February 3–10, 2000

cover story

Superstar, part 2

by Steve Cohen

continued from Part 1

The Perfect Candidate

Right after the Astor Place riot, a fellow actor said that the government should give Forrest a medal for driving Macready out of the country. But Forrest was disappointed to find that some newspapers didn’t treat him as a hero but criticized his followers for causing trouble, and blamed him for inciting them. Confused and upset and feeling some guilt, he retired from the stage for a year, and thereafter avoided any kind of political involvement.

Not that he wasn’t wooed.

Forrest had been friendly with Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812 against the British who later served two terms as president. Forrest and his wife visited the retired president at his home, The Hermitage, in Tennessee, and Jackson adherents asked Forrest to run for Congress. They thought that Forrest, because of his public stand against British acting, would attract votes from non-English ethnic groups, including the rising number of Irish immigrants. His staunch patriotism and his identification with heroic characters would have made him an attractive candidate — "No one carried the democratic fever to the stage with such fierce passion," says Forrest biographer Richard Moody — but he declined.

Instead, Forrest used his fame and wealth to help American playwrights. From 1829 to 1847 he sponsored contests for new plays about Americans, paid cash to the authors and put the winning works on stage with his own acting company. And in a lasting display of his love for the theatrical profession, he left his fortune to establish a home for ill and aging actors.

The first site for the Forrest Home was the actor’s summer residence, Springbrook, which he built in 1865 on 100-plus acres in Northeast Philadelphia, from the Delaware River to Frankford Avenue adjoining Cottman Avenue; he stipulated that it be made an actors’ retirement home after his death. In 1926 the city bought that acreage to build textile mills, and Forrest’s estate opened a new home at 4849 Parkside Ave.

The residents were from all aspects of theater: vaudevillians, Shakespeareans, comedians, extras. Nicholas Joy, the father in The Philadelphia Story, lived there in its last years. So did Bram Nossen from the original cast of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. There was a maximum of only 12 residents at a time, because Forrest wanted it to be a real home, not an institution. The residents lived among souvenirs of Forrest’s career — his costumes, suits of armor, daggers, dueling pistols and knives, including some Bowie knives given to him by their inventor, Jim Bowie, who was one of his friends.

"That home was closed in 1986 when we couldn’t get guests anymore," says Gloria Justin, past president of the Edwin Forrest Home. Most of the contents were donated to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. But one set of treasures — a series of original glass negatives that Matthew Brady shot of Forrest in the 1860s — went to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and a William Rush statue of Comedy and Tragedy was bought by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Forrest Home then merged with the Actors Fund of America, which operates a home in Englewood, NJ.

"He was a wonderful benefactor for his fellow actors," says Justin. "And the beautiful thing is that he started his good works in his youthful days when he built a mansion and said he’d donate it to elderly actors. But he lost that house in that messy divorce."

 

Jealous Lover

"Messy" is an understatement. Forrest married the young British actress Catherine Sinclair in 1840; they met during one of his first trips abroad, when he was 34 and she 19. Forrest’s growing problems with Macready and the British public may have had a corrosive effect on the marriage. Or perhaps it was a case of life imitating art.

Certainly the problems between Edwin and Catherine escalated during the time that the feud with Macready became intense. Forrest was appearing in Cincinnati as Othello, and his Iago — the man who inflames Othello’s jealousy — was an actor named George Jamieson. One afternoon in December 1848, Forrest went to a portrait artist for a sitting, leaving his wife alone in their rooms at the City Hotel.

Forrest told the story himself, in a court affidavit: "When I came back and entered my private parlor I found Mrs. Forrest standing between the knees of Mr. Jamieson, who was sitting on the sofa with his hands upon her person. I was amazed and confounded and asked her what this meant. She said, with perturbation, that Mr. Jamieson had been pointing out her phrenological developments."

	Congratulated for his playing of Lear, Forrest once replied indignantly: "For God’s sake, sir, I do not play Lear. I am Lear!"

