April 26, 2022 • 47 mins
As an African-American actor in the 1800s, Ira Aldridge had the odds stacked against him. Yet despite systemic racism, as well as negative attitudes about Americans in general, Aldridge went on to become the darling of the London stage. In today's episode, the guys explore how Ira Aldridge used his tremendous fame as a way to advocate for equality, abolition and more -- and broke numerous records along the way.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. It is a weirdly cold,
but weirdly beautiful day here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
Let's give it up to our one and only super producer,
Mr Max Williams. They called me, Ben, know we're we're
hanging out. We are fans. I think all three of
(00:51):
us are cinophiles, and we're also fans of stage works.
I recently saw some stage plays in uh as the
COVID lifted, yeah, or as it backed off for a second.
What'd you go see? A little our town, a little
uh hms Penefall, perhaps the South Pacific? Are you musical guy?
(01:12):
I love musicals, man, I love a good musical. Have
you have you seen those? Have you seen the Steven
Spielberg West Side Story? Ben? I have I have? We
talked about this um at some point, didn't we? I
I really enjoyed it. It's his first musical he's ever done,
and he nailed it. I've just been screaming about it.
I just loved that. I watched it on a plane
and I cried into my airplane Chicken Tikka Masala. It
(01:34):
was like that kind of good cry where it's like, oh,
the spectacle, the lights, the footlights, the dancing and the
camera moving through the ceiling and all that. Um, we're
really talking about musicals today. We are talking about the
theatrical ops. Yes, wherever you want to put the R
and the E, there is a difference. We'll save that.
(01:55):
You can. You can surprise yourself with that. Yeah. So
it's weird because now when people think of theater, they
think of it as something separate from the world of film. Right,
Most of the famous actors you are likely to know
today are film or television. But back in the day,
especially when film was coming into its own right, and
(02:21):
and in the years and decades and well, let's be honest,
centuries before that, the celebrity actors were stage actors, you know.
And we don't have a lot of video of them,
of course, and there are relatively few photographs, especially when
you go back to the time before the photograph was
a widespread technology. But you'll see woodcuts or paintings of
(02:44):
these people who were very much like the Morgan Freeman's
the Brad Pitts, the Angelina Jolie's of their day, that's right,
the Morgan Mindy's, you know, the la Vernon Shirley's, the
Golden Girls, a few Jared Lettos, Yeah, this few Jared Lettos. Unfortunately,
the Mr and Mrs Smith's of their time. Remember that movie.
(03:04):
It was a big deal at the time, and I
don't remember a thing about it. And they were spies
and they were very good looking, and that's all I remember.
But you know, it's funny that we actually did an
episode about a pair of rivals, Shakespearean actors William McCready
and Edward Edwin Forrest, who had these competing performances of Macbeth. Uh,
(03:25):
and there they had such like rival like super fandoms
that didn't like one of the performances in that in
like a riot in the Streets of Manhattan. Remember that one. Ben.
It's been a while, but this is sort of in
the same vein as that one, because today we're talking
about like the father of all of that kind of hubbub,
you know, the father of all of that, like the
(03:46):
actor as Mega Star is a guy named Ira Aldrich
who was born in New York in eighteen o seven,
and he made quite a little name for the big
name for himself back in the mid night teenth century.
He had many cultural awards and honors bestowed on him,
(04:06):
and as of today he is just one of thirty
three people who have been honor with a bronze plaque
on a chair. That's a big deal. Gets your own
plaque on. It's not like a bench. This is on
a chair, not in a park, but at the Shakespeare
Memorial Theater in Stratford upon Avon. So Ben, what's the
big deal with al dress? Why was he so special
(04:27):
and what makes him noteworthy outside of just being a
cracker jack actor. Yeah, one phenomenal actor by all accounts
to He's an American who is impressing Europeans. And three,
perhaps most importantly for this story, he was upending social
norms and taboos of the day. Because you see our
(04:48):
protagonist today, Ira Aldridge was black and he was living
at the time, Like we said, he's born Manhattan eighteen
o seven. He was living at the time in this
were of gray area between being a free person of
color and being a an enslaved person. Historians like John
(05:08):
Hope Franklin liked to describe him as belonging to the
world of the quasi free. And we learned about this,
or at least I. I first learned this phrase through
an excellent article in The New Yorker by Alex Ross
called Othello's Daughter, and it's all about the legacy of
Ira Aldridge. So he wasn't from these uh super elite ancestrys. UH.
(05:32):
Slavery was at the time, thankfully being gradually abolished in
New York, but the population people of color in that
area were still beset at all turns by Jim Crow
kind of laws. You know, voting rights were restricted. That
was one of the biggest deals. His father, Daniel Aldridge,
(05:52):
was a street vendor and was a preacher in the
African Methodist Episcopal's Eye and Church. And we don't know
much about his mom other than her name Laurna. He
did have a pretty good education. He learned at the
African Free School in his early years. This was a
network of schools set up by anti slavery advocates and
(06:13):
abolitionist movements. And Daniel Aldridge Aldred Sr. He really wanted
his kid to follow him into the ministry. He wanted
him to be a religious figure. But eventually I read
out a taste of the theater. He probably saw it
at Manhattan's now defunct Park Theater, and that's that's where
(06:36):
he got the hook, and that's where he found his
direction in life. And it's a good thing you found
it too, as we'll see, yeah, for sure. Um. He
participated in performances of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's adaptation of Pizarro,
which I'm I'm not familiar with, and by most accounts
from historians of the man his next acting performance was
(06:58):
in a Shakespearean play. It was at the African Grove Theater,
which was the only theater that black actors were allowed
to perform at. It was between Bleaker Street and Prince
Street there in Lower Manhattan, and it was actually one
of the very earliest attempts to create a kind of
cultural community around theater in segregated New York. It was
(07:21):
all black cast crew, uh and largely because of the
community kind of aspect of it. The audience was made
up of free and slave, middle class and working class alike.
According to a lovely quote from a Aldrich historian in
this excellent mental floss article by Natasha Frost, the nineteenth
(07:42):
century African American actor who conquered Europe. Spoiler alert, you
already kind of hinted at that. He's definitely impressing those
theater snobs in Europe, or he will be very soon.
So back to Shakespeare. He makes his Shakespearean debut in
the African Growth Theaters production of Romeo and Juliet. So
(08:02):
he's already starting to build a name for himself, at
least within his community there in New York and the
African American theater community, which was admittedly, you know, a
little Niche just had this one performance space, but that
was soon to change after some rocky beginnings, let's just
say yeah, because the discrimination still was ever president and ubiquitous.
(08:25):
Shortly after the grove opened, city officials kind of made
up a reason to close it. They said they were
getting a lot of noise complaints, so the project was
relocated to Bleaker Street. But this move took the theater
away from its core audience there in central Manhattan and
(08:46):
put it in competition just geographically with larger, a bit
fancier theaters, and it was struggling to compete with those,
and these theaters primarily had white audiences, and the theater
infrastructures there resented this new kid on the block. They
also had a smaller attendance themselves, because you know, they
(09:09):
moved away from where their audiences. So the theater ran
into trouble. And these problems were exacerbated because not a
week would pass without the police or local racist residents
or city officials coming by just to jam them up
and hassle them. We don't know exactly what happened, but
there may have been some criminal behavior on the part
(09:31):
of these these haters. Basically it least one source claims
the theater mysteriously burned to the ground in eighteen twenty six.
No records of it exist officially after eight And this
is where Aldridge said, you know, I wonder if people
are going to take me seriously as an actor in
this country, if I, as an African American, can make
(09:54):
a go of this in this nation. And he said no.
He decided his only path forward as a serious, determined
and inspiring actor of color was to immigrate. And that's why,
when he was only seventeen in eighteen twenty four, he
took a job on a ship headed to England and
(10:15):
he planned to never return. Yeah, sort of self banishment
or you know, it's an adventure of course, and trying
to make his way in a place where he thought
would be a little more hospitable. But it does have
the the ring of exile to it in a weird way.
So he went to England. The British Empire, already abolished slavery,
(10:36):
was a much more welcoming situation for him, because, after all,
in the US, the slaves trade was still flourishing in
parts of the US. I mean, it's been abolished in
New York, but we know, you know how it went elsewhere,
right right here where we currently sit in fact, unfortunately,
but free African Americans and their descendants either way, we're
(10:58):
not eligible for citizenship. Running slaves were to be returned
to their owners caught. There's a whole bounty hunter kind
of situation around that. Really really nasty stuff, very inhospitable.
But in England, you know, well sure there was plenty
of racism, as there is everywhere and continues to be.
It doesn't just go away the moment you change the law. Uh,
(11:18):
it was more hospitable for him and his career prospects.
