Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
St. Louis Theatre in the Age of the Original Jim Crow
By Louis Gerteis
In a period of American history that textbooks traditionally associate with the
"politics of the common man," an outburst of theatrical entertainment brought an abrupt
end to a long-standing American bias against theatrical entertainment. The period
between 1820 and 1850 marked an unprecedented era of theatricality. New American
theatres provided an expanding market for English managers and players, but they also
spurred the emergence of distinctly American theatrical fare, most exuberantly
represented in the work of a group of ethnic and regional "delineators." Prominent among
these delineators, and best remembered, was a blackface song and dance man named
Thomas D. Rice, who billed himself (to disparage his imitators) as the "Original" Jim
Crow. The origins of Rice's Jim Crow act lay in a broad theatrical search for American
idioms of social representation. At the center of the era's western theatre circuit, St. Louis
theatre figured prominently in this search. It was this search and the American materials
it generated that characterized the theatricality of the age of the Original Jim Crow.
Born in New York City in 1808, Jim Crow Rice joined a stream of theatrical
migration westward in the 1820s, finding work in the traveling theatre companies that
performed in the commercial towns of the Gulf Coast and the Ohio and Mississippi River
Valleys. Rice found work as an extra and comic actor with Englishborn theatre manager
Samuel Drake and with two of Drake's American-born proteges, Noah Ludlow and
Solomon Smith. Rice played a variety of comic roles in Mobile and Louisville in the late
1820s, and it was in Louisville with Drake's company in June 1830 that Rice introduced,
in blackface, the "cornfield negro" character Jim Crow. Rice took his Jim Crow act to
Cincinnati and then east to Philadelphia, where "MR. RICE from Kentucky theatres" was
engaged to "sing his popular extravaganza of Jim Crow." After an appearance in
Baltimore, Rice opened at New York's Bowery Theatre in November 1832. From New
York, Rice moved to Washington, D.C., where, in January and February 1833, he
continued to develop his Jim Crow material in the midst of the Nullification Crisis, when
South Carolina's effort to prevent the collection of federal tariff duties brought to the
surface of American politics underlying sectional tensions associated with slavery and the
expansion of national and international markets. In September 1834 Rice, for the first
time, brought his Jim Crow extravaganza to St. Louis, where Ludlow and Smith, now
managers in their own right, centered their expanding theatrical activities in the West.
Jim Crow Rice and other theatre performers generally played before audiences that
represented the community as a whole. Rice performed his blackface song and dance acts
before audiences that included blacks and whites as well as men, women, and children of
all classes. Until larger urban populations permitted theatres to attract more specialized
audiences (and until audiences sought such specialized entertainment) managers and
players necessarily appealed to this representative mix. For a player like Rice, it meant
that his blackface Negro delineations, if successful, would appeal to blacks as well as
whites, to women as well as men, and to the wealthy as well as the working class.
Not surprisingly, audiences were seated in a manner that reflected the community's
social distinctions. Audiences were separated into three categories, defined in part by
social custom and in part by the price of the ticket purchased. Thus, the interior of
Ludlow and Smith's St. Louis Theatre, which opened in 1837, was divided into a pit (or
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
"parquette"), a second tier of boxes, and a gallery on the third tier. The gallery was
further divided into separate sections for black and white patrons. Boxes were the most
expensive seats, while the pit was less costly, and the gallery provided the cheapest way
to see a show.
Although American pit and gallery audiences were notoriously raucous and even
riotous in their behavior, the St. Louis Theatre largely avoided the type of disturbances
that managers and performers (particularly visiting British players) found so disruptive
across the United States. William G. B. Carson's chronicle of the St. Louis Theatre
through 1839 recorded just one instance of loud hissing in 1837 and some undefined
antics by young men in the boxes in 1838. The 1840s and early 1850s appear to have
been free of major disturbances as well. Ludlow ascribed this record of good behavior to
his decision to keep unattended women and prostitutes out of the theatre. When Ludlow
and Smith opened the St. Louis Theatre, they decided to "refuse admission to any female.
