J. Edward Green

Last updated

J. Edward Green was an actor, playwright and production manager in the United States. He was born in New Albany, Indiana in 1871. In his early years, he was part of the Black American Troubadours, Black Patti's Troubadours, Scott's Real Refined Negro Minstrels, the King and Bush Colored Minstrels, and Rusco & Holland's Minstrels. He organized the Rag Time Opera Company in 1901 in Birmingham, Alabama, where he produced two musical plays, African Princes and Medicine Man. [1] For several years, he was the straight man for Ernest Hogan, sometimes called the father of ragtime. In September 1906, Robert Motts hired Green to be the Director of Amusements at the Pekin Theatre, replacing Charles S. Sager. [2] While there, he authored, directed, and acted in shows, staging works including musical comedies Captain Rufus, In Zululand, The Man from 'Bam, Mayor of Dixie, Two African Princes, Honolulu, Queen of the Jungles, Twenty Minutes from State Street, My Nephew's Wife, My Friend from Georgia, A Trip to Coontown, The Count of No Account, In Eululand, The Grafters and Doctor Dope. Doctor Dope was by Stanley Woods (playwright). [3]

Green was described by a reviewer as picking out a stereotypical "foible of the Negro" to ridicule in his productions. [4]

In 1910, Green and Marion Brooks established the Chester Amusement Company to present shows after The Pekin changed to a vaudeville house: '...this organization "operated" three theatres in Chicago and "booked" several others. "It was the eventual failure of this enterprise which contributed to [Green's] physical breakdown" and untimely death in 1910.' [5] Green died in Chicago on February 21, 1910 of cerebral hemorrhage. His body was taken home to New Albany, Indiana, for burial on February 23. He was 39. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Cole (composer)</span> American composer, actor, playwright (1868–1911)

Robert Allen Cole Jr. was an American composer, actor, and playwright who produced and directed stage shows. In collaboration with Billy Johnson, he wrote and produced A Trip to Coontown (1898), the first musical entirely created and owned by black showmen. The popular song La Hoola Boola (1898) was a result of their collaboration. Cole later partnered with brothers J. Rosamond Johnson, a pianist and singer, and James Weldon Johnson, a pianist, guitarist and lawyer, creating more than 200 songs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African-American musical theater</span> Musical theater productions by African Americans

African-American musical theater includes late 19th- and early 20th-century musical theater productions by African Americans in New York City and Chicago. Actors from troupes such as the Lafayette Players also crossed over into film. The Pekin Theatre in Chicago was a popular and influential venue.

Paul Carter Harrison was an American playwright and professor. Harrison was known for works such as his Obie Award winning play The Great MacDaddy and scholarly writings on theater and performance. Between 1962 and 1982, he produced or directed numerous American and Dutch plays and screenplays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Rabbit's Foot Company</span>

The Rabbit's Foot Company, also known as the Rabbit('s) Foot Minstrels and colloquially as "The Foots", was a long-running minstrel and variety troupe that toured as a tent show in the American South between 1900 and the late 1950s. It was established by Pat Chappelle, an African-American entrepreneur in Tampa, Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flournoy Miller</span> American entertainer and playwright (1885–1971)

Flournoy Eakin Miller, sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", he wrote many successful vaudeville and Broadway shows, including the influential Shuffle Along (1921), as well as working on several all-black movies between the 1930s and 1950s.

Joseph Taylor Jordan was an American pianist, composer, real estate investor, and music publisher. He wrote over 2000 songs and arranged for notable people such as Florenz Ziegfeld, Orson Welles, Louis Armstrong, Eddie Duchin, Benny Goodman, and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tutt Brothers</span> American vaudeville producers, writers and performers

Salem Tutt Whitney and J. Homer Tutt, known collectively as the Tutt Brothers, were American vaudeville producers, writers, and performers of the late 19th and early 20th century. They were also known as Whitney & Tutt, Tutt & Whitney and the Whitney Brothers. They were prominent in black vaudeville and created over forty revues for black audiences.

The Ethiopian Art Theatre — originally called the Chicago Folk Theatre, later the Colored Folk Theatre, also referred to as The Ethiopian Art Players — was an African American theatre company based out of Chicago, Illinois. The company was an influential albeit short-lived (1922/1923–1925) group founded during the Harlem Renaissance. There are differing views over the precise year that the company was founded, 1922 or 1923. The founder was Raymond O'Neil, a white theatre director, and its principal sponsor was Mrs. Sherwood Anderson, also white; though all its performers were African American. The organization was unique and controversial during its era, primarily for being one of the few African American Theatre Companies to perform European theatrical works, but also, among other things, for producing theatrical works of African American playwrights for both African American and Non-African American audiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William D. Foster</span> American film producer

William D. Foster, sometimes referred to as Bill Foster, was a pioneering African-American film producer who was an influential figure in the Black film industry in the early 20th century, along with others such as Oscar Micheaux. He was the first African American to found a film production company, establishing the Foster Photoplay Company in Chicago in 1910. Foster had a vision for the African-American community to portray themselves as they wanted to be seen, not as someone else depicted them. He was influenced by the black theater community and wanted to break the racial stereotyping of blacks in film. He was an actor and writer under the stage name Juli Jones, as well as an agent for numerous vaudeville stars. His film The Railroad Porter, released in 1912, is credited as being the world's first film with an entirely black cast and director. The film is also credited with being the first black newsreel, featuring images of a YMCA parade. Foster's company produced four films that were silent shorts.