So to cover the cost of his travel, he um
got a job as a steward on the very ship
that took him to Britain. That's sort of like paying
for your dinner by like washing the dishes restaurants. Very clever.
This guy seemed to be pretty quick on his feet
(11:38):
and and a very like resourceful guy. So on the
trip he became friends with a British actor who was
also happened to be a producer of theater, a guy
named James Walack. They met a few months earlier, and then,
as chance would have it, they ran into each other
again on this boat and Walack offered Aldredge a job
(11:59):
as well to be his like that a you know, uh,
not really an acting job. It's a little condescending, but
you know it's a job nonetheless. And so they get
to Liverpool. Aldridge quits the job on the ship obviously
only intended to like pay amount of money to get there.
They're like, well, I feel the trade. I thought we thought.
I thought we had a grand new lifelong employee. And
(12:19):
you Ira Aldridge, you cad um. And then he decided
to join the employee of this actor producer fellow. So uh,
through him, he starts to meet some pretty cool context.
Even if wal it didn't, you know, give him a
useful gig in the industry right away by being around him.
He kind of you rub elbows and some of the
(12:41):
right people in the world of theater there in a
new a new city, in a new country. For him, yeah,
I al would say that was the main win for him.
That was the primary method of payment for him. And
it wasn't about the money, it was about the access.
And he also matriculated into the University of Glasgow where
he quickly just stay englished himself. Over eighteen months he
(13:02):
won a lot of like recognition and even a gold
medal for excellence in Latin composition, which the three of
us have not won for the record. So then after
after his time in Glasgow, he finds work an acting
gig at the Old Vic which was known back then
(13:23):
as London's Royal Kobourg Theater. He plays the role of
Orinoco in The Revolt of Surinam in eight The London
press hated him. They were total pills about it. They
predicted he would never work as an actor again. They
would they predicted he would never worked as an actor
(13:44):
at all again. And then they also said, and you
know what, further, we don't think a black man should
be on stage at all. This started to change in
May of eighteen. Later the same year when he hits
London as the first actor ever in Britain to play
(14:05):
Othello and also actually be black. Right, that's the troubling
history of that character. Yeah, everyone previously playing that would
have been in some kind of horrible, garish black face makeup.
(14:27):
So uh, it's it's a very interesting character too. I mean,
that is a very politically rife and controversial play from Shakespeare.
Does it hold up or is it sort of a
little bit? Does it not age well? Othello has It
is a tragedy. It's a tragic story, and there's a
(14:49):
lot of questions. Now. There's a lot of discourse now
about whether Othello is a racist play or whether it's
a play about racism, if that makes sense. There's there's
a lot of great discourse. I'm having a hard time
recommending some of the many articles written about this, but
if you if you check, if you just search your
(15:10):
browser choice for that question, is Othello a racist play
or play about racism? You will see a lot of
differing opinions here. And of course Fellow ridiculous historians, We
welcome yours as well. So it's not it's not such
a cut and dried answer, right like that, That's that's
sort of what it comes down to, right, It's it
can be complex because you have to think of the
context at the time, the context of the modern reader.
(15:32):
What did Shakespeare think? Oh boy? You know what it
reminds me of is uh the way Wagner is sort
of treated. So Wagner being like a known virulent anti Semite,
you know it was totally a Nazi sympathizer, if not
like the official composer of the Nazi Party more or less.
But nowadays his music is viewed as very very important
(15:53):
and culturally important and like in terms of like the
history instrorectory of music, and there are Jewish music and
conductors that will reform the work of Wagner knowing all
of these things, but also knowing the impact that it had.
And I saw a piece where a couple of those
folks were sort of explaining, well, what better way to
give the old f you to Wagner than have a
(16:14):
bunch of Jewish dudes playing his music? Yeah, I could
see that. I mean, it also goes back to the
question of to whom does a work of art belong?
The artist or the audience. But yeah, I think that's
that's an interesting constructive way to look at it. The
people of London, the literati, the tastemakers, they were also starting.
(16:37):
The tide was starting to turn in Aldridge's favor. The
critics who had lambasted him earlier weren't really sure how
to take this guy because he was, as they described him,
a gentleman of color, and he was also lately arrived
from America. But when they saw him in Othello dude,
they loved it. They said his death was certainly one
(17:00):
of the finest physical representations of bodily anguish we ever witnessed.
And still this is all, by the way, this is
all happening while the guy is only seventeen years old.
Shout out to Paul Anthony Jones. Uh yeah, and mental floss.
He wrote Ira Aldridge, the Black Shakespearean actor who We're
(17:22):
gonna wait on that title for a second because I
don't want to spoil it too much. But his star
was ascending, right He was moving into the big leagues.
It wasn't very long after this he was getting top
billing in different plays in different venues. He became the
very first African American actor to establish himself outside of
(17:44):
the United States. But there's some there's a lot of baggage,
as you can imagine, that comes with this. He was
sometimes called the African tragedian, and uh that story as
a problematic etymology, we'll get to it in a second.
But even always becoming that era's equivalent of a movie star,
he did not have an easy ride of it, you
(18:05):
know what I mean. This was the odds were still
very much stacked against him. Yeah, I mean it was,
you know, despite the comparatively progressive approach to slavery, again
that was like the worst, end all, be all extreme
of racism. Still plenty of old money types going to
the theata that we're quite racist and did not like
(18:27):
the look of a person of color treading the boards
as it were, right on on the stages. These these
like hallowed stages, hallowed halls from the Covent Garden for example,
which is where he performed soon after his Othello debut,
and a newspaper called The Figureo was absolutely just lambasted
(18:49):
him and basically kind of made it almost like a
personal mission of the editor to tear him down. I
just have to say, he's a black guy playing Othello,
what is the problem? Like? What like they're they're saying,
I don't know, it's a bit too far, it's scandalous.
It's it's so recurring to the old ways. Well what anyway, No,
(19:12):
this all really happened, folks. Yeah, that's pretty wild. So
they essentially launched a smear campaign against him, you know,
largely relying on racism and otherness and just kind of
treating him like some sort of foreign invader. Uh. They
essentially wanted him to have to give up his his
(19:33):
theater aspirations and become uh you know, a work bit, uh,
in a lowly position suited to his station, right, something
like a footman or a street sweeper quote, the level
for which his color appears to have rendered him peculiarly qualified. Yeah,
(19:55):
and uh, good news, folks, don't worry. Stories not over yet.
They weren't successful, but it did kind of drive him
away from the London stage. He was having a tough
time getting work after the establishment said this is way
too far for us. And if you look at the
(20:15):
traditional story, you will see some people later adding some
nuance onto this. So the basic story, the long story,
short version, is that racism, including national media in the day,
wrote these really racist reviews. But then there are other
historians who are arguing it may be less clear cut
(20:39):
because there was a flu outbreak that was driving people
away from theaters at the time, and then it's possible
the powerful supporters of slavery had bribed reviewers to write
this opprobrious stuff. So the real answer is kind of
lost to history. But we know that Aldred did not
(21:00):
take this as the end of his career, and the
stage is lucky that he refused to accept defeat. Instead,
he took Othello and another play called The Padlock on
a tour of all the provincial theaters in Britain. He said,
look at the theaters for the people, and if London
is not gonna have me, there's still people who live
(21:22):
somewhere else. And this was a huge hit. It was
a national tour. He got all these new fans. Max
if we get people cheering and speak of sound oddly
British perfect tell home tale, hoo, ballyhoo, baliwick, and he
(21:51):
became he actually became the manager of the Coventry Theater
in eighteen eight. So this is another first for this guy.
Now he's not just the first black American actor to
break through, he's the first black manager of a British theater, right.
And he starts really making a name for himself also
as an activist, UH, doing speaking engagements on the evils
(22:13):
of slavery and all of that, and he becomes something
of a leader in the abolitionist community there in the UK,
and he really starts to kind of get a lot
of support swelling around him. He takes this tour to Ireland, UH,
and he arrives in Dublin and shout out to our
(22:34):
buddy listener Andy Buck from Ireland. He could tell us
a lot about it. Really really cool dude um in
a band called Sky Trumpets that he named after a
phenomenon that we've discussed on stuff they don't want you
to know. I think he's more of a stuff that
I wants you to know list But anyway, thinking of Ireland,
thinking of my buddy Andy, our buddy Andy from County Cork.
(22:54):
But he takes his tour to Dublin and becomes a
smash yet surprising they think they take they take him
much more easily than the Brits, which I would not
necessarily expect him. No shade on the Irish. It's because
I think there was a social aspect to a town,
because they liked when he talked to them, you know,
(23:16):
not in character but just as himself, and it talked
about how terribly he had been treated by the British
in London. And because because of the tense nature there
between Ireland and and Britain, obviously he found an acquire
that he could preach to. Because you have to wonder
how many people who supported him in those audiences were thinking,
(23:39):
I love Othello and I love the Podlock, and how
many of them were thinking, yeah, screw the British. That
guy gets it. But either way, either way he was
treated really well. He made a number of lifelong friends
in Ireland. He's touring Britain and Ireland repeatedly. By the
eighteen thirties. He's got a one man show that he
(24:01):
has made on his own. It's got these great dramatic monologues.