. . who did not come attended by a gentleman, or some one having the appearance of a
man of respectability." Ludlow and Smith would not even admit unescorted women to
the gallery, as many theatres did. Indeed, "women notoriously of the pave [i.e., women of
the street] were never, under any conditions, admitted." The result of these "rigid
measures" was that the third tier of the St. Louis Theatre "was as quiet and orderly as any
portion of the house." Ludlow recalled one occasion when two women nearly gained
entrance by disguising one of the couple as a man. But the deception was uncovered
when "an old gallant of one of them" gave the ruse away.
The exclusion of unescorted women from the gallery apparently solved the problem
of prostitution in the St. Louis Theatre. And although the "colored" gallery remained, the
older distinction between gallery and "colored" gallery seems to have faded. When St.
Louis' voice of New England piety, William Greenleaf Eliot, spoke of the theatre as
"surrounded by incidental evil," Sol Smith took the opportunity to observe that there was
no longer a "saloon or barroom" in the St. Louis Theatre. As for the third tier or gallery,
noted Smith, mindful of his critic's liberality on the issue of racial equality, it was
"frequented by as honest and virtuous a set of auditors, male and female, as can be found
in any community—of colored people."
With the gallery effectively reserved for blacks, the pit, which opened off of a large
lobby, became the principal area for social interaction in the theatre. Much of the pit was
intentionally left without seating to provide standing, and mingling, room. In the 1870s
Ludlow responded to a characterization of the St. Louis Theatre as small by observing
that "it would not seat as many persons" as did theatres in St. Louis in the 1870s,
"because such seating was not required by the theatre population." "There was,"
explained Ludlow, "an unusual[ly] large space... purposely ... left for lobby entrances."
Ample standing room insured that the theatre provided an area for social interaction
without regard to the class distinctions that tended to define audience seating.
This social composition of local audiences provided the backdrop for Jim Crow
Rice's arrival in St. Louis in September 1834. By this time his act had expanded to
include a number of Jim Crow songs. Rice's Jim Crow material mixed the braggadocio of
the western "roarer" with a perspective on politics that was generally favorable to
President Andrew Jackson but that must also have seemed refreshingly remote from the
rancor surrounding the debate over the national bank and the ideological rigidity
embedded in the developing sectional crisis. Jackson's war against the Bank of the United
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
States, against what he and his supporters viewed as the institutionalized privilege of a
monied aristocracy, reached a climax in 1832, when Jackson vetoed a bill advanced by
Henry Clay and Daniel Webster to recharter the national bank. Fighting the bank war on
one front, Jackson simultaneously confronted John C. Calhoun, the doctrine of concurrent
state powers, and South Carolina's radical challenge to federal authority. Rice's Jim Crow
provided comic relief to this backdrop. In the song "Jim Crow," Rice sang:
I wip de lion ob de west,
I eat de Allegator;
I put more water in my mouf, Dan boil ten load of tator
Chorus:
Weel about and turn about,
And do jis so;
Eb'ry time I weel about
I jump Jim Crow
O den I go to Washington,
Wid bank memorial;
But find dey tork sich nonsense,
I spen my time wid Sal.
I make de speech rite udder side,
To Burjus ob Rode ile;
I gib him sich a mighty cut,
Dat make de hole house smile.
I told dem dare be Ole Nick,
Wat wants de bank renew;
He gib me so much money,
o lor, dey want it too.
I den go to de Presiden,
He ax me wat I do;
I put de veto on de boot,
An nullefy de shoe.
By 1834, Rice had also developed the first of his "Ethiopian Operas," a farce called
Oh! Hush! Or, The Virginny Cupids! He performed the piece during his first St. Louis
engagement in a salt warehouse that Ludlow and Smith had converted into a theatre. In
the piece Rice, who played the role of Cuff, began to develop in greater detail themes of
social representation that had been implicit in his original Jim Crow material.
For example, the play opens with a street scene at dawn showing bootblacks at work.
