Creative Actors Lab
Join Max and Kelley Grimm as we explore ways to incorporate creativity into your everyday life. Once we give ourselves permission to feel inspired by allowing our imaginations to flourish, we can reignite that childlike joy to create without being self-conscious.
Creative Actors Lab
Ep. 21 - A Tale of Two Booths
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Hi there, my name is Kelly Cody Grimm. And I'm Max Grimm. And we are Creative Actors Lab. What we want to do is just talk a little bit about how you can bring creativity into your everyday life. Hey guys, it's Kelly. And Max. And we are back for another podcast. And when we were thinking, kind of brainstorming about upcoming podcasts and things like that, Max at one point, and I think we'll be doing this in October, had talked about haunted theaters and things like that. And then I was thinking about true crime. And then to kind of meld those passions together, it was what is probably the most famous crime that has ever happened in a theater? And that, of course, would have been the Lincoln assassination, which happened on April 14th in 1865. Just to kind of put that into context for you, this happened four days after Robert E. Lee surrendered. In John Wilkes Booth's mind, and that was the person who assassinated President Lincoln. He thought that if he and his conspirators could take out Lincoln, could take out Andrew Johnson and then the Secretary of State Seward, that then the Union would be on their knees, and then maybe because there was still fighting going on in Tennessee, that they could still keep the Civil War going. At first, though, however, the plan was to kidnap Lincoln. It was not to kill him and then try to exchange him for prisoners on the Confederacy. So what we're going to talk a little bit is about the Booth family, about their traditions in theater, and then we're going to talk about basic crime and art. Crime and art, as well as sort of a tale of two booths, because Edwin Booth was probably the most famous actor of his day. And then his younger brother John Wilkes Booth. One thing I did find out that I thought was really interesting is that the brothers actually did a benefit. Like in 1864, they did Julius Caesar, and uh I believe John Wilkes Booth played um Mark Anthony and then uh Genius Jr., which was the name of their dad, but this brother got it, he was also an actor. Um, he played uh Cassio, and then uh Edwin played Brutus.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And they actually raised money to put up a statue in Central Park of Shakespeare, and that statue is still there. Really? Yeah. So yeah, I kind of like was doing a deep dive because again, as I've mentioned, I am a history and a theater geek, but I just like, what that is so, so interesting. So to give you context about the Booth family, they were probably the most famous theatrical family in the country. I put them on par with the Bear Moores, uh, Skarsgard brothers, Baldwin Brothers. So, you know, any family that you can think that has had a lot of influence and it within show business, that's what the Booth family was particularly, and not just in their little slice of the United States, they uh settled in Maryland. Their dad actually came from England, had not divorced his wife, um, had his mistress come over, they bought some land in Maryland. In fact, John Wilkes Booth was born in a log cabin, um, and he was nine out of ten kids. And it was not until 1851 that his dad actually got the divorce from his wife, who was still in England. And at the point that he did marry uh John Wilkes Booth's mother, that actually happened on John Wilkes Booth's 13th birthday. So he kind of stole the thunder of the poor kid in 13. Um, what was also interesting is that when John Wilkes Booth was away at school, he had a palm reader look at his palm, and she told him that he would have a grand but short life and then meet a very bad end. And he would pull that out and talk about it when he was, as they would say, feeling particularly melancholy. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Do you think um that could be a a bit of the self-fulfilling prophecy?
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. That's what I'm thinking.
SPEAKER_03:That's the problem with some of things like that. Um is that once you think you know what the future is going to be, you're just resigned to it and say, okay, well, I guess I I guess I'm just screwed here. So let's so let's not try to make any changes. That could that could definitely be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that, and then the fact that the dad got married to his mistress, who was also, again, John Wilkes Booth's mother, um, on his 13th birthday. I mean, I don't know if you're into superstition in numbers, that's also kind of like Yeah, but and well, and that's also the um in so many cultures, you know, uh a boy becoming a man at around that age.