It's kind of like, um, it's almost like a mix
tape or a montage Shakespearean recitals songs. But then also
in the midst of this he puts in real life
tales from his own biography or autobiography at this point,
as well as lectures on the importance of abolitionism on
(24:25):
both sides of the pond, right. And I mean he
has plenty of firsthand accounts. Even though he was never
a slave himself, he's certainly experienced the prejudice and horrible
kind of remnants of slavery from the attitude towards black
people in the United States and in England. Also not
to mention that at the time, what he's doing is
(24:45):
almost akin to like what you think of as like
a variety show. I guess, I mean, like you said,
been In is a one man show, but he's doing
all these different things, noting all these different bits, and
it really is like educational and also entertaining and much
more of like high cultural kind of you know, fair
with the Shakespeare and the songs and all that um.
And it really serves to kind of lambast and lampoon
(25:07):
and serve as a meaningful kind of counter to these
awful minstrel shows that were still super huge at the time.
Theater is protest and I love this because yes, uh,
it's it's an excellent way to to just encapsulate the
power of theater, which sometimes sounds pretentious, but it is
(25:29):
a real thing. He started using white face. Black Face
was very popular and normalized at this time, and so
he would put on white face and he would say, hey,
I'm I'm a good actor. I'm not just a good
black man who was an actor. I am a good actor.
So he would play Shylock Richard the third, Macbeth king Lear,
all the hits from Shakespeare. And then there was this guy,
(25:51):
a minstrel show white actor doing black face named Thomas Rice.
He came to England with his menstrel routine and Aldredge
took it up a notch. He took one of Rice's
own skits, minstrel show skits, and he wove it into
his own show and he parodied the parody, which meant
(26:11):
that he cut like he hamstrung anything Rice was trying
to do, and showed himself to be an unparalleled performer.
It's like for an example of power theater. I still
can't believe we didn't get in trouble for this. During
a lot of the anti choice movements here in Georgia,
me and some of my colleagues started holding protests, but
(26:35):
we just switched the word abortion for promotion. And we
actually managed to interview the governor at the time and
had a conversation with him until he caught on and
it was on tape about whether or not he thought
women should have a right to a promotion or whether
it should be up to men in the government. We
didn't get a reason, ladies, we didn't get arrested. But
(26:58):
theater can be powerful, and this is something that galvanizes
his crowd. But maybe we talk a little more about
his role as an activist because we're pointing that out,
and I think that becomes like increasingly important to him,
even more so as time goes on. Yeah, and as
you can tell, he's already making knave for himself essentially
(27:19):
as an activist, and he's becoming this kind of community
leader in the abolitionist movement. He really starts to use his,
you know, fame from the theater to fight against slavery,
even from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. It's
incredibly impressive. So shakespeare plays typically end with what is
(27:40):
known as a jig uh in a classic performance of
a Shakespeare play. I think most of the ones that
i've seen. I don't know if you've ever been to
like Stratford upon Avon or been to like a Shakespeare
in the Park festival. I've usually seen more modernized version
of us. So I am not familiar with the jig. Uh.
It's some little classic dance kind of thing. It's like
a day Ants song game. This is the way it's
(28:02):
described that might poke a little fun of the story.
Probably meant to deflate something super heavy that you've just experienced,
right to kind of like take the air out of
it a little bit and like, you know, a little
bit of a palate cleanser after like spoiler alert, Romeo
and Juliette kill themselves, or you know, Titus Andronicus uh
feeds his nemesis is children to her in the form
(28:26):
of meat pies. Sorry, I think it's okay to spoil Shakespeare.
It's been like hundreds of years, sure if he wrote
it kidding, but he takes this format thing that is understood,
this this little jig, and he turns it on its head. Yeah.
So the idea is, if you've ever seen some improv shows,
(28:48):
you've seen this happen in theater that we don't know
the exact dances the Shakespearean actors were doing. But we
do know it was probably a way to connect them
with the audience, right, And this is something that he
subverts just as you described. He says, let me take
this moment at the end of the show, not to
have a funny dance routine where everybody gets up on
(29:09):
the stage, you know, and starts cutting rug But let's
let's use this moment for me to speak directly to
the audience, to break the fourth wall. Let's be together
on something serious. At first he just had a guitar
that he would sing songs on, but as the years
went on, he's about twenty five at this point. He
starts reciting poetry he had written himself, and it's protest poetry.
(29:34):
It's stuff like I risk my all upon my power
life son, yes country, to to free my brethren fettered
slaves from sinking and inglorious graves. And this starts to
touch people. It also, you know, order reminds me of
the It reminds me of who is it, Dylan Thomas,
Do not go gentle into that good night? That that's
(29:56):
a subversion of like what's usually what up to that?
I was like a poem that was a drinking toast
that would be about happy stuff. So he's he's mixing
on his head and I just think it's amazing. I
can't be objective. I'm a fanboy of this guy. I
wish I could have seen him live. He also gave
a lot of money to abolitionist charities and causes, uh,
(30:18):
like the Negro State Conventions. Um. And this started making
its way into the press as well, not necessarily in
a bad way, I mean, whereas it might have been
such in the past. To your point been things were
sort of turning a little bit in in Europe. So
one mentioned that made it to the press was about
Aldredg's involvement in helping a family of fugitive slaves who
(30:40):
ran from Baltimore to New York and were captured and
then split apart and scattered across the U S. And
Aldredge read about this case, uh, and he sent a
large amount of money to New York Society to give
them some aid. Yes, so people were basically reviewing plays
they do was in, but they were increasingly focusing on
(31:03):
his real world activism in addition to the characters he
played in a complimentary tone too. Which is surprising and amazing. Yes, yeah,
that's huge, and especially when you consider how Europe treated
him when he first got there. So this gets the
attention of the leaders of something called the New Negro movement,
(31:26):
and the leaders of this movement, the leaders of the
quality movements in general. Linkston used James Weldon Johnson W E. B. Dubois.
They are all over the moon that a performer of
color has made a place for themselves in European culture
and European stage culture. And that's when Dubois inducts him
(31:49):
into something called the talented tent. This was a group
of exceptional individuals that W. E. B. Believed, we're going
to lead the entire population, the entire diaspora, to salvation.
But let's also say this Aldredge wasn't like a He
(32:12):
wasn't always a serious, somber, no fun guy. He was
a consummate showman. He would go town to town, he
had really fancy carriage, he would do all this pr stuff,
and he was not above a little bit of personal
embellishment to get butts in the seats of the shows.
He started claiming he was a descendant of an aristocratic
(32:35):
or princely fula line, and then later he spread this
story that he was born in Senegal. Neither of these
were necessarily true. He definitely wasn't a radical though as
a matter of fact, his political bent would have been
unusual to a lot of folks today, because yes, he
(32:57):
was very much an abolitionist. He wanted slavery gone. He
also said he wasn't entirely opposed to colonialism. He was
down for the advancement of the colonial enterprise. So that
seems kind of contradictory at times, you know, so he
(33:19):
somehow managed to keep was saying I'm surprised because of
the way he's being received because while he's not radical,
what he's doing at the time and who he is
and what he looks like is radical. Right. He's not
like ideologically radical or like, you know, being a super hardliner,
which is important because that is exactly the ability that
(33:42):
allows him to kind of allows his message to resonate more, right,
because he's sort of he's bringing everybody in and he's
making people, oh, well, this this guys a fine actor,
and he's got a good head on his shoulders. Do
you know what, maybe I should stop being racist. Uh,
it's just I mean, I'm over simplifying a little bit,
but it does seem that his accessibility from the acting
(34:04):
world is what kind of led people to maybe pay
him a little more attention and not be like freaked
out by him, you know. And I'm so I'm not
making excuses for needing that, but it does seem that
it was a positive force in spreading that message and
allowing him to do some good. So he was so
popular in those days in England, playing to sold out
houses every night of the week. By the eighteen fifties,
(34:26):
is acting chops were the talk of the world. They
had spread way beyond the borders of of England. So
he decided that he was going to put together a
traveling troop of actors and head out on a tour
of the entire continent of Europe. So he did that thing,
and just a couple of months he was considered the
(34:50):
most revered, well reviewed, beloved actors in the entirety of Europe.