Forrest took no immediate action, but in January 1849, while Catherine was visiting her sister, Forrest broke into a locked drawer and found a romantic letter to her from Jamieson. A few days later he ordered her out of the house. Her lawyers claimed that Forrest had had affairs with actresses and that one of them went to a doctor for an abortion. The final court ruling gave Mrs. Forrest all that she asked for in property and alimony. She stayed in the United States and later became manager of a theater in San Francisco. After the divorce, in 1852, Forrest built the brownstone mansion at Broad and Master Streets that is now the home of Freedom Theatre.

In his 60s, Forrest was impaired by arthritis. Sometimes he had to lie prone on stage before the curtain went up and had to be helped into position for each scene. He saw his popularity challenged by Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, who used a less declamatory and more conversational delivery. The elder brother, ironically, had been named Edwin in honor of Forrest. In his last years, the infirm Forrest limited himself to dramatic public readings. He died in December of 1872 at age 66.

 

Still the One

Forrest’s superstardom may have dimmed, but he still has his ardent fans. Theater personalities Hal Prince, Celeste Holm, Barnard Hughes and Hope Lange are among the 240 members of an Edwin Forrest Society, pledging their money to help ill and aging actors in the Forrest tradition. A group of admirers gathers at his grave in Philadelphia on his birthday, March 9, to lay a wreath and drink a toast to his memory. Others observe a provision of Forrest’s will by gathering to read the Declaration of Independence aloud each July 4.

Stephen Sell, retired manager of the Annenberg Center, has led the graveside ceremonies — in the courtyard of what used to be Old St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (now a community center) at Third and Spruce — for several years. "We come together to honor him because he was important to Philadelphia and to the theater," he says. The late Adele Magner often came, because Forrest rewarded new playwrights and Magner’s Young Playwrights Festival tried to maintain that tradition.

But there are few fans more faithful than the present-day occupants of Forrest’s first home, the Walnut Street Theatre, and its producing artistic director. Having the sculpture of Forrest as Coriolanus was not enough. Nor was commissioning Will Stutts to pay homage to the actor in his new play. What was still needed? Bernard Havard drove to Lancaster to get it: a lock of Forrest’s hair.

The hair was auctioned off in the recent auction of items deaccessioned by the Charlotte Cushman Club, the actors’ guest house and library that recently closed its doors to devote its attentions solely to raising scholarship funds. The brown lock was cut by a friend after the actor died.

Havard reports that there were quite a few people bidding against him at Lancaster’s Smythe Auction House, but he raised the ante so he could bring Forrest memorabilia back for his theater. The final price for Forrest’s curl: $325. In addition, Havard bought (all with the approval of his board) a glass caster from underneath Forrest’s bedpost, a calling card, a photo, playbills and a biography. The hair is already in a frame and may be exhibited in the Walnut lobby across from the statue.

If this seems to verge on enshrinement, it’s a fitting tribute to an actor whose impact lasted long beyond the end of his career, and whose life became legend even before his death.

"Forrest was a big, over-the-top man who was representative of the tempest of his times," says Will Stutts. "He was America’s first native-born actor, and a bounder who fell madly in love with a woman who was unfaithful."

People magazine would have lapped him up.

Forrest Fact

When Forrest played Iago to Kean’s Othello in Albany in December of 1825, he changed the characterization from the customary brooding malevolence. Instead, Forrest played Iago as "a superficially gay, dashing and lighthearted fellow," according to biographer Richard Moody. Moody gives an example. Iago’s speech to Othello ("Look to your wife. Observe her well with Cassio… ") was spoken in "a frank and easy fashion, suddenly changing to a hiss into Othello’s ear" on the last words of the speech. The audience reacted with gasps to Forrest’s delivery and Kean’s startled expression. According to an Albany reporter, Kean said to Forrest afterward, "In the name of God, where did you get that?" and Forrest replied that it was his own instinct.