Covent Garden in the rôle of Richard III on February 12, 1817. His striking similarity in appearance and manner to Edmund Kean challenged comparison with the most famous actor of the day, and a furious discussion arose in the public press between the "Boothites" and the "Keanites. " There seems to have been no just ground for the charge of imitation which was brought against Booth: both actors belonged to the realistic school of Cooke, but Booth gave his lines differently from Kean and his emphasis was more intelligent. After a successful repetition of the performance of Richard III, Booth not unnaturally asked for an increase of salary at Covent Garden; this being refused, he was persuaded by Kean to join the latter at Drury Lane on a three-years' contract, but after a single notable performance of Iago to Kean's Othello, he became convinced on good grounds that he was going to be kept subordinate to Kean; forthwith he promptly returned to Covent Garden and signed a three years' contract with that house.
This unprecedented struggle between the two leading theatres of England for the services of an actor of twenty-one, together with Booth's carelessness in regard to legal ties, made him the temporary center of English theatrical history. His reappearance at Covent Garden was the signal for a riot in the theatre, and the play was given entirely in pantomime, as no words could be heard above the storm of catcalls, hissings, and applause. His subsequent appearances were marked by similar scenes but with decreasing vehemence; gradually the excitement subsided, and Booth now paid the penalty for his previous notoriety by having to play to smaller houses; nevertheless he ended the season with an established reputation as one of the leading actors on the English stage. In the following year he toured the provinces and in the autumn returned to Covent Garden where he repeatedly appeared as Richard III and as Iago and also added the innovation of playing Shylock in Jewish dialect. In 1820 his most important activities were an engagement as King Lear (Nahum Tate's version) at Covent Garden, a long run at the Cobourg Theatre in The Lear of Private Life and another in Horatii and Curiatii, an engagement at Drury Lane where he played Iago to Kean's Othello, Edgar to his Lear, and Pierre to his Jaffier, and a particularly noteworthy performance of Julius Cæsar at Drury Lane in which Booth played Cassius to the Brutus of James W. Wallack and the Antony of John Cooper.
In 1821, Booth visited France and Madeira and then in April sailed on the ship Two Brothers for America. Landing at Norfolk, Virginia, Booth immediately obtained an engagement at Richmond, followed by one in the Park Theatre, New York, and others in Boston, Philadelphia, and the leading Southern cities. In the following summer he purchased a large farm in a beautiful secluded tract of woodland near Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland, twenty-three miles from Baltimore. Here in a comfortable log cabin, with his vegetable garden, orchard, and vineyard, his fishpond and herd of sheep, the actor spent as much time each year as he could steal from his profession.
The most important events in Booth's long stage career in America were his performance of Pescara, a part expressly written for him, in Sheil's Apostate at the Park Theatre in June 1827; his stage management of the Camp Street Theatre, New Orleans, in 1828, when he also appeared at the Théâtre d'Orléans as Oreste in Racine's Andromaque in French; his management in 1831 of the Adelphi Theatre in Baltimore when he first introduced Charles Kean to an American audience, in Hamlet, he himself gracefully taking the minor part of the Second Grave Digger; and his playing of Pierre to Edwin Forrest's Jaffier and of Othello to Forrest's Iago in September 1831 at the Park Theatre. He made tours of England in 1825-1826 and in 1836-1837, the first unsuccessful because of the hard times, and the second saddened by the death of a favorite son.
Booth now became increasingly subject to temporary fits of insanity; in one of these during a trip to the South in 1838 he attempted to drown himself and also one night attacked his manager, Thomas Flynn, with an andiron, receiving in the encounter a broken nose which permanently marred his handsome countenance and somewhat nasalized his melodious voice. From this time he appeared in the theatre less frequently, although he played every year in Boston and New Orleans where he was an especial favorite. In the spring of 1852 he and Edwin Booth, who had now been on the stage for several years, joined the younger Junius Brutus Booth, also an actor, in California; after some weeks of fairly successful performances in San Francisco and Sacramento, the elder Booth decided to return home. He stopped on the way at New Orleans, where he played for the last time, in a series of six performances at the St. Charles Theatre. Having overtaxed his strength, he caught a severe cold and died alone in his cabin on the steamboat J. S. Chenoweth on the way to Cincinnati. His funeral in Cincinnati was attended by great crowds of people, including throngs of negroes. The body was later removed to Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore.
Achievements
Junius Booth was the foremost tragedian of his day in America. He was essentially an emotional rather than intellectual actor, depicting best of all the passions of ambition, jealousy, hatred, fear, and revenge. His best rôles were those of villains and semi-villains; Richard III, Iago, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, Pescara, Luke in Riches, and Sir Edward Mortimer in Colman's The Iron Chest. He was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.
Religion
An amateur student of the Koran, Catholic theology, and occultism, Booth believed in the transmigration of souls and the equality of man.
Personality
Booth was a vegetarian both in theory and practise, on his farm he refused to permit even the most noxious animals to be killed, and at least on one occasion he went to the length of arranging an elaborate funeral for some of his dumb friends. Equally noteworthy, despite Booth's irascibility and moodiness, was his erratic kindness toward every type of human being.
Interests
Booth was a remarkable linguist familiar with German, Dutch, and Hebrew.
Connections
On May 8, 1815 he was married, in London, to Marie Christine Adelaide Delannoy, with whom he had eloped from Brussels; later, he deserted her after she had borne him a son, Richard Junius, who served in the Confederate army, and a daughter, who died in infancy. On January 13, 1821, Booth was married to Mary Anne Holmes.