And it's so rare for someone to be critically you know,
lauded and also get good receipts, you know what I mean,
and like put butts in seats and have people like
the masses really love what they're doing. So this is
like he's like a unicorn man. Yeah. Yeah, It's rare
(35:12):
for someone to reach this level of accolades, and I
would say he was probably one of the most lauded
actors in the world by default at this point. One
German writer even said, you know, Ira Aldridge might be
the greatest of all actors ever. And a Polish reviewer
left something was really interesting. Polish reviewers said, though the
(35:35):
majority of spectators did not speak English, they did, however,
to understand the fillings portrayed on the artist face, eyes, lips,
and the tones of his voice and the entire body.
So his acting, they were arguing, was on a level
past language, or a level past the spoken word, which
I think was amazing. Let's go back to New York,
(35:56):
back where he's born. New York Times eighteen fifty three.
They're thinking about this guy, their long lost son, and
they quote a review of his Betrayal of Othello in
Austria from a Viennese paper, and they say that he's
an eminent artist, partially because of the simpleness and truthfulness
(36:17):
of his performance, but also by the power with which
he marks the most violent eruptions of passion. He gets
cozied up to by royalty. They love him. He eventually
marries a member of the of the aristocracy, Amanda van Brandt.
She's a Swedish countess. She was his second wife. You
(36:38):
don't get a name like that without some kind of royalty.
So so he keeps going and he's touring all the time.
For another ten years. He is, like you said, he's
making receipts, he's breaking the Bacon home. He buys a
couple of properties in London, one, funnily enough, on Hamlet Road.
(36:59):
And now at this point, the Civil War across the
Atlantic is over. He's in his late fifties, and he says,
I'm gonna try to go back to the United States.
I know, I said I was never going to, but
I'm gonna try to go back. I want to see
what my home country is like now that people have been,
(37:19):
at least on paper emancipated. I'm gonna do a hundred
date tour. And uh, people listened. The buzz started building. Yes,
this was gearing up to be like the Monsters of
Rock of of the era. You know, a theatrical version.
You know, this is absolutely going to be a massive
(37:39):
You know hit Blockbuster tour, but unfortunately it never happened.
Why didn't it happen? While just a few weeks before
uh they were to take off, Aldredge got ill. He
had a lung condition that he developed while he was
on tour in Poland, and unfortunately he passed away in
(38:01):
Poland and Lauds on August seven, eighteen sixty seven. That's
just a day before my birthday, at the age of
sixty and he was buried in the evangelical cemetery of
the site I'm not gonna lie ben this. That makes
me sad. We talk a lot about people on this
history podcast, and he usually ends with them dying. And
I don't always care. That sounds harsh. I care, but
(38:23):
like I don't always feel like kinship or like a
little emo twist, you know when when I say the
part where they die. But I feel this guy man,
he seemed like a lovely man and really like changed
the game in so many ways. Uh. He died two
years after slavery was abolished through the Thirteenth Amendment UM
and Alice Obscura points to a his obituary in the
(38:48):
journal Opportunity that was published in nineteen and it started
with a particular observation, um editorial kind of observation, Ben,
you want to this quote is so good, so good. Yeah,
it says he is the only actor of color that
was ever known and probably the only instance that may
(39:08):
ever again occur. Record scratch, Thanks Max. Thank god they
were wrong about that, man. Yeah, they were wrong. And
that's what I mean. It's like such a weird t leef.
Reading that at the time probably just felt absolutely prophetic.
But thank god because probably because of the groundwork this
(39:29):
guy laid proved to be true. Yeah, it's I mean
so dehumanizing as well when you consider how many actors,
how many fantastic actors have lived and died since and
you're working today. But there's still, make no mistake about it,
a ton of discrimination in the world of acting. I remember,
(39:50):
I remember reading that since the Academy Awards began in
nine only something like six point four percent of acting
nominations haven't gone to non white actors at all. Only
really before Will Smith won the most recently, and only
four black men and one black woman ever won the
(40:12):
Best Actor or Actress award. Yeah, unless I mean, Ben,
you and I both recently saw everything everywhere all at once.
That's both liked it very very much. Um but yeah, absolutely,
I can't wait to see it again in theaters. Anyone
out there who hasn't seen it highly recommended. It's every
bit of what they say it is, uh and and
then some I think it's it's gonna be something different
(40:32):
for everybody. But Michelle Yo is a great example of
She's obviously not black, she's Asian American, but a great
example of the way Hollywood even still today treats Asian
Americans either get cast as some sort of like stoic
kung Fu you know, lady, or she's like I think
she was in Crazy Rich Asians, which is obviously a
(40:52):
great movie. People really loved it, an important movie that
highlighted some of these problems. But it's still a pretty
widespread problem in Hollywood and enacting unless you start going
more into these like community theater situations where it's sort
of the model of the black theater that we talked
about back in New York that Aldridge was a part of.
So it is still a problem because you know, you know,
(41:14):
she's in this movie giving a very incredibly heartfelt, nuanced performance.
Movies about family, Yeah, It has some amazing psychedelic you know,
time hopping and multiverse shenanigans, but at the end of
the day, the best part of it is grounded by
her beautiful heartfelt just very real performance. So good on
(41:35):
the the Daniels for kind of pointing out this issue
and showing what's possible, and hopefully Hollywood will follow suit
because the movies seems to be making some money. It's
usually what talks in Hollywood. I love it. It It was
we're talking about this off air. It's it's pretty much.
It reminds me of McSweeney's if McSweeney's a walf and
made a feature length film. The creativity is amazing. It's
(41:57):
a brainstorming session. It all winds up together and shout
out to Wolfen by the way, if you want to
see more immensely creative stuff. Guy, I love those guys.
But it's true that Aldridge's career as an actor was
beyond extraordinary. It was extra extraordinary. His career eclipsed pretty
(42:22):
much every actor. He was an amazing actor, and not
just an amazing quote black actor. He went further. He
was seen by more people in more countries, He won
more awards, more decorations than any other actor in his
entire century. So why does he slip under the radar
so often today? It's partially because he appeared almost exclusively
(42:46):
in Europe during his career, so he doesn't appear in
a lot of American theatrical histories. He traveled from place
to place, so he didn't get a big reputation in
any one spot. It was kind of an agglomerate thing.
That's why people like Burnt Lynfers, who wrote the introduction
to Ira Aldridge the African Rucius says quote, he was
(43:08):
more common than a fixed star, here today, gone tomorrow,
and as a consequence, he shines less brightly. Now kind
of sad It is sad um, but again we're talking
about it. But it's true. I didn't know about it
until now. It certainly seems like something that should be
much more in the public consciousness because clearly a very
(43:29):
important dude, even if he doesn't get props like he should.
But hopefully we at least gave you folks something to
read up a little bit more about, because this guy's
got a very nuanced life. And man, I'm sorry, so
eight this is like, do you think there's any recordings
of him doing any monologues or anything. You know. I
(43:49):
was looking. I didn't find any at this time. It
doesn't mean they're not just on the cusps silent film
era at best, and they didn't really know, but like
there would have been I don't know when was wax
cylinder technology a thing that was probably like the early
nine So he would have died just ten years before
(44:11):
the invention of the phonograph. So again, very very very close.
But at least at least we can say we are
spreading the story now. It remains important in the modern day.
And folks, we know we went a little long on
this one, but we hope you enjoyed it as much
(44:31):
as we did. And if you know any actors, if
your loved wins or actors, or if you yourself for
an actor, you know it is an unforgiving and difficult profession.
So be kind to him, take him out for a
drink or something, you know what I mean, and go
see their shows, speaking shows. Thank you so much for
(44:51):
tuning into Hours. Thank you to Mr Max Williams, our
super producer. Thanks to Casey Pegram, Eve's Jeff Cote, who else,
oh oh, Christopher obviously who is gonna be here corporeally
before before too long if I'm not mistaken. Yes, And
I'm almost a bit sad noll that we didn't we
(45:12):
didn't have the quister a k a. Jonathan Strickland on
today's show. But I'm not sad enough to wait around
to see to tread the podcast. Yeah, just so, But
I'm not sad enough to wait around until he shows up.
What do you think? Yeah, I think it's about It's
about that time. Besides, the the giant clock is is
being repaired, and so it wouldn't it wouldn't even work out,
(45:34):
wouldn't be appropriate at all. Huge thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed this begging Bob, Max Williams younger brother, curling
enthusiasts and historian. I believe we have a double episode
coming up that Max is a very graciously contributed research
to about the history of the sport. I'm going to
try my best to stay awake um the whole time.
(45:58):
You know, it's this thing I'm doing that, or I'm
antagonizing you about curling. It's the thing I'm trying out.
It's it's just like I'm playing into our nemesis situation.
It's not. I don't really believe it. Curling is pretty cool.
It really helps me out every time you call me
Matt too. Yeah, Max, I know your name. We have
another show where there's a Matt, so I have a
little punchy right, I mean, I mean, how often do
you call Matt Max? I'm just saying it, mad Max.