Cuff, a "Boss Boot-black," addresses Pete, his foreman. Cuff has collected so many boots
from hotels that he fears his men will not finish them in time to be delivered at four
o'clock in the morning. "Now, den, boys," says Cuff, "if you polish dem by dat time, I'll
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
gib you all a holiday dis evenin!" Pete promises to work with a will and calls on Cuff to
give them a song. Cuff sings a comic courtship song; when he finishes they all notice
Sam Johnson seated on a chair with his feet on a barrel. Johnson is looking at a
newspaper held upside-down. Cuff recognizes him and calls out his name. "I would hab
you know," replies Johnson imperiously, "dat my name, Sar, is Mr. Samuel Johnson,
Exquire, an' I don't wish to be addressed by such—[pointing to crowd]—low, common,
vulgar, trash!" Cuff explains to his workers that Johnson had been a bootblack himself
until he won a large lottery prize "and retired from de 'spectable perfession of bracking
boots."
What is noteworthy in the farce is its identification of its blackface characters with
working-class concerns. The work of the bootblacks is low in social esteem but
nevertheless, as Cuff declares, respectable. Moreover, the social rapport between boss,
foreman, and workers—the workplace camaraderie and the balance between extra labor
and a spontaneous holiday—evokes a tradition of artisan production that was under
increasing stress as bosses sought to expand output and profits by promoting a greater
degree of division of labor and a centralization of production.14 Johnson, with his
newfound wealth, has assumed the characteristics of an aristocrat, looking down on the
honest working man. Johnson's social pretensions are ludicrous, of course, but the
association of class distinction with wealth produced very real tensions in commercial
communities like St. Louis.
Rice, of course, was not the era's only Negro delineator. As the number of blackface
performers increased in the 1840s, a number of "minstrel" bands began appearing on
stages across the country. A group called the Columbian Minstrels appeared at the St.
Louis Theatre for two performances in May 1844. Two minstrel groups, the Ethiopian
Serenaders and the Sable Harmonists, appeared briefly in St. Louis in March 1845,
playing, respectively, at the Planter's House and the St. Louis Theatre. The Sable
Harmonists returned with some frequency, playing at the Planter's House in January
1847, for example, and offering a "splendid silver cup... to the best original conundrum,
to lady competitors only."15
The popularity of Rice and other blackface performers with the heterogeneous theatre
audiences of the 1830s and 1840s is striking, but it is a popularity that needs to be kept in
perspective. Of the blackface performers, only Rice ranked with the theatrical stars of the
day. When the star of stars, Edwin Forrest, played the role of Spartacus in The Gladiator
on June 3, 1844, he packed the St. Louis Theatre with more than 200 in the boxes, more
than 500 in the pit, and nearly 150 in the gallery. Not surprisingly, Forrest commanded a
high fee. "'You are hotly called for in the West," Ludlow and Smith wrote Forrest in
1838, urging him to state his terms for an engagement. Ludlow and Smith succeeded in
engaging Forrest for half of the receipts (after subtracting $150 for the managers) and
half of the receipts from his benefit performance. Ludlow and Smith had offered Rice
nearly as good a deal in 1836 to play in Mobile (to share after $200 with half the benefit).
By contrast, when the Sable Harmonists played at the St. Louis Theatre in 1845 all ticket
prices were reduced to fifty cents. At these prices, the managers could hardly have
expected to clear two hundred and fifty dollars before sharing the receipts. The Sable
Harmonists, like ordinary stock players, were undoubtedly paid a fixed fee for each
performance.
It was Rice's participation in the era's theatricality, and not simply his blackface song
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
and dance acts, that made him, for a time, a star. It is in this context that Rice can be
compared with Forrest, whose St. Louis performances offer a separate perspective on the
meaning of the era's theatricality.
Although Forrest was renowned as a tragedian, he was, in his own way, a delineator
as well. By all accounts, Forrest's style pleased the masses more than it did elite
consumers of culture. Forrest's followers delighted in displays of muscularity, a penchant
for swordplay, lengthy death scenes, and his melodramatic treatment of tragic roles. "The
masses are with him," declared the New York Albion of September 2, 1848, "with the
democratic denizens of the large manufacturing towns his success was unbounded."