SPEAKER_03:But to not have that that day particularly highlighted and just kind of overshadowed by um getting married to your so that I guess your kids aren't gonna be bastards anymore.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um but yeah, no, that that's that's enough to that's a person with an unstable personality right there. That'd be enough to kind of tip the scales in in favor of nefarious endings.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you know, particularly if I mean what I think is very interesting again in my research, um, I had looked at one point about doing a documentary on the lost mill workers of Roswell. Yeah, and so I knew some of the history uh around here. One thing I did not realize though was that John Wilkes Booth came to perform in a theater in Columbus, Georgia, actually got shot in the heel, and they thought that might have killed him. But he managed to survive that. So I'm like, well, that's very interesting. So just within his personalities, people that saw him perform said he was always very electric. Probably people said he was like the best-looking man they had ever met, that they had ever seen. So, you know, may have very well been the Brad Pitt again, or the Alexander Skarsgard of the Skarsgard brothers. All those brothers are really good looking, by the way. And to me, just I mean, again, as I was doing these deep dives in the different places that they performed, to me was just absolutely fascinating. And the fact that you had all this going on against the backdrop of the Civil War. And when you do hear, you know, expressions like it was brother versus brother in the Civil War, that's basically what it came to in the Booth household. Edwin was a unionist, and John Wilkes Booth, he's like, Yeah, slavery's cool. I don't see why we got to change it, it's all good. And he was very outspoken. And what is interesting was he let his views be known when he was performing in New York, and the audience pretty much he would be canceled if they'd been able to cancel. Definitely. But they were like, they're like, Yeah, no, we don't want to ban him from the stage here. They let him go, they let him perform and all that. But yeah, he was up north when he did let people know about his opinion of the Civil War. One thing that is interesting when we do bring in um General E. Lee on this, is General Lee, you know, as I said, he had actually surrendered four days before the assassination to Ulysses S. Grant, who actually looked up to him. They knew each other from West Point. And at the point that Robert E. Lee was surrendering, they sat down and like talked for two hours. And finally Lee went, uh, dude, I'm like surrendering. So, like, can we speed this up? And Grant was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, sorry. Uh, also, what people don't probably know is that Robert E. Lee as a general was so esteemed that he was actually Lincoln's first choice to lead the Union armies. But when Virginia seceded from the Union, Robert E. Lee went, Yeah, I can't fight my brothers. So, but he was really actually a unionist. So, for all those people that want to hold him up as, you know, just this, the, the ultimate Confederate, uh, he really wasn't. But uh, he, I mean, obviously there was a lot of bloodshed and things like that. So, but getting back to the Booth family and just where they were, Edwin, as the brother, actually, people have said he has probably performed Hamlet more than any other actor ever. There was a point where he did a hundred performances straight of Hamlet, you know, over a hundred nights, which is that's a lot of Hamlet. Um, at one point he did bring his brother, uh John Wilkes Booth in to play Horatio, and then at the end he asked the audience, brought him out, was very proud, and said, How did he do? And the audience gave him a standing ovation and things like that. And I think just too, when you think about kind of like the psychology sometimes and the ego-drivenness that sometimes performers can be, actors can be. Uh, you just wonder, you know, having grown up, knowing that your dad and your mom weren't married, and uh nowadays it wouldn't be as big a stigma, but back then that was pretty much a stigma. I don't know how many people in Maryland knew that, and um that Junius Booth, and actually his full name, his dad's full name was Junius Brutus Booth. Of course. That is not a theatrical name at all. So, you know, just within, you know, that backdrop and the fact that Edwin was so, so, so famous, and then John Wilkes, I think, you know, always felt like he was in his brother's shadow, but he truly did get very zealous um and was very angry that the Civil War ended. And I mean, at this point, the numbers have been put at the number of Americans who died um at anywhere between um 600,000 and 750,000. So it was just a horrible waste, a lot of young men just and families and people like that. So the night of April 14th, 1865, again, what had happened with his conspirators was he had plotted to again take out the top three Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Seward. Um, Seward was recovering from being sick, and they broke into his house and stabbed him, but he did survive. And then the guy who was supposed to kill Andrew Johnson just chickened out. So he didn't. And then the whole story behind Ford's Theater, I think, is really fascinating. What happened was John T. Ford um created Ford's Theater. It was a 1500-seat theater, which I'm thinking was pretty dang big. That's a big theater when you don't have a sound system.
SPEAKER_03:I've been I've performed in 1500-seat houses before. Yeah, that's big.
SPEAKER_02:Actually, the very last performance that John Wilkes Booth did was at Ford's Theater and it was May or March 21st, like around 1860.
SPEAKER_03:By the way, kids, that's where that's where you have to do your vocal exercises. Um, but yeah, just to think about that, to be in a 1500-seat theater and and have no microphones. That's that's that's daunting.
SPEAKER_02:We might look at a lot of those performances as being extremely theatrical.
SPEAKER_01:Well, they had to be.