(46:22):
I call sometimes. Yeah. I thought the name of the
film series was Matt Max just because I don't read
headlines or titles, but Matt Max is a is a
popular Germans children's television program or a candy bar. I
would try the uh anyhow two did? For our upcoming episodes,
(46:42):
will the uh? Will the tension continue to build to
a breaking point over curling? Only you can tell it
will be a very special week for all of us, folks.
We can't wait to hear from you. You can find
us wherever you get your podcast, and we'll join you
very too. If it's more ridiculous history, boy, will we
(47:02):
ever see you next time? Folks. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. It is a weirdly cold,
but weirdly beautiful day here in our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
Let's give it up to our one and only super producer,
Mr Max Williams. They called me, Ben, know we're we're
hanging out. We are fans. I think all three of
(00:51):
us are cinophiles, and we're also fans of stage works.
I recently saw some stage plays in uh as the
COVID lifted, yeah, or as it backed off for a second.
What'd you go see? A little our town, a little
uh hms Penefall, perhaps the South Pacific? Are you musical guy?
(01:12):
I love musicals, man, I love a good musical. Have
you have you seen those? Have you seen the Steven
Spielberg West Side Story? Ben? I have I have? We
talked about this um at some point, didn't we? I
I really enjoyed it. It's his first musical he's ever done,
and he nailed it. I've just been screaming about it.
I just loved that. I watched it on a plane
and I cried into my airplane Chicken Tikka Masala. It
(01:34):
was like that kind of good cry where it's like, oh,
the spectacle, the lights, the footlights, the dancing and the
camera moving through the ceiling and all that. Um, we're
really talking about musicals today. We are talking about the
theatrical ops. Yes, wherever you want to put the R
and the E, there is a difference. We'll save that.
(01:55):
You can. You can surprise yourself with that. Yeah. So
it's weird because now when people think of theater, they
think of it as something separate from the world of film. Right,
Most of the famous actors you are likely to know
today are film or television. But back in the day,
especially when film was coming into its own right, and
(02:21):
and in the years and decades and well, let's be honest,
centuries before that, the celebrity actors were stage actors, you know.
And we don't have a lot of video of them,
of course, and there are relatively few photographs, especially when
you go back to the time before the photograph was
a widespread technology. But you'll see woodcuts or paintings of
(02:44):
these people who were very much like the Morgan Freeman's
the Brad Pitts, the Angelina Jolie's of their day, that's right,
the Morgan Mindy's, you know, the la Vernon Shirley's, the
Golden Girls, a few Jared Lettos, Yeah, this few Jared Lettos. Unfortunately,
the Mr and Mrs Smith's of their time. Remember that movie.
(03:04):
It was a big deal at the time, and I
don't remember a thing about it. And they were spies
and they were very good looking, and that's all I remember.
But you know, it's funny that we actually did an
episode about a pair of rivals, Shakespearean actors William McCready
and Edward Edwin Forrest, who had these competing performances of Macbeth. Uh,
(03:25):
and there they had such like rival like super fandoms
that didn't like one of the performances in that in
like a riot in the Streets of Manhattan. Remember that one. Ben.
It's been a while, but this is sort of in
the same vein as that one, because today we're talking
about like the father of all of that kind of hubbub,
you know, the father of all of that, like the
(03:46):
actor as Mega Star is a guy named Ira Aldrich
who was born in New York in eighteen o seven,
and he made quite a little name for the big
name for himself back in the mid night teenth century.
He had many cultural awards and honors bestowed on him,
(04:06):
and as of today he is just one of thirty
three people who have been honor with a bronze plaque
on a chair. That's a big deal. Gets your own
plaque on. It's not like a bench. This is on
a chair, not in a park, but at the Shakespeare
Memorial Theater in Stratford upon Avon. So Ben, what's the
big deal with al dress? Why was he so special
(04:27):
and what makes him noteworthy outside of just being a
cracker jack actor. Yeah, one phenomenal actor by all accounts
to He's an American who is impressing Europeans. And three,
perhaps most importantly for this story, he was upending social
norms and taboos of the day. Because you see our
(04:48):
protagonist today, Ira Aldridge was black and he was living
at the time, Like we said, he's born Manhattan eighteen
o seven. He was living at the time in this
were of gray area between being a free person of
color and being a an enslaved person. Historians like John
(05:08):
Hope Franklin liked to describe him as belonging to the
world of the quasi free. And we learned about this,
or at least I. I first learned this phrase through
an excellent article in The New Yorker by Alex Ross
called Othello's Daughter, and it's all about the legacy of
Ira Aldridge. So he wasn't from these uh super elite ancestrys. UH.
(05:32):
Slavery was at the time, thankfully being gradually abolished in
New York, but the population people of color in that
area were still beset at all turns by Jim Crow
kind of laws. You know, voting rights were restricted. That
was one of the biggest deals. His father, Daniel Aldridge,
(05:52):
was a street vendor and was a preacher in the
African Methodist Episcopal's Eye and Church. And we don't know
much about his mom other than her name Laurna. He
did have a pretty good education. He learned at the
African Free School in his early years. This was a
network of schools set up by anti slavery advocates and
(06:13):
abolitionist movements. And Daniel Aldridge Aldred Sr. He really wanted
his kid to follow him into the ministry. He wanted
him to be a religious figure. But eventually I read
out a taste of the theater. He probably saw it
at Manhattan's now defunct Park Theater, and that's that's where
(06:36):
he got the hook, and that's where he found his
direction in life. And it's a good thing you found
it too, as we'll see, yeah, for sure. Um. He
participated in performances of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's adaptation of Pizarro,
which I'm I'm not familiar with, and by most accounts
from historians of the man his next acting performance was
(06:58):
in a Shakespearean play. It was at the African Grove Theater,
which was the only theater that black actors were allowed
to perform at. It was between Bleaker Street and Prince
Street there in Lower Manhattan, and it was actually one
of the very earliest attempts to create a kind of
cultural community around theater in segregated New York. It was
(07:21):
all black cast crew, uh and largely because of the
community kind of aspect of it. The audience was made
up of free and slave, middle class and working class alike.
According to a lovely quote from a Aldrich historian in
this excellent mental floss article by Natasha Frost, the nineteenth
(07:42):
century African American actor who conquered Europe. Spoiler alert, you
already kind of hinted at that. He's definitely impressing those
theater snobs in Europe, or he will be very soon.
So back to Shakespeare. He makes his Shakespearean debut in
the African Growth Theaters production of Romeo and Juliet. So
(08:02):
he's already starting to build a name for himself, at
least within his community there in New York and the
African American theater community, which was admittedly, you know, a
little Niche just had this one performance space, but that
was soon to change after some rocky beginnings, let's just
say yeah, because the discrimination still was ever president and ubiquitous.
(08:25):
Shortly after the grove opened, city officials kind of made
up a reason to close it. They said they were
getting a lot of noise complaints, so the project was
relocated to Bleaker Street. But this move took the theater
away from its core audience there in central Manhattan and
(08:46):
put it in competition just geographically with larger, a bit
fancier theaters, and it was struggling to compete with those,
and these theaters primarily had white audiences, and the theater
infrastructures there resented this new kid on the block. They
also had a smaller attendance themselves, because you know, they
(09:09):
moved away from where their audiences. So the theater ran
into trouble. And these problems were exacerbated because not a
week would pass without the police or local racist residents
or city officials coming by just to jam them up
and hassle them. We don't know exactly what happened, but
there may have been some criminal behavior on the part
(09:31):
of these these haters. Basically it least one source claims
the theater mysteriously burned to the ground in eighteen twenty six.
No records of it exist officially after eight And this
is where Aldridge said, you know, I wonder if people
are going to take me seriously as an actor in
this country, if I, as an African American, can make
(09:54):
a go of this in this nation. And he said no.
He decided his only path forward as a serious, determined
and inspiring actor of color was to immigrate. And that's why,
when he was only seventeen in eighteen twenty four, he
took a job on a ship headed to England and
(10:15):
he planned to never return. Yeah, sort of self banishment
or you know, it's an adventure of course, and trying
to make his way in a place where he thought
would be a little more hospitable. But it does have
the the ring of exile to it in a weird way.
So he went to England. The British Empire, already abolished slavery,
(10:36):
was a much more welcoming situation for him, because, after all,
in the US, the slaves trade was still flourishing in
parts of the US. I mean, it's been abolished in
New York, but we know, you know how it went elsewhere,
right right here where we currently sit in fact, unfortunately,
but free African Americans and their descendants either way, we're
(10:58):
not eligible for citizenship. Running slaves were to be returned
to their owners caught. There's a whole bounty hunter kind
of situation around that. Really really nasty stuff, very inhospitable.
