Background
Joseph Hart Boudrow was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 8, 1861, to James H. and Sarah E. Boudrow. His father, a Boston area junk dealer, was from Nova Scotia, the son of French immigrants who had settled there in the early 1800s.
Entertainer manager producer songwriter
Joseph Hart Boudrow was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 8, 1861, to James H. and Sarah E. Boudrow. His father, a Boston area junk dealer, was from Nova Scotia, the son of French immigrants who had settled there in the early 1800s.
Hart"s mother was a native of Massachusetts. While still in his teens Hart began touring with I. West. Baird"s Minstrel Show as an end man, the musician stationed at the end of a line of performers. Later he joined other minstrel troupes such as Simmons and Slocomb and Tony Pastors Minstrels before entering vaudeville to play Ko-Ko in West. South. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan"s Mikado and as a performer in Princess Idaho
In 1888 he joined forces with Frederick Hallen as Hallen and Hart and toured for six years in Later On, a musical comedy written by himself and H. Grattan Donnelly.
This success was followed by a two year run of The Idea, written with Herbert Hall Winslow. Hart next struck out on his own touring with his play The Gay Old Boy (1894-1895), A Tarrytown Widow (1897-1898), by C. T. Dazey, Foxy Grandpa (an adaptation from the Carl East Schultze comic strip, 1901-1905) and Girls Will Be Girls (1903-1904), the latter two written in collaboration with Melville Baker.
Hart"s later years were primarily spent as a writer and producer of vaudeville shows. Joseph Hart died suddenly on October 3, 1921 from a stroke he suffered at his New York residence on West Fifty-Fourth Street.