SPEAKER_02:They had to be. You had you had people up there, and Lincoln, for him, he had been in Forge Theater. He actually had his own box. People were familiar with that. And actually, John Wilkes Booth had performed for him before and did a play, I think it was called The Acolyte. And when he got angry and just kind of pointed up to the box, and one of the women went, Mr. President, I think he's really pointing at you. And he just kind of laughed and goes, Seems like that, huh? That was really how John Wilkes Booth was able to gain entrance. And the owner of Ford's Theater was a very good friend of the Booth family. This is a story that I found out last night, and I just fascinated me because I had never heard this. But apparently, Edwin Booth saved Robert Lincoln from being crushed by a train. And so what was happening was, and they think this happened late, there hasn't been an exact date to pin it down, but Robert Lincoln in two in 2009, in 1909, actually wrote a letter to a friend who was an editor and explained what happened. So everybody was on the train platform, they were getting ready to get their sleeper cars, and they were waiting to get that. And so the crowd kind of pushed him up against where the train was, and the car started to move, and then he kind of fell between where the train was and the opening to board it. And so he kind of like just fell and is looking up and panicking, and he felt a person pull the back of his collar very strongly and basically pulled him up and got him back on the platform. And because Edwin Booth was pretty famous and he had been to the theater and seen him, he just said Edwin Booth. And what was um interesting is John T. Ford, who was again a friend of the Booth family, was there when Robert Lincoln was saved by Edwin Booth. And I was like that. And that actually ended up comforting him in his later years after his brother had done this terrible thing. He had to take a few months off from acting because, of course, the name was Mud at that point. It was Mud, although we will talk about Dr. Mudd, Samuel Mudd. That's actually where that term comes from. Is your name is Mud. Um, so yeah, his name was Booth, but it might as well have been Mud.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so, you know, he saved him. And then, you know, again, thinking over the that time and how horrible it was. And I believe Robert Lincoln lived into his 80s and actually served under two other presidents. And he was really the only Lincoln son that actually made it into adulthood. Now, he never told his parents that this happened because his mom would have freaked out because at that point she had already lost like two children. And when people do talk about the Lincoln assassination and they kind of compare it to the Kennedy assassination, I'll throw out some of these like little factoids, but they had their personal secretaries. Lincoln's personal secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy's personal secretary was named Lincoln. So it's kind of interesting how uh that all played out as far as that goes. But, you know, just within the Booth family and how famous they were, and usually their debut was with Richard III.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Particularly like with their father and things like that. So I just really thought that that was, you know, just so, so interesting as far as like the theater family goes. But, you know, obviously John Wilkes booth went terribly, terribly, terribly wrong. Something else I found out in my research is that Maryland did not formally secede from the Confederacy, even though a lot of people kind of well, Maryland's just one of those states that it's like right next to Washington, D.C. So some people might say it's kind of northern, but it's kind of southern. Uh, it did not formally s secede from the Union, but it would not allow trains that were doing things union-oriented to run through there. That was interesting. They just they kind of tried to stay neutral, but I don't know that at that point in time that you could stay neutral. You know, for me, I think just that John Willis Booth was the head of this conspiracy. You know, he was the one that came up. This is how we're gonna take things out, I'm gonna do it dramatically.
SPEAKER_03:Of course.
SPEAKER_02:So the night, getting back to the night of April 14th, 1865, the best that they can figure is that Booth was around the theater. They knew him, he was around at intermission. The Secret Service agent, there's been a lot of different conjecture about that. There was a soldier who was there, and it was about 1014 that at that point, and the name of the play was called My American Cousin. Lincoln was laughing at it. It's a comedy. So, I mean, if if there's anything that one can say was he literally didn't know what hit him, and he was having a good night, and he was laughing. Now, what is interesting is just getting back to Robert Lincoln, he felt like he had the opportunity to go that night, as did Ulysses S. Grant. Uh, Grant's wife wanted to go see her family and wanted to go on a train, and she's like, Could you please just say no? We've got other plans. And then Robert also uh regretted that he wasn't there because he thinks he might have been able to stop John Wilkes Booth. But there was a soldier there that tried to stop him. He got stabbed. It's hard to say, but I think just there was a lot of regret from Robert Lincoln about not being able to stop John Wilkes Booth. And then, of course, Edwin had a lot of regrets that he didn't know that that's what was going to happen. Um, what was also interesting that I think you might find fascinating is that Edwin Booth, afterwards in Manhattan, he did um actually found the Players Club, and that was a club specifically for actors, that actors could go and be among themselves. He founded that in 1888, and then he did found a theater in Manhattan. They did very grand productions, but it ended up going bankrupt after four years, which that never ever happens in theater kids. So there was just um a lot within the family. I what I did think was interesting was um he did have a series of strokes, I think in 1889 Edwin did, and then the last one was the one that really took his life. But also, when you're talking about right now, we've got the strike going on, and you you may not have this. Do you know how much in one year between 1959 and 1960 John Wilkes Booth made performing$20,000 in that time? So, you know, when people are going, oh well, writers, I'm like, you have writers now that here we are 2023, that was 1859, 1860. The dude was making$20,000. That was let's just say that was a fortune.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, that just kind of blew my mind um a bit.