But in England, you know, well sure there was plenty
of racism, as there is everywhere and continues to be.
It doesn't just go away the moment you change the law. Uh,
(11:18):
it was more hospitable for him and his career prospects.
So to cover the cost of his travel, he um
got a job as a steward on the very ship
that took him to Britain. That's sort of like paying
for your dinner by like washing the dishes restaurants. Very clever.
This guy seemed to be pretty quick on his feet
(11:38):
and and a very like resourceful guy. So on the
trip he became friends with a British actor who was
also happened to be a producer of theater, a guy
named James Walack. They met a few months earlier, and then,
as chance would have it, they ran into each other
again on this boat and Walack offered Aldredge a job
(11:59):
as well to be his like that a you know, uh,
not really an acting job. It's a little condescending, but
you know it's a job nonetheless. And so they get
to Liverpool. Aldridge quits the job on the ship obviously
only intended to like pay amount of money to get there.
They're like, well, I feel the trade. I thought we thought.
I thought we had a grand new lifelong employee. And
(12:19):
you Ira Aldridge, you cad um. And then he decided
to join the employee of this actor producer fellow. So uh,
through him, he starts to meet some pretty cool context.
Even if wal it didn't, you know, give him a
useful gig in the industry right away by being around him.
He kind of you rub elbows and some of the
(12:41):
right people in the world of theater there in a
new a new city, in a new country. For him, yeah,
I al would say that was the main win for him.
That was the primary method of payment for him. And
it wasn't about the money, it was about the access.
And he also matriculated into the University of Glasgow where
he quickly just stay englished himself. Over eighteen months he
(13:02):
won a lot of like recognition and even a gold
medal for excellence in Latin composition, which the three of
us have not won for the record. So then after
after his time in Glasgow, he finds work an acting
gig at the Old Vic which was known back then
(13:23):
as London's Royal Kobourg Theater. He plays the role of
Orinoco in The Revolt of Surinam in eight The London
press hated him. They were total pills about it. They
predicted he would never work as an actor again. They
would they predicted he would never worked as an actor
(13:44):
at all again. And then they also said, and you
know what, further, we don't think a black man should
be on stage at all. This started to change in
May of eighteen. Later the same year when he hits
London as the first actor ever in Britain to play
(14:05):
Othello and also actually be black. Right, that's the troubling
history of that character. Yeah, everyone previously playing that would
have been in some kind of horrible, garish black face makeup.
(14:27):
So uh, it's it's a very interesting character too. I mean,
that is a very politically rife and controversial play from Shakespeare.
Does it hold up or is it sort of a
little bit? Does it not age well? Othello has It
is a tragedy. It's a tragic story, and there's a
(14:49):
lot of questions. Now. There's a lot of discourse now
about whether Othello is a racist play or whether it's
a play about racism, if that makes sense. There's there's
a lot of great discourse. I'm having a hard time
recommending some of the many articles written about this, but
if you if you check, if you just search your
(15:10):
browser choice for that question, is Othello a racist play
or play about racism? You will see a lot of
differing opinions here. And of course Fellow ridiculous historians, We
welcome yours as well. So it's not it's not such
a cut and dried answer, right like that, That's that's
sort of what it comes down to, right, It's it
can be complex because you have to think of the
context at the time, the context of the modern reader.
(15:32):
What did Shakespeare think? Oh boy? You know what it
reminds me of is uh the way Wagner is sort
of treated. So Wagner being like a known virulent anti Semite,
you know it was totally a Nazi sympathizer, if not
like the official composer of the Nazi Party more or less.
But nowadays his music is viewed as very very important
(15:53):
and culturally important and like in terms of like the
history instrorectory of music, and there are Jewish music and
conductors that will reform the work of Wagner knowing all
of these things, but also knowing the impact that it had.
And I saw a piece where a couple of those
folks were sort of explaining, well, what better way to
give the old f you to Wagner than have a
(16:14):
bunch of Jewish dudes playing his music? Yeah, I could
see that. I mean, it also goes back to the
question of to whom does a work of art belong?
The artist or the audience. But yeah, I think that's
that's an interesting constructive way to look at it. The
people of London, the literati, the tastemakers, they were also starting.
(16:37):
The tide was starting to turn in Aldridge's favor. The
critics who had lambasted him earlier weren't really sure how
to take this guy because he was, as they described him,
a gentleman of color, and he was also lately arrived
from America. But when they saw him in Othello dude,
they loved it. They said his death was certainly one
(17:00):
of the finest physical representations of bodily anguish we ever witnessed.
And still this is all, by the way, this is
all happening while the guy is only seventeen years old.
Shout out to Paul Anthony Jones. Uh yeah, and mental floss.
He wrote Ira Aldridge, the Black Shakespearean actor who We're
(17:22):
gonna wait on that title for a second because I
don't want to spoil it too much. But his star
was ascending, right He was moving into the big leagues.
It wasn't very long after this he was getting top
billing in different plays in different venues. He became the
very first African American actor to establish himself outside of
(17:44):
the United States. But there's some there's a lot of baggage,
as you can imagine, that comes with this. He was
sometimes called the African tragedian, and uh that story as
a problematic etymology, we'll get to it in a second.
But even always becoming that era's equivalent of a movie star,
he did not have an easy ride of it, you
(18:05):
know what I mean. This was the odds were still
very much stacked against him. Yeah, I mean it was,
you know, despite the comparatively progressive approach to slavery, again
that was like the worst, end all, be all extreme
of racism. Still plenty of old money types going to
the theata that we're quite racist and did not like
(18:27):
the look of a person of color treading the boards
as it were, right on on the stages. These these
like hallowed stages, hallowed halls from the Covent Garden for example,
which is where he performed soon after his Othello debut,
and a newspaper called The Figureo was absolutely just lambasted
(18:49):
him and basically kind of made it almost like a
personal mission of the editor to tear him down. I
just have to say, he's a black guy playing Othello,
what is the problem? Like? What like they're they're saying,
I don't know, it's a bit too far, it's scandalous.
It's it's so recurring to the old ways. Well what anyway, No,
(19:12):
this all really happened, folks. Yeah, that's pretty wild. So
they essentially launched a smear campaign against him, you know,
largely relying on racism and otherness and just kind of
treating him like some sort of foreign invader. Uh. They
essentially wanted him to have to give up his his
(19:33):
theater aspirations and become uh you know, a work bit, uh,
in a lowly position suited to his station, right, something
like a footman or a street sweeper quote, the level
for which his color appears to have rendered him peculiarly qualified. Yeah,
(19:55):
and uh, good news, folks, don't worry. Stories not over yet.
They weren't successful, but it did kind of drive him
away from the London stage. He was having a tough
time getting work after the establishment said this is way
too far for us. And if you look at the
(20:15):
traditional story, you will see some people later adding some
nuance onto this. So the basic story, the long story,
short version, is that racism, including national media in the day,
wrote these really racist reviews. But then there are other
historians who are arguing it may be less clear cut
(20:39):
because there was a flu outbreak that was driving people
away from theaters at the time, and then it's possible
the powerful supporters of slavery had bribed reviewers to write
this opprobrious stuff. So the real answer is kind of
lost to history. But we know that Aldred did not
(21:00):
take this as the end of his career, and the
stage is lucky that he refused to accept defeat. Instead,
he took Othello and another play called The Padlock on
a tour of all the provincial theaters in Britain. He said,
look at the theaters for the people, and if London
is not gonna have me, there's still people who live
(21:22):
somewhere else. And this was a huge hit. It was
a national tour. He got all these new fans. Max
if we get people cheering and speak of sound oddly
British perfect tell home tale, hoo, ballyhoo, baliwick, and he
(21:51):
became he actually became the manager of the Coventry Theater
in eighteen eight. So this is another first for this guy.
Now he's not just the first black American actor to
break through, he's the first black manager of a British theater, right.
And he starts really making a name for himself also
as an activist, UH, doing speaking engagements on the evils
(22:13):
of slavery and all of that, and he becomes something
of a leader in the abolitionist community there in the UK,
and he really starts to kind of get a lot
of support swelling around him. He takes this tour to Ireland, UH,
and he arrives in Dublin and shout out to our
(22:34):
buddy listener Andy Buck from Ireland. He could tell us
a lot about it. Really really cool dude um in
a band called Sky Trumpets that he named after a
phenomenon that we've discussed on stuff they don't want you
to know. I think he's more of a stuff that
I wants you to know list But anyway, thinking of Ireland,
thinking of my buddy Andy, our buddy Andy from County Cork.
