Theatre 373: Actors: Images

Photographs of actors from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Includes: Sarah Bernhardt

Photographs of actors from the University of Washington's collection
Includes Sarah Bernhardt, Lydia Thompson, Sarah Siddons

Includes photographs from the American stage
William Henry Lane
George Alexander
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Siddons
Adah Isaac Menken
Lydia Thompson

Images of 19th century actors

These 146 theater playbills and programs provide information about variety theater productions, including names of performers, productions, the different acts that comprised an evening's entertainment, and advertisements.

"In the Victorian Web we encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which we can examine when and if we wish to do so."

Spanning 200 years of constant transformation, the history of American theater includes how style, technique, culture, history, and politics affected the training of American actors.

The "Jim Crow" character was developed by a white actor named Thomas "Daddy" Rice. Rice's popular "Jim Crow" song and dance performance was based upon a real-life black man whom he had met in the South.

People who had never seen blacks bought T.D. Rice's image of the Jim Crow character. In 1843 a group of blackface performers created a popular minstrel group. The Sambo figure became one of the most potent forces in the politics of slavery.

Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II, changes the Restoration drama experience. Society takes a great interest in stage gossip. Gwynn displays great wit and self-mockery.

Men's general attitude towards women is licentious. Elizabeth Barry is kept by a number of wealthy patrons. The theater develops a reputation as a nest for prostitution.

Born in 1807, Ira Aldridge apprenticed at the African Grove Theater at 17 and then moved to England. A self-taught actor, Aldridge became a Shakespearean star in Europe, but prejudices prevented him from performing much in America.

Laura Keene was the first woman to manage an American theatre. She established the matinee as a theatre staple and initiated extended runs for individual plays. She played the lead in "Our American Cousin" the night President Lincoln was assassinated.

Adapted from his book, The Pleasures of the Imagination, this lavish exploration of the arts in eighteenth-century London is presented by historian John Brewer.

This program looks at the background and training of these first actresses, at their influence on plays written at the time, at their lives and the roles they played, and at how their sexuality and availability became the central feature of their professional identity. Nell Gwynn is discussed.

Men's general attitude towards women is licentious. Elizabeth Barry is kept by a number of wealthy patrons. The theater develops a reputation as a nest for prostitution.

Many film stars from 1920-1930 began their careers on the stage. Sarah Bernhardt was a famous French stage actress and singer.

Lotta Crabtree, a child entertainer who traveled through the gold mining country, reminded miners of loved ones left behind. Mining went underground when the surface gold in California disappeared.

British William Macready and American Edwin Forrest rose to theater fame in America. Influenced by British actor Edmund Kean, Forrest became America's first theater star with his fiery delivery, strong physical presence, and commanding voice.

Actors are considered vermin. David Garrick improves their social standing. Theatrical paintings have been preserved.

This segment traces the evolution of clowns from Joseph Grimaldi at the end of 18th century to today’s character clowns and white-faced clowns.

During the English Civil War, London’s theaters were closed by Parliament, and many were destroyed by Cromwell. During the Restoration, new playhouses, built to stage the probing social comedies of the era, were shaped by changes in English drama, politics, and society. We learn how the Parisian tennis court theaters, attended by the court in exile of Charles II, influenced the new London theaters, particularly Christopher Wren’s Theatre Royal. Other Restoration design solutions, some baroque and some neoclassical, were responses to changes in British drama and society. Advanced computer graphics illustrate important theater features throughout the documentary. The program shows how Wren’s work influenced Georgian playhouses and is once again inspiring modern theater design.

Italian Eleanora Dusa and French Sarah Bernhardt were two popular European actresses who toured in America. Bernhardt expressed her acting and theater philosophies in her book "The Art of the Theater."

Master Juba created several tap dancing steps that are still in use today.