SPEAKER_03:Was that that period of time again?
SPEAKER_02:That was the period of time 1859 to 1860.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_02:He was Making that kind of money. Edwin was making more. In fact, what happened was when the Manhattan theater that he had went bankrupt in 1874, Edwin went out on tour and actually managed to get his fortune back because people in Europe and things like that would go, oh, Edwin Booth, yes, let's pay him all sorts of money. But, you know, just to me, when you're getting into the minutiae of the night of the assassination, and a lot of people do attribute the term break a leg to John Wilkes Booth. We will probably do one podcast on theater superstitions, but that is something that actors say to one another, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_03:It's sort of it's um it's a very silly superstition, but it's kind of like you the theory of it is really, I don't know, kind of a bit psychologically sad in my opinion. But it's kind of like let's wish evil, let's wish bad things on our fellow actors because the the powers that be are going to do the opposite of what we say. So let's wish bad things so that good things will happen. That's sad. I'm sorry, that's just that's that's just sad to think that way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, you know, that night he was at Ford's Theater, and again, the owner of Ford's Theater was a very good friend. That's how he found out. He went there to get his mail, John Wilkes Booth did, to get his mail mail that afternoon. And someone that worked in the box office said, Oh my god, President Lincoln's coming tonight to see our American cousin. And at that point, he's like, Okay, let me go get them folks together. Hey, this has got to happen tonight. So, yeah, and and when you think it was like, okay, he had to like physically go and talk to them, he couldn't just send out a tweet or a text or anything like that, or even a telegram to let them know. But at the point that he did jump from the stage, and do you know what he said? Um, yeah, six semper tyrannas. However, and my daughter was actually playing me a clip from I've got a secret, the show back in the 50s. And there was a man on there that at that point was 96 years old, and he was in the theater at five years old and he witnessed the assassination. He at the time didn't know what that was, he just thought it was a loud theater noise. I mean, who would have thought that's what was going on? And then he was concerned because he saw a man fall from the balcony, so he thought somebody got pushed from the balcony. A lot of the witnesses, um, however, there were alternating accounts. Some people said, and even John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary that he did break his leg when he leaped from the balcony. But there have also been reports that he did exaggerate in his own diary.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Just because if anybody found it, then people would think he had done more than he actually.
SPEAKER_03:Which again is just sad.
SPEAKER_02:It is. This is this is not a good person. This is a person who was not in a good place psychologically, but you gotta wonder sometimes is it nature or nurture? You know, I mean, I guess there's no way to really know that.
SPEAKER_03:It sounds like a bit of both. And I mean, to to pretty much spend your life on stage playing make-believe for a living. That's what you do. It's it it's um it I I've known some people who are very psychologically very sensitive, and um they get into acting and uh playing these roles and playing make-believe, and uh sometimes they have a bit of difficulty um with knowing where the line of demarcation is of uh your actual life and what's going on in your wild imagination. Again, a very sad thing, I I I I think because uh just um you do have to, as an actor, sort of achieve this this balance of you know really having a thick skin and putting up with all the criticism and rejection that you're gonna get, but at the same time, sort of have this raw nerve uh to be able to channel the different emotions that the characters have. And there are some people who just don't wind up doing that very well, and their perception of reality gets out of balance, and then they start um becoming psychologically very unhealthy, which is what it sounds like to me here. I mean, is it nature or nurture? Well, I think you got a little bit of both going on here, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_02:And I mean, again, um ironically, I'm as I'm looking at my notes, was John Wilkes Booth was in the first play that opened at the uh Ford Theater on November 9th, 1863, and it was a play called The Marble Heart. So again, he was the heartthrob back then. Um, and then we talked about the benefit for the Shakespeare song. Now I'm kind of like very curious to go and see what that statue is intellectual, too, just because that was the only time all three uh Booth brothers were in one production and it was Julius Caesar. So again, um he uttered the famous line that Brutus said uh at the point that Caesar was stabbed. So I think within his mind, too, he was thinking, Look what I'm doing. And you know, again, there had been reports where he jumped up on stage and put his hands up and said, Hey, I've taken care of things for the union. And but he there was a friend of his who had a horse waiting for him. The horse was very spirited. And so how they think he really broke his leg, it was not so much jumping from the balcony, but that the horse might have either thrown him off or actually fallen on him.
