Headline: “Booth saves Lincoln!”
That actually could be a headline. John Wilkes Booth had an older brother (also an actor) that was on the same railway platform as Abraham’s son Robert Todd Lincoln during (or maybe just before?) the Civil War. Robert fell down between the train and the platform but was saved by the older Booth by the scruff of his coat collar just as he was about to disappear.
IIRC, the older Booth had already disavowed his brother for his sessionist views.
Hollyweirdo before Hollyweird was a thing.
Thanks. I never knew that. JW Boothe was a grade A. horse’s arse. Poor Robert Todd didn’t survive to adulthood, but this save was the Boothe family’s finest hour.
As an aside, Edwin Booth continued after the war as one of America’s leading actors. The public did not hold his brother’s actions against him. Of course, this was in the aftermath of the Civil War, which had torn many families apart.
Edwin lived long enough to be recorded. There is a wonderful CD that I found many years ago at the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC of early recordings of many of the now legendary Shakespearian actors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these go back to the earliest experiments with sound recording. What better subject to choose for such demonstrations of technology?
It is interesting to hear these legendary voices, but it is also a fascinating echo of the shifts in performance styles and audience expectations. The early recordings go back long before actors could wear hidden microphones, there was no amplification, and there were no cameras permitting closeups, dialogues in low tones and even whispers, and naturalism in delivery. Actors had to plant their feet firmly on stage, take a deep breath, project an unaided voice to the back row of the balcony, and eee-none-see-ate very clearly to be understood. Those recordings sound terribly stilted today. They were functional necessities at the time.
The Folger no longer has that CD available; I checked the last time I was there, fairly recently, and I sounded off about it. It is exactly the kind of thing that a top Shakespearian museum and research collection should offer. I’ve not checked to see if it’s still available elsewhere or in other formats.
Junius Brutus Booth Jr. was the premier Shakespearean actor of the mid-nineteenth century, acclaimed in Britain and the United States. Their father was British born, and a steadfast republican (anti-monarchist), hence Junius was named for a famous Roman republican. John Wilkes (John Wilkes, not John Wilkes Booth) had been a republican member of Parliament.
After their father died, their mother came to live with Junius in New York. John came to live with them, too, as his mother appreciated her youngest son’s company. John, who was pro-slavery and bitterly opposed to Lincoln would engage in tireless harangues about Lincoln, secession, and the war, which annoyed his more or less Republican brother, who supported Lincoln and emancipation. John was sort of like your liberal brother-in-law. He couldn’t change his mind and would not change the subject. Eventually, Junius threw him out.
Interestingly, the Booth brothers (Edwin was a prominent actor, too) only ever appeared once together on stage, one night, in a benefit performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, to fund a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. Edwin played Brutus, John Wilkes played Mark (”Lend my your ears”) Anthony, and Junius played Cassius.