(22:54):
But he takes his tour to Dublin and becomes a
smash yet surprising they think they take they take him
much more easily than the Brits, which I would not
necessarily expect him. No shade on the Irish. It's because
I think there was a social aspect to a town,
because they liked when he talked to them, you know,
(23:16):
not in character but just as himself, and it talked
about how terribly he had been treated by the British
in London. And because because of the tense nature there
between Ireland and and Britain, obviously he found an acquire
that he could preach to. Because you have to wonder
how many people who supported him in those audiences were thinking,
(23:39):
I love Othello and I love the Podlock, and how
many of them were thinking, yeah, screw the British. That
guy gets it. But either way, either way he was
treated really well. He made a number of lifelong friends
in Ireland. He's touring Britain and Ireland repeatedly. By the
eighteen thirties. He's got a one man show that he
(24:01):
has made on his own. It's got these great dramatic monologues.
It's kind of like, um, it's almost like a mix
tape or a montage Shakespearean recitals songs. But then also
in the midst of this he puts in real life
tales from his own biography or autobiography at this point,
as well as lectures on the importance of abolitionism on
(24:25):
both sides of the pond, right. And I mean he
has plenty of firsthand accounts. Even though he was never
a slave himself, he's certainly experienced the prejudice and horrible
kind of remnants of slavery from the attitude towards black
people in the United States and in England. Also not
to mention that at the time, what he's doing is
(24:45):
almost akin to like what you think of as like
a variety show. I guess, I mean, like you said,
been In is a one man show, but he's doing
all these different things, noting all these different bits, and
it really is like educational and also entertaining and much
more of like high cultural kind of you know, fair
with the Shakespeare and the songs and all that um.
And it really serves to kind of lambast and lampoon
(25:07):
and serve as a meaningful kind of counter to these
awful minstrel shows that were still super huge at the time.
Theater is protest and I love this because yes, uh,
it's it's an excellent way to to just encapsulate the
power of theater, which sometimes sounds pretentious, but it is
(25:29):
a real thing. He started using white face. Black Face
was very popular and normalized at this time, and so
he would put on white face and he would say, hey,
I'm I'm a good actor. I'm not just a good
black man who was an actor. I am a good actor.
So he would play Shylock Richard the third, Macbeth king Lear,
all the hits from Shakespeare. And then there was this guy,
(25:51):
a minstrel show white actor doing black face named Thomas Rice.
He came to England with his menstrel routine and Aldredge
took it up a notch. He took one of Rice's
own skits, minstrel show skits, and he wove it into
his own show and he parodied the parody, which meant
(26:11):
that he cut like he hamstrung anything Rice was trying
to do, and showed himself to be an unparalleled performer.
It's like for an example of power theater. I still
can't believe we didn't get in trouble for this. During
a lot of the anti choice movements here in Georgia,
me and some of my colleagues started holding protests, but
(26:35):
we just switched the word abortion for promotion. And we
actually managed to interview the governor at the time and
had a conversation with him until he caught on and
it was on tape about whether or not he thought
women should have a right to a promotion or whether
it should be up to men in the government. We
didn't get a reason, ladies, we didn't get arrested. But
(26:58):
theater can be powerful, and this is something that galvanizes
his crowd. But maybe we talk a little more about
his role as an activist because we're pointing that out,
and I think that becomes like increasingly important to him,
even more so as time goes on. Yeah, and as
you can tell, he's already making knave for himself essentially
(27:19):
as an activist, and he's becoming this kind of community
leader in the abolitionist movement. He really starts to use his,
you know, fame from the theater to fight against slavery,
even from all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. It's
incredibly impressive. So shakespeare plays typically end with what is
(27:40):
known as a jig uh in a classic performance of
a Shakespeare play. I think most of the ones that
i've seen. I don't know if you've ever been to
like Stratford upon Avon or been to like a Shakespeare
in the Park festival. I've usually seen more modernized version
of us. So I am not familiar with the jig. Uh.
It's some little classic dance kind of thing. It's like
a day Ants song game. This is the way it's
(28:02):
described that might poke a little fun of the story.
Probably meant to deflate something super heavy that you've just experienced,
right to kind of like take the air out of
it a little bit and like, you know, a little
bit of a palate cleanser after like spoiler alert, Romeo
and Juliette kill themselves, or you know, Titus Andronicus uh
feeds his nemesis is children to her in the form
(28:26):
of meat pies. Sorry, I think it's okay to spoil Shakespeare.
It's been like hundreds of years, sure if he wrote
it kidding, but he takes this format thing that is understood,
this this little jig, and he turns it on its head. Yeah.
So the idea is, if you've ever seen some improv shows,
(28:48):
you've seen this happen in theater that we don't know
the exact dances the Shakespearean actors were doing. But we
do know it was probably a way to connect them
with the audience, right, And this is something that he
subverts just as you described. He says, let me take
this moment at the end of the show, not to
have a funny dance routine where everybody gets up on
(29:09):
the stage, you know, and starts cutting rug But let's
let's use this moment for me to speak directly to
the audience, to break the fourth wall. Let's be together
on something serious. At first he just had a guitar
that he would sing songs on, but as the years
went on, he's about twenty five at this point. He
starts reciting poetry he had written himself, and it's protest poetry.
(29:34):
It's stuff like I risk my all upon my power
life son, yes country, to to free my brethren fettered
slaves from sinking and inglorious graves. And this starts to
touch people. It also, you know, order reminds me of
the It reminds me of who is it, Dylan Thomas,
Do not go gentle into that good night? That that's
(29:56):
a subversion of like what's usually what up to that?
I was like a poem that was a drinking toast
that would be about happy stuff. So he's he's mixing
on his head and I just think it's amazing. I
can't be objective. I'm a fanboy of this guy. I
wish I could have seen him live. He also gave
a lot of money to abolitionist charities and causes, uh,
(30:18):
like the Negro State Conventions. Um. And this started making
its way into the press as well, not necessarily in
a bad way, I mean, whereas it might have been
such in the past. To your point been things were
sort of turning a little bit in in Europe. So
one mentioned that made it to the press was about
Aldredg's involvement in helping a family of fugitive slaves who
(30:40):
ran from Baltimore to New York and were captured and
then split apart and scattered across the U S. And
Aldredge read about this case, uh, and he sent a
large amount of money to New York Society to give
them some aid. Yes, so people were basically reviewing plays
they do was in, but they were increasingly focusing on
(31:03):
his real world activism in addition to the characters he
played in a complimentary tone too. Which is surprising and amazing. Yes, yeah,
that's huge, and especially when you consider how Europe treated
him when he first got there. So this gets the
attention of the leaders of something called the New Negro movement,
(31:26):
and the leaders of this movement, the leaders of the
quality movements in general. Linkston used James Weldon Johnson W E. B. Dubois.
They are all over the moon that a performer of
color has made a place for themselves in European culture
and European stage culture. And that's when Dubois inducts him
(31:49):
into something called the talented tent. This was a group
of exceptional individuals that W. E. B. Believed, we're going
to lead the entire population, the entire diaspora, to salvation.
But let's also say this Aldredge wasn't like a He
(32:12):
wasn't always a serious, somber, no fun guy. He was
a consummate showman. He would go town to town, he
had really fancy carriage, he would do all this pr stuff,
and he was not above a little bit of personal
embellishment to get butts in the seats of the shows.
He started claiming he was a descendant of an aristocratic
(32:35):
or princely fula line, and then later he spread this
story that he was born in Senegal. Neither of these
were necessarily true. He definitely wasn't a radical though as
a matter of fact, his political bent would have been
unusual to a lot of folks today, because yes, he
(32:57):
was very much an abolitionist. He wanted slavery gone. He
also said he wasn't entirely opposed to colonialism. He was
down for the advancement of the colonial enterprise. So that
seems kind of contradictory at times, you know, so he
(33:19):
somehow managed to keep was saying I'm surprised because of
the way he's being received because while he's not radical,
what he's doing at the time and who he is
and what he looks like is radical. Right. He's not
like ideologically radical or like, you know, being a super hardliner,
which is important because that is exactly the ability that
(33:42):
allows him to kind of allows his message to resonate more, right,
because he's sort of he's bringing everybody in and he's
making people, oh, well, this this guys a fine actor,
and he's got a good head on his shoulders. Do
you know what, maybe I should stop being racist. Uh,
it's just I mean, I'm over simplifying a little bit,
but it does seem that his accessibility from the acting
(34:04):
world is what kind of led people to maybe pay
him a little more attention and not be like freaked
out by him, you know. And I'm so I'm not
making excuses for needing that, but it does seem that
it was a positive force in spreading that message and
allowing him to do some good. So he was so
popular in those days in England, playing to sold out
houses every night of the week. By the eighteen fifties,
(34:26):
is acting chops were the talk of the world. They
had spread way beyond the borders of of England. So
he decided that he was going to put together a
traveling troop of actors and head out on a tour
of the entire continent of Europe. So he did that thing,
and just a couple of months he was considered the
(34:50):
most revered, well reviewed, beloved actors in the entirety of Europe.