SPEAKER_03:A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that is so. That is Richard III. Again, what the brothers debuted with. That's what their debuts, stage debuts were. And then uh there was a hundred thousand dollar reward put out on his head. So again, you're talking a hundred thousand dollars, that would have been well over probably almost two million dollars nowadays. That's a lot of money that will get your attention. Um, and then on April 26th, he was cornered at the Garrett farm, and they set the farm on fire, but they told the soldiers, please, we want to take him out alive. We want to know what he did. We want to know if there's other conspiracies going on. And you had one soldier that either didn't get the memo or is like, I'm gonna take him out. So he ended up being shot in the neck, and then he died um about three hours later. And you probably don't know this, but do you know what Booth's last words were? He looked at his hands and said, useless, useless, useless. Wow. Yeah, that's a pretty dramatic way to go out. Um, and then what was interesting was he was his remains, Booth's remains were put in a few places, and then finally, um, about six years later, the family did receive his remains, and they are buried anonymously in the family farm in Maryland. But again, as Edwin went forward, he did stop performing for a little while, but then got to go back up and you know, did try to restore the family name, but obviously. Now, the interesting thing about Dr. Samuel Mudd is I thought he got hung because there were a few people, like Booth's uh landlady, was hung, um, but she didn't know anything about it. But people were just like, we gotta hang people and make different people a lesson. But um, Dr. Samuel Mudd actually set his leg so that he could ride. Uh, there's differing accounts. Some people say he knew exactly who John Wilkes Booth was. Then other people have said, eh, I don't think he knew. Or he actually said, I've met him a few times, but and it may have been under those circumstances, he may have looked really different, you know, disheveled, um, filthy, and things like that. So he may not have gone, oh, this is the guy I saw on stage with the makeup and everything. Samuel Mudd actually ended up being sentenced to prison, I think for about 15 years, and then got out, and he actually passed away when he was still pretty young, about 49. But what is interesting is um if you're familiar with the journalist Roger Mud, he is a part of the family. And again, when you talk about the your name is Mudd, that is uh that is kind of where. So yeah, break a leg kid is not necessarily John Willis Booth. Um, that expression was actually used before that, and then it actually really came into vogue in the 20s uh in theater world in the 20s. And again, if we were going to talk, I'd be curious to know. And that again, I'm thinking we're looking at October to start looking at some haunting things, but just to see if there are ghosts uh that people see at the Ford Theater, I would think you probably would.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that energy is all good, all good theaters have ghosts.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I'm curious just to read and see if you can still get the script of our American cousin uh and just see if that's still uh something that you could look at. But I to me it's just really interesting is like the the play was still going on at 10 o'clock at night. That just seems like that would be really late. But if it started at eight and your plays go two hours, uh definitely. Um, but as everybody knows, Lincoln died, just President Lincoln himself died the next uh morning. And when his trains were going through the different towns, actually, Booth saw that with some of his conspiracy buddies, saw the train going through, people got to see the president lying in state. So that is the story of the Booth brothers. Uh again, Edwin at the point that he died, he donated um$5,000 to different places, um, to the actors' fund. And then also to different actors' associations in Maryland and things like that. And again, we're talking$5,000 in their time, not in our time.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So considerable fortune.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And, you know, he just really wanted to have the booth name not forever be associated with death. For Edwin, just knowing that he had saved the president's son and that his the president's son got to live into his 80s, which was something his father wasn't able to do. I'm not sure about Mary Todd Lincoln. She uh was not the most stable.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I yeah.
SPEAKER_02:First lady we've ever had.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I've I've heard.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Uh, but anyway, guys, so that's just kind of like a mini deep dive. Uh, we are going to be looking at other like creative true crime. We were looking at some of that, and I just kept on getting drawn back to the Don Wilkes Booth and the Booth family. And I'm like, why don't we kick off with that one? Thank you. I hope it's kind of sparked your curiosity in history and wanting to check out some older theaters and landmarks, maybe checking out some Shakespeare in honor of Edwin Booth and the family, and again, the fact that he donated so much to help people out just to kind of take the stain off the family name. I thought was really cool.
SPEAKER_03:Indeed.
SPEAKER_02:So thank you guys so much for listening, and we will be back next time.
SPEAKER_03:Be well, everybody. Until next time, much love to you all.
SPEAKER_02:We appreciate you guys tuning in. And keep in mind that you can catch us on our social media, Creative Actors Lab on Instagram and Facebook, and by the same name on YouTube. And for more on what we do, you can go to our website Creative ActorsLab.com.
SPEAKER_03:All one word. Thank you for listening. Stay curious, make art. Much love until next time.
