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“Vicissitude and Woe”: The Theatrical Misadventures of John Banvard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

John Hanners
John Hanners
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Drama at Allegheny College.
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Extract

John Banvard was one of the more colorful and eccentric entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century American popular theatre. The hero of a Horatio Alger “rags to riches” story, he garnered honors, wealth, and fame on the strength of the enormous success of his massive panorama, now lost, of the Mississippi River. In the 1860s, his reputation as an artist secure, he dreamed of establishing a theatre and museum that would not only reflect the emerging cultural consciousness of the American urban population, but turn a neat profit as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , November 1982 , pp. 177 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1982

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References

NOTES

1 Quoted in Dizikes, John, Sportsmen and Gamesmen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 337.Google Scholar

2 [John Banvard], Description ofBanvard's Panorama of the Mississippi, Painted on Three Miles of Canvas, exhibiting a View of Country 1200 Miles in Length, Extending from the Mouth of the Missouri River to the City of New Orleans, Being by far the Largest Picture ever Executed by Man (Boston: John Putnam, 1847), p. 4.

3 John Banvard, “Autobiography” (holograph manuscript #6302), Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota.

4 Ibid.

5 Louisville Democrat, June 29, 1846.

6 For accounts of Banvard's career as a panoramist, see this author's “‘The Great Three-Mile Painting’: John Banvard and His Mississippi Panorama,” Journal of American Culture, 4 (Spring 1981), 28–42; and McDermott's, John FrancisThe Lost Panoramas of the Mississippi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).Google Scholar

7 Banvard #6302.

8 Newspaper clipping, n.d., Banvard Scrapbook, Banvard Family Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.

9 Newman, Estelle, “The Story of ‘Banvard's Folly,’” Long Island Forum, XI (May 1952), 83.Google Scholar

10 Boston Journal, September 20, 1864.

11 Boston Morning Advertiser, September 20, 1864.

12 Boston Journal, September 20, 1864.

13 William A. Lilliendahl, “memoranda of Matters relative to John Banvard and the New York Museum Association,” n.d. (holograph manuscript with annotations, #3307), Manuscript Collections, New-York Historical Society, New York, New York.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Other firms supplying Banvard were Wheeler and Wilson (sewing machines for canvas), Woodward Mfg. Co. (gas fittings), Doremusand Nixon (upholstery), John Latimer (carpetings), F. King (plumbing), and R. Galbraith (taxidermy). New-York Times, June 17, 1867.

18 Ibid.

19 Allston Brown, T., A History of the New York Stage: From the First Performance in 1732 to 1901 (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1903), II, 522.Google Scholar

20 Daly, Joseph Francis, The Life of Augustin Daly (New York: Macmillan, 1917), p. 314.Google Scholar

21 New-York Times, June 17, 1867.

22 Ibid.

23 New-York Times, June 23, 1867.

24 Odell, George C.D., Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927–1949), VIII, 216.Google Scholar

25 New-York Times, June 17, 1867.

26 Ibid.

27 New-York Times, June 24, 1867.

28 Daly, p. 314.

29 Lilliendahl #3307.

30 Ibid.

31 Odell, VIII, 216. The dancers included Guiseppina Morlachi, Elisa Blasina, Augusta Sohlke, Eugenie Lupo, Aurelia Ricci, Catrina Corradine, Giovanni Lupo, and Domenico Ronzani. New-York Times, September 27, 1867.

32 New York Daily Tribune, October 2, 1867. The stage was already five feet wider than any stage in New York. See New-York Times, June 23, 1867.

33 Odell, VIII, 318.

34 New York Daily Tribune, October 4, 1867.

35 New York Daily Tribune. October 2, 1867.

36 New-York Times, October 4, 1867.

37 New York Daily Tribune, October 4, 1867.

38 Ibid.

39 Odell, VIII, 319.

40 Lilliendahl #3307.

41 Odell, VIII, 319.

42 Lilliendahl #3307.

43 New-York Times, April 6, 1868.

44 Brown, II, 523.

45 Lilliendahl #3307.

46 Ibid.

47 Huntington (New York) Township Records, Suffolk County Historical Society, Riverhead, Long Island, New York.

48 The Mystery of San Marco (USC #5616) was copyrighted May 25, 1876, and Sun and Ice (USC #3329) was copyrighted March 19, 1877. No copies were deposited in the Library of Congress. See Library of Congress Copyright Office, Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States: 1870–1916 (Washington, D.C., 1918), I, 1595Google Scholar; II, 2246.

49 The Private Life of a King: Embodying the Suppressed Memoirs of the Prince of Wales, Afterwards George IV, of England (New York: The Literary and Art Publishing Company, 1875).

50 New-York Times, December 24, 1876. Corrinia (USC #13767) was copyrighted on December 13, 1876. (Dramatic Compositions, I, 511.), but Banvard may not have been the true author, plagiarizing or adapting Robert Buchanan's Corinne (USC #8515). See Marks, Patricia, “Robert Buchanan's American Performances, 1876–95,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 74 (No. 2, 1980), 146–51Google Scholar, and this author's reply in the same journal, 75 (No. 1, 1981), 105–06.

51 Ibid.

52 Odell, X, 219.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Letter, P.T. Barnum to William A. Lilliendahl, February 28, 1878, Banvard Family Papers.

56 Brown, II, 8.

57 Odell, X, 604.

58 Odell, X, 219.

59 Daly, p. 314.

60 Daly, p. 256.

61 Felheim, Marvin, The Theatre of Auguslin Daly: An Account of the Late Nineteenth Century American Stage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 See New-York Times. December 6, 7, 8, 1876.

63 Daly, p. 314.

64 For a recent analysis of Barnum's theatrical and publicity techniques, see Dizikes, pp. 267–89.

65 Public Opinion (Watertown, S.D.), May 22, 1891.