Neil Burgess

Background

Neil Burgess was born on June 29, 1851 in Boston, his mother's name being Ellen A. Lunt.

Education

He was educated in the public schools of Cambridge, and, after a brief time in business, made his professional beginning, at the age of nineteen, with Spaulding's Bell Ringers, and in the vaudeville theatres.

Career

One evening in Providence, while Burgess was stage manager with a company on tour playing The Quiet Family, the actress who had been impersonating Mrs. Barnaby Bibbs was unable to appear, and Burgess took her place, for that performance only, as he thought. Although he disliked his task, he found favor with the audience, and his destiny was thereby settled.

He starred first in 1879 in Vim, or, A Visit to Puffy Farm. Interspersed with his experiences in this play were appearances, beginning in 1879, in Widow Bedott, or, A Hunt for a Husband, a dramatization of The Widow Bedott Papers. In it was utilized the treadmill device for a horse race later used effectively and with great spectacular effect in the chariot race in Ben Hur.

When not on the road they made their home at Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, during the years of Burgess's prosperity.

As a reward for his stage success, he acquired considerable wealth, but lost the greater part of it through injudicious investments and unprofitable theatrical ventures. He attempted a tour of England with The County Fair in 1897, but the English public failed to understand and appreciate his peculiar type of humor.

During his last years on the stage he gave a condensed version of The County Fair in vaudeville.

Achievements

• His most popular part was Abigail Prue, and his most popular play "The County Fair", written by Charles Barnard, and produced in Burlington, New Jersey, October 6, 1888, and at Proctor's Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, March 5, 1889, after which it was acted more than five thousand times during the ensuing seasons.

Views

After his entire life on the stage was spent in grotesque impersonations in which he burlesqued rather than interpreted the eccentric personalities of elderly women. For his effects, and for the laughter across the footlights, he relied largely upon extravagances of feminine costume.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• George C. Odell later reflected on these roles: "I still see him as Widow Bedott in the kitchen, making pies, straightening out the affairs of the neighborhood and personifying, in spite of his sex, the attribuates of a managing woman. He was not the least bit effeminate, not at all like the usual female impersonator of minstrelsy or of variety, and yet he was Widow Bedott to the life, and with little suggestion of burlesque. "

Interests

• Burgess was also interested in inventions tied to the stage and backed a turntable device that allowed horses to run at full speed on stage, and another device that simulated the sound of a large crowd.

Connections

In San Francisco, September 7, 1880, Burgess had married a member of his company, Mary E. Stoddart, a niece of James H. Stoddart, the actor. She accompanied him on his tours through many seasons, and died in 1905, leaving one son.

Mother:

Ellen A. Lunt

Wife:

Mary E. Stoddart

References

• The Oxford Companion to American Theatre