A number of theatre companies are associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Vaudeville</span> Vaudeville-era African American entertainment

Black Vaudeville is a term that specifically describes Vaudeville-era African American entertainers and the milieus of dance, music, and theatrical performances they created. Spanning the years between the 1880s and early 1930s, these acts not only brought elements and influences unique to American black culture directly to African Americans but ultimately spread them beyond to both white American society and Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse A. Shipp</span> American writer (1864–1934)

Jesse Allison Shipp, Sr. was an American actor, playwright, and theatrical director, who is best remembered as a pioneer African-American writer of musical theater in the United States, and as the author of the book upon which the landmark play In Dahomey was based. Shipp played an influential role in expanding black theater beyond its minstrel show origins and is recalled as perhaps the first African-American director of a Broadway performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Chappelle</span>

Patrick Henry Chappelle, was an American theatre owner and entrepreneur, who established and ran The Rabbit's Foot Company, a leading traveling vaudeville show in the first part of the twentieth century. He became known as one of the biggest employers of African Americans in the entertainment industry, with multiple tent traveling shows and partnerships in strings of theaters and saloons. Chappelle was described at that time as the "Pioneer of Negro Vaudeville" and "the black P. T. Barnum," and was the only African American to fully operate a traveling show solely composed of African-American entertainers.

Tom McIntosh was an African-American comedian who starred in many minstrel shows in the US from the 1870s to the 1900s. He was considered one of the funniest performers in this genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billy McClain</span> American actor

William C. McClain was an African-American acrobat, comedian and actor who starred in minstrel shows before World War I. He wrote, produced and directed several major stage and outdoor extravaganzas, and wrote a number of popular songs. He was influential in extending the range of minstrel shows far beyond the traditional conventions of the time, giving them appeal to much wider audiences. He toured in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. Later he promoted boxing and played several minor roles in movies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pekin Theatre</span> Black-owned musical theatre in Chicago

Established on June 18, 1904, Chicago’s Pekin Theatre was the first black owned musical and vaudeville stock theatre in the United States. Between 1904 and around 1915, the Pekin Club and its Pekin Theatre served as a training ground and showcase for Black theatrical talent, vaudeville acts, and musical comedies. Additionally, the theatre allowed “African-American theatre artists with an opportunity to master theater craft and contribute significantly to the development of an emerging Black theater tradition”. It was known by various names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irvin C. Miller</span> African-American actor, playwright and vaudeville show writer and producer

Irvin Colloden Miller was an American actor, playwright, and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including Broadway Rastus (1921), Liza (1922), Dinah (1923), which introduced the wildly popular black bottom dance, and Desires of 1927 starring Adelaide Hall. For thirty years he directed the popular review, Brown Skin Models, influenced by the Ziegfeld Follies but exclusively using black performers. "In the 1920s and 1930s, he was arguably the most well-established and successful producer of black musical comedy."

John Larkin was an American stage and screen performer, as well as songwriter, whose acting career extended nearly four decades — from the late 1890s through his last acting roles in the five films released the year of his death. A scrapbook preserved at Atlanta's Emory University indicates that "he was billed as "The Rajah of Mirth" and "The Funniest Colored Comedian in the World".

James Loften Mitchell was an American playwright and theatre historian who was part of the black American theatre movement of the 1960s.

Marion A. Brooks was an actor, playwright, and theater businessman. He partnered on the Bijou theater company at the newly established Bijou Theater in Montgomery, Alabama with players from Chicago. After it folded, he returned to work at the Pekin Theatre in Chicago.

References

  1. Peterson, Bernard L. and Lena McPhatter Gore (1997). The African American Theatre Directory, 1816-1960: A Comprehensive Guide to Early Black Theatre Organizations, Companies, Theatres, and Performing Groups. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN   9780313295379., pp. 30,32, 40, 111, 163, 173-180.
  2. Thomas Bauman, The Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black-Owned Theater (Urbana, Chicago & Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2014). See also "The Theatre". Meyer Bros. & Company. February 23, 1908 via Google Books.
  3. "14 Apr 1907, Page 32 - The Inter Ocean at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com.
  4. Carter, Marva (September 11, 2008). Swing Along: The Musical Life of Will Marion Cook. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198026853 via Google Books.
  5. Peterson and Gore, African American Theatre Directory, p. 40.
  6. The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, February 23, 1910, p. 2, Newspapers.com.