Forrest was popular in a variety of Shakespearean roles, particularly Othello and
Richard III, yet his representations of working-class masculinity resonated with particular
clarity (and with complex social implications) in two tragedies written for him by
American authors. The first, Metamora, Or the Last of the Wampanoags, written in 1829
by John August Stone, dramatized the defeat of the Wampanoags and the death of their
chief during King Philip's War in New England in 1675-76. The play was not a
sentimental appeal for sympathy for oppressed Indians but an expression of manly
resolve never to be a slave. The popularity of the piece—which must have been rooted in
the expectation that Metamora would die but never submit—was enormous and
sustained. When Forrest's engagement in St. Louis in May 1839 was failing due to
competition from a concert of Italian music at the National Hotel, Sol Smith, then
managing the St. Louis Theatre, hastily put on Metamora to "kill the concert dead." It
worked: receipts shot up from $268 to $951.
As Metamora opens, Oceana and her father, Mordaunt, await the arrival of Lord
Fitzarnold from England. Mordaunt has promised his daughter's hand to Fitzarnold
despite her love for the honest American, Walter. Sadly Oceana promises to abide by her
father's wishes. Metamora enters, throwing aside a wolf that he has slain with his bare
hands. Walter announces the chief's arrival: '''Tis Metamora, the noble sachem of a
valiant race—the white man's dread, the Wampanoag's hope." "The Wampanoag will not
wrong his white brother," declares Metamora, "but he owns no master."
Amid news of Indian unrest, the colonists plan to meet with Metamora and capture
him if necessary. Metamora escapes and calls his people to war: "Red man, arouse!
Freedom! Revenge or death!" Thunder and lightning cause all to quail but Metamora.
"Hark, warriors!" declares the chief, "The Great Spirit hears me and pours forth his
mighty voice with mine." Meanwhile Fitzarnold plans to wed Oceana at midnight and
sail for England at dawn. Walter tries to prevent the wedding but all are interrupted by
the Indian attack. Metamora spares Oceana and Mordaunt; Oceana attempts to protect
Metamora's wife, Nahmeokee, and her child when they are captured by the colonists.
Seeking refuge from the fighting, Oceana is cornered near her mother's tomb by the
lecherous Fitzarnold, who seeks to take her for his own. Metamora enters. Fitzarnold
draws his sword and is disarmed and slain by the Indian. Metamora then takes Oceana to
his wigwam, where she is welcomed by Nahmeokee. Facing defeat, Metamora tells his
warriors to fight to the death. "Shout the war song of the Wampanoag race," he cries,
"and on to the battle follow me! . . . They come! Death! Death, or my nation's freedom!"
Walter, Oceana, and others enter to form a tableau as Metamora delivers his dying speech
and the curtain falls:
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
My curses on you, white men! May the Great Spirit curse you when he speaks in
his war voice from the clouds! Murderers! The last of the Wampanoags' curse be
on you! May your graves and the graves of your children be in the path the red
man shall trace! And may the wolf and panther howl o'er your fleshless bones. . .
the curse of Metamora stays with the white man!
Similar to Metamora in several respects was the second of Forrest's American
dramas, The Gladiator, written in 1831 by Robert Montgomery Bird. In it Forrest played
Spartacus, the leader of the Roman slave uprising. In writing the play, Bird had taken his
inspiration, in part, from Nat Turner's slave insurrection in Southampton County,
Virginia, in the summer of 1831. Bird was still writing The Gladiator at the time of the
insurrection and noted the connection between his play and the slave uprising:
Six to eight hundred rebelling slaves under Nat Turner are murdering, ravishing,
and burning in Virginia. . . . If they had a Spartacus among them to organize the
half million of Virginia, the hundred of thousand of the other states, and lead them
on in the Crusade of Massacre, what a blessed example might they not give to the
world of the excellence of slavery!
Although The Gladiator is set in Rome, the connection with American slavery was
obvious. Spartacus' master promises to free his wife and child and return them to their
home if he will fight in the approaching games. Spartacus agrees, knowing that four
hundred armed slaves have been assembled for the final spectacle. Spartacus calls on the
assembled gladiators to rebel: "Ho, slaves, arise! It is your hour to kill! Kill, and spare
not—For wrath and liberty!—Freedom for bondmen—freedom and revenge!"
