Some Useless Facts In The Theater World
John Wilkes Booth was the greatest matinée idol of his era. Through history books rarely mention it, the man who shot Lincoln was beloved and familiar to thousands of theatergoers and was especially popular with women, from whom he received a hundred fan letters a week. In fact, it was Booth's familiarity with the layout of Ford's Theater—he had played there many times—and his friendliness with the stagehands that allowed him to penetrate the security guard so easily the night of the shooting.
James O'Neill, father of the playwright Eugene O'Neill, acted in the play The Count of Monte Cristo no less than 5,352 times—an average of one performance a day every day for fourteen years. “I believe,” O' Neill once said, “that I should have lost my memory and mind altogether had I continued to keep up the strain.”
Noel Coward wrote Private Lives in two weeks.
Toward the end of her life, Sarah Bernhardt had a wooden leg and often wore it on stage. The “Divine Sarah” slept in a coffin, owned her own railroad car, and played Juliet when she was seventy.
Slapstick comedy is named after an actual slapping stick. The stick, which came to be equated with broad farce in the sixteenth century as part of the Italian commedia dell'arte, was used by the comic hero Harlequin to whack the rumps of artless stooges. It was made of two pieces of wood joined together to make a slapping sound when it hit.
Edwin Booth is the only actor in the American hall of Fame.
Stage bows were originally devised as a way for actors to thank the audience. The audience would or would not acknowledge each of the actors in turn, depending on how much they enjoyed the performances.