Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States
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Jefferson was born on February 20, 1829, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Jefferson and Cornelia Frances Thomas, a French exile from Santo Domingo who had married an actor, Thomas Burke, and was a widow with one son when Jefferson married her in 1826. Joseph Jefferson, III, therefore had English, Scotch, and French blood. His father, though an actor, was more interested in painting. From Joseph I he inherited a sunny, optimistic nature, sense of humor, and personal integrity, but no acting genius. To his son he passed on the kindly, humorous, happy disposition, the personal integrity, a love of art, and the acting genius which he had missed.
Education
The life of constant moving and acting in small plays was the only schooling young Jefferson ever had.
Career
During young Joe's early years, the father was acting and scenepainting in New York and the East, and the boy made his debut at the age of four in Washington. "Jim Crow" Rice, a famous early interpreter of Negro songs and dances, brought little Joe on in a bag, dumped him out on the stage blacked and dressed exactly like himself, and the child gave an imitation of his song and dance. In 1837 the father moved west with his wife, two children, and his stepson, Charles Burke. They went first to Chicago, then a mere village, and later down the middle border. The family acted in barns, halls, log houses even, and lived the hard life of frontier players. Jefferson's father died suddenly, of yellow fever, in Mobile, November 24, 1842, at the age of thirty-eight. The family were without funds, and young Joe, at the age of thirteen, was the man of the family, barnstorming the primitive South in roles beyond his years, and even following the American army into Mexico. He did not get back to New York till September 1849, when, a seasoned trouper of twenty, he came forward at Chanfrau's Theatre as Hans in Somebody Else. His half brother, Charles Burke, was also in the company. Some success in New York inspired him to organize a company and take a tour through the South. Later he played in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and by 1856 he had saved enough money for a trip to Europe, to study the theatre there.
In November 1856 he became a member of Laura Keene's company in New York and his hard apprenticeship was over. In this skilled company he made a hit as Dr. Pangloss in The Heir at Law and in October 1858 appeared as Asa Trenchard in Our American Cousin, in which E. A. Sothern appeared as Lord Dundreary. Both men became famous as a result of this play. In September 1859 Jefferson joined Dion Boucicault at the Winter Garden, where he first appeared as Caleb Plummer in Boucicault's version of The Cricket on the Hearth, and then as Salem Scudder in The Octoroon.
In 1861 Jefferson set out for Australia, where he remained four years, acting his successful roles and recovering his health. In 1865 he went to London and there carried out a long-cherished dream - to secure a new version of Rip Van Winkle in which he could play. There had been several stage versions of the story acted in America, the best by James Henry Hackett and Jefferson's half-brother, Charles Burke. Jefferson induced Boucicault to make a new version, based on Burke's, he himself suggesting the famous scene with the ghosts, in which only Rip speaks. The new play was acted on September 4, 1865, at the Adelphi Theatre, London, and Jefferson's performance was immediately recognized as one of those rare and precious things which come only once in a generation. He first acted the role in America at the Olympic, New York, September 3, 1866, and with the same effect.
From that time on, Jefferson gradually shelved all his other rôles with the exception of Caleb Plummer, Dr. Pangloss, and one or two more, until 1880, when he made a new acting version of The Rivals in which he elevated Bob Acres from a rustic boob to a quaint and whimsical eccentric. Thereafter he chiefly alternated Rip and Bob as his repertoire. This revival of The Rivals was made in Philadelphia at the Arch Street Theatre, with Mrs. Drew as Mrs. Malaprop. From 1866 on, too, his annual tours of the country became triumphs; every child in America was taken to see Rip as a part of its education.
From 1875 to 1877 he reappeared with great success in London. In later years his tours were confined to the autumn and spring. In summer, after 1889, he lived at "Crow's Nest" near Grover Cleveland, his friend, on Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, and in winter on his plantation in Louisiana or at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1890's he was in much demand as a lecturer, for in spite of his complete lack of a formal education he had formulated the laws of his art and could express them with apt phrase and illustration better, perhaps, than almost any other player since Talma, as may be seen by consulting his fascinating Autobiography. Jefferson's last appearance on the stage was in Paterson, New Jersey, May 7, 1904, as Caleb Plummer and Mr. Golightly in Lend Me Five Shillings. He had been on the stage for seventy-one years. He became ill the following winter, at his residence at Palm Beach, and died on Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, 1905. His grave is near his Cape Cod home.
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Membership
Jefferson at one time served as President of the Players' Club (1893).
Interests
Jefferson inherited his father's love for painting, and also for fishing, and spent much of his leisure indulging these hobbies.
Connections
Jefferson was twice married: first to Margaret Clements Lockyer, in 1850, who died in 1861, and second, in 1867, to Sarah Isabel Warren, a distant cousin. She died in 1894. His first son, Charles Burke Jefferson, was for many years his manager. His fifth child, Thomas, became an actor, and two sons by his second marriage went on the stage, thus making five generations of the Jefferson family in the theatre.