The slave army led by Spartacus is briefly successful against the Roman armies, but
dissension divides the ranks. Spartacus is trapped; his wife and child are killed by Roman
soldiers. "There shall no life be spared in fight today," he declares as he prepares for his
final battle. Spartacus leads the surviving gladiators to their deaths. In The Gladiator, as
in Metamora, Forrest's democratic appeal contributed to an antebellum popular culture
that was, to say the least, ambiguous on the issue of slavery. Both roles were successfully
played by Forrest during his 1839 and 1844 engagements in St. Louis.
Eighteen forty-eight was a year of revolution in Europe and political and social
upheaval in the United States. It was also the year that the comic actor Frank Chanfrau
introduced a new type of delineator, the class-conscious character Mose, in a farce called
A Glance At New York. Mose represented the American journeyman, a social type fast
disappearing in a wage-earning working class. He was a volunteer fireman, spoke in an
American cockney slang, and was quick to risk his life to save women and children.
Mose was also quick to protect a country greenhorn from city tricksters and to introduce
the newcomer to the novelties of city life. He was equally quick with his fists and
engaged in brawls as a form of recreation. Mose's appearance on the theatrical scene, like
Jim Crow's, was greeted with enormous enthusiasm, first in New York, where the play
opened, and soon in St. Louis and elsewhere around the country. An observer described
the character in Chanfrau's New York debut:
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
He stood there in his red shirt, with his fire coat thrown over his arm, the stovepipe hat. . . drawn down over one eye, his trousers tucked into his boots, a stump
of a cigar pointing up from his lips to his eye, the soap locks plastered flat on his
temples, and his jaw protruded into a half beastly, half human expression of
contemptuous ferocity. . . . Taking the cigar stump from his mouth and turning
half way round to spit, he said, "I ain't a goin' to run wid dat mercheen no more!"
Instantly there arose such a yell of recognition as had never been heard in the little
house before. Pit and galleries joined in the outcry. . . . Every man, woman, and
child recognized in the character all the distinctive external characteristics of the
class.
Surrounding Mose on the St. Louis stage in 1848 were a host of delineators who, like
Jim Crow Rice, impersonated distinctive American types. George Handel Hill arrived in
St. Louis early in April with his Yankee impersonations, followed by John Collins and
his Irish delineation acts. Collins, who first arrived in the United States in 1846, was
widely hailed as the successor to the late Tyrone Power, the original stage Irishman, who
had died in 1842. A comic actor with a strong tenor voice, Collins combined Irish
comedy with sentimental Irish songs. He drew particularly well to the boxes for his
benefit performance on April 17.
"Yankee" Hill returned to St. Louis on April 18 for six performances, including his
delineations of Jedediah Homebred in The Green Mountain Boy and Jonathan Ploughboy
in The Forest Rose. In July and August Ludlow and Smith introduced Mose in A Glance
at New York in 1848. A playbill dated July 27 advertised the sixth performance of the
piece with J. M. Weston starring as Mose ("a true specimen of the B'hoys") and Mr.
Fuller as George Parsells ("a Green-horn from the Country"). The St. Louis production of
A Glance at New York played regularly for three weeks. The success of the piece—a
playbill for the July 27 performance proclaimed that "MOSE is called before the curtain
every night"—inspired Ludlow and Smith to develop local variations on the Mose theme.
After announcing an early opening of the fall season on August 10, 1848, Ludlow and
Smith played A Glance at New York at the request (as they claimed on the August 11
playbill) of "RETURNED VOLUNTEERS" from the Mexican war "who have not had an
opportunity of witnessing it."
The early fall season accommodated the mid-August return of Thomas D. Rice, who
had been engaged for eight performances of his Negro delineation material, including
two stagings of Otello, a blackface burlesque of Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, and
performances of his Ethiopian operas Virginia Mummy and Bone Squash Diavolo. Rice's
benefit performance on August 21 combined Bone Squash with Jim Crow in London, the
latter perhaps being a burlesque of The Irishman in London, a piece frequently performed
by Irish delineators.
After Rice's departure, Ludlow and Smith revived A Glance at New York and offered
with it an original production called Mose in St. Louis, which, presumably, made St.
Louis settings and events the locale and occasion for Mose's fireman-brawler antics. A
Glance at New York would be brought back again in 1850, and Ludlow and Smith again
tried their hand at developing a St. Louis variant, this time using a futuristic theme.
Chloroform; or, St. Louis in 1950 featured "an inhabitant of this city, who awakes after
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
having slept one hundred years." The farce featured "Pink Patter," a woman editor who
"wore pants," suggesting that the piece derived its humor from comic reversals of gender
roles. Neither Mose in St. Louis nor Chloroform appear to have enjoyed the success of A
Glance at New York; there is no record of subsequent performances.
The 1848 fall season continued with another Yankee delineator, Dan Marble, who
arrived on September 25 for a two-week engagement. Marble interspersed his Yankee
material, including Jonathan Ploughboy in The Forest Rose, with delineations of western
characters. Marble returned to St. Louis in the spring of 1849, offering The Forest Rose
again and introducing a new comedy called How They Do At Washington, in which he
played the character S. Hopkins Waddlebottom. His final appearance in St. Louis, on
May 5, 1849, would be the last performance of his life. Traveling by riverboat to an
engagement in Louisville, Marble died of cholera.
The minstrel band the Sable Harmonists followed Marble's earlier appearance for a
short engagement of two nights. On their second night they performed a blackface
burlesque of the popular opera Bohemian Girl called Virginian Gal. Or, the Bite of the
Wild Coon, starring Signorina Luscreachia Poorgoose and Signor Tomatoe. The Sable
Harmonists were best known at the time for two sentimental songs which they published
as sheet music for parlor performances: "Old Uncle Ned" and "Jenny Bright." The lyrics
of "Old Uncle Ned" spoke of old age and death; the lyrics of "Jenny Bright," like a
multitude of "Ethiopian Melodies" of the day, told a tale of lost love. Jenny Bright and
Pompey, separated by the Roanoke River, try to escape from slavery so that they can live
together. When Pompey swims across the river to join Jenny Bright, she reaches for him
down the steep and slippery bank. Jenny falls into the water and is drowned. In the song's
chorus, Pompey laments:
Long did I love her,
Long did I woo,
Master was angry—
What could I do!
Master was angry—
What could I do!"
The English-born tragedian Junius Brutus Booth (father of John Wilkes Booth)
followed the Sable Harmonists with a lengthy engagement playing a variety of
Shakespearean roles. Booth, who died on a Mississippi River steamboat during a western
tour in 1852, offered Othello twice, attracting audiences to the boxes. Despite his English
background, Booth took Edwin Forrest's popular success to heart. Theatre manager Joe
Cowell, also an Englishman, praised Booth's "simple Republican deportment." Because
Booth carefully concealed the "advantages he possessed above the capacity of his
companions, his acquirements were lauded and admitted." Cowell judged it to be "the
characteristic" of Americans "sometimes to allow a foreigner to be equal, but never
superior in anything."
This republican attitude defined theatre culture in the era of the original Jim Crow.
Through tragedians and delineators alike, simple republican deportment advanced a
principle of equality that confronted the era's barriers of class, gender, and race with
humor and with a hearty contempt for social pretension. However, theatre culture would
Gateway Heritage magazine, vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1995.
Copyright © by the Missouri Historical Society.
begin to change in St. Louis in the early 1850s. The St. Louis Theatre stopped operating
on a regular basis in 1851, when Ludlow and Smith sold the property to the federal
government as part of a site for a new custom house and post office. They dissolved their
partnership two years later. By that time, theatre in St. Louis, as elsewhere in the country,
had become increasingly differentiated along lines of social class, and a variety of
theatres offered distinctive fare to increasingly disparate social groups. Thus, in St. Louis
during the 1850s the theatrical era of the original Jim Crow quietly came to an end.