And it's so rare for someone to be critically you know,
lauded and also get good receipts, you know what I mean,
and like put butts in seats and have people like
the masses really love what they're doing. So this is
like he's like a unicorn man. Yeah. Yeah, It's rare
(35:12):
for someone to reach this level of accolades, and I
would say he was probably one of the most lauded
actors in the world by default at this point. One
German writer even said, you know, Ira Aldridge might be
the greatest of all actors ever. And a Polish reviewer
left something was really interesting. Polish reviewers said, though the
(35:35):
majority of spectators did not speak English, they did, however,
to understand the fillings portrayed on the artist face, eyes, lips,
and the tones of his voice and the entire body.
So his acting, they were arguing, was on a level
past language, or a level past the spoken word, which
I think was amazing. Let's go back to New York,
(35:56):
back where he's born. New York Times eighteen fifty three.
They're thinking about this guy, their long lost son, and
they quote a review of his Betrayal of Othello in
Austria from a Viennese paper, and they say that he's
an eminent artist, partially because of the simpleness and truthfulness
(36:17):
of his performance, but also by the power with which
he marks the most violent eruptions of passion. He gets
cozied up to by royalty. They love him. He eventually
marries a member of the of the aristocracy, Amanda van Brandt.
She's a Swedish countess. She was his second wife. You
(36:38):
don't get a name like that without some kind of royalty.
So so he keeps going and he's touring all the time.
For another ten years. He is, like you said, he's
making receipts, he's breaking the Bacon home. He buys a
couple of properties in London, one, funnily enough, on Hamlet Road.
(36:59):
And now at this point, the Civil War across the
Atlantic is over. He's in his late fifties, and he says,
I'm gonna try to go back to the United States.
I know, I said I was never going to, but
I'm gonna try to go back. I want to see
what my home country is like now that people have been,
(37:19):
at least on paper emancipated. I'm gonna do a hundred
date tour. And uh, people listened. The buzz started building. Yes,
this was gearing up to be like the Monsters of
Rock of of the era. You know, a theatrical version.
You know, this is absolutely going to be a massive
(37:39):
You know hit Blockbuster tour, but unfortunately it never happened.
Why didn't it happen? While just a few weeks before
uh they were to take off, Aldredge got ill. He
had a lung condition that he developed while he was
on tour in Poland, and unfortunately he passed away in
(38:01):
Poland and Lauds on August seven, eighteen sixty seven. That's
just a day before my birthday, at the age of
sixty and he was buried in the evangelical cemetery of
the site I'm not gonna lie ben this. That makes
me sad. We talk a lot about people on this
history podcast, and he usually ends with them dying. And
I don't always care. That sounds harsh. I care, but
(38:23):
like I don't always feel like kinship or like a
little emo twist, you know when when I say the
part where they die. But I feel this guy man,
he seemed like a lovely man and really like changed
the game in so many ways. Uh. He died two
years after slavery was abolished through the Thirteenth Amendment UM
and Alice Obscura points to a his obituary in the
(38:48):
journal Opportunity that was published in nineteen and it started
with a particular observation, um editorial kind of observation, Ben,
you want to this quote is so good, so good. Yeah,
it says he is the only actor of color that
was ever known and probably the only instance that may
(39:08):
ever again occur. Record scratch, Thanks Max. Thank god they
were wrong about that, man. Yeah, they were wrong. And
that's what I mean. It's like such a weird t leef.
Reading that at the time probably just felt absolutely prophetic.
But thank god because probably because of the groundwork this
(39:29):
guy laid proved to be true. Yeah, it's I mean
so dehumanizing as well when you consider how many actors,
how many fantastic actors have lived and died since and
you're working today. But there's still, make no mistake about it,
a ton of discrimination in the world of acting. I remember,
(39:50):
I remember reading that since the Academy Awards began in
nine only something like six point four percent of acting
nominations haven't gone to non white actors at all. Only
really before Will Smith won the most recently, and only
four black men and one black woman ever won the
(40:12):
Best Actor or Actress award. Yeah, unless I mean, Ben,
you and I both recently saw everything everywhere all at once.
That's both liked it very very much. Um but yeah, absolutely,
I can't wait to see it again in theaters. Anyone
out there who hasn't seen it highly recommended. It's every
bit of what they say it is, uh and and
then some I think it's it's gonna be something different
(40:32):
for everybody. But Michelle Yo is a great example of
She's obviously not black, she's Asian American, but a great
example of the way Hollywood even still today treats Asian
Americans either get cast as some sort of like stoic
kung Fu you know, lady, or she's like I think
she was in Crazy Rich Asians, which is obviously a
(40:52):
great movie. People really loved it, an important movie that
highlighted some of these problems. But it's still a pretty
widespread problem in Hollywood and enacting unless you start going
more into these like community theater situations where it's sort
of the model of the black theater that we talked
about back in New York that Aldridge was a part of.
So it is still a problem because you know, you know,
(41:14):
she's in this movie giving a very incredibly heartfelt, nuanced performance.
Movies about family, Yeah, It has some amazing psychedelic you know,
time hopping and multiverse shenanigans, but at the end of
the day, the best part of it is grounded by
her beautiful heartfelt just very real performance. So good on
(41:35):
the the Daniels for kind of pointing out this issue
and showing what's possible, and hopefully Hollywood will follow suit
because the movies seems to be making some money. It's
usually what talks in Hollywood. I love it. It It was
we're talking about this off air. It's it's pretty much.
It reminds me of McSweeney's if McSweeney's a walf and
made a feature length film. The creativity is amazing. It's
(41:57):
a brainstorming session. It all winds up together and shout
out to Wolfen by the way, if you want to
see more immensely creative stuff. Guy, I love those guys.
But it's true that Aldridge's career as an actor was
beyond extraordinary. It was extra extraordinary. His career eclipsed pretty
(42:22):
much every actor. He was an amazing actor, and not
just an amazing quote black actor. He went further. He
was seen by more people in more countries, He won
more awards, more decorations than any other actor in his
entire century. So why does he slip under the radar
so often today? It's partially because he appeared almost exclusively
(42:46):
in Europe during his career, so he doesn't appear in
a lot of American theatrical histories. He traveled from place
to place, so he didn't get a big reputation in
any one spot. It was kind of an agglomerate thing.
That's why people like Burnt Lynfers, who wrote the introduction
to Ira Aldridge the African Rucius says quote, he was
(43:08):
more common than a fixed star, here today, gone tomorrow,
and as a consequence, he shines less brightly. Now kind
of sad It is sad um, but again we're talking
about it. But it's true. I didn't know about it
until now. It certainly seems like something that should be
much more in the public consciousness because clearly a very
(43:29):
important dude, even if he doesn't get props like he should.
But hopefully we at least gave you folks something to
read up a little bit more about, because this guy's
got a very nuanced life. And man, I'm sorry, so
eight this is like, do you think there's any recordings
of him doing any monologues or anything. You know. I
(43:49):
was looking. I didn't find any at this time. It
doesn't mean they're not just on the cusps silent film
era at best, and they didn't really know, but like
there would have been I don't know when was wax
cylinder technology a thing that was probably like the early
nine So he would have died just ten years before
(44:11):
the invention of the phonograph. So again, very very very close.
But at least at least we can say we are
spreading the story now. It remains important in the modern day.
And folks, we know we went a little long on
this one, but we hope you enjoyed it as much
(44:31):
as we did. And if you know any actors, if
your loved wins or actors, or if you yourself for
an actor, you know it is an unforgiving and difficult profession.
So be kind to him, take him out for a
drink or something, you know what I mean, and go
see their shows, speaking shows. Thank you so much for
(44:51):
tuning into Hours. Thank you to Mr Max Williams, our
super producer. Thanks to Casey Pegram, Eve's Jeff Cote, who else,
oh oh, Christopher obviously who is gonna be here corporeally
before before too long if I'm not mistaken. Yes, And
I'm almost a bit sad noll that we didn't we
(45:12):
didn't have the quister a k a. Jonathan Strickland on
today's show. But I'm not sad enough to wait around
to see to tread the podcast. Yeah, just so, But
I'm not sad enough to wait around until he shows up.
What do you think? Yeah, I think it's about It's
about that time. Besides, the the giant clock is is
being repaired, and so it wouldn't it wouldn't even work out,
(45:34):
wouldn't be appropriate at all. Huge thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed this begging Bob, Max Williams younger brother, curling
enthusiasts and historian. I believe we have a double episode
coming up that Max is a very graciously contributed research
to about the history of the sport. I'm going to
try my best to stay awake um the whole time.
(45:58):
You know, it's this thing I'm doing that, or I'm
antagonizing you about curling. It's the thing I'm trying out.
It's it's just like I'm playing into our nemesis situation.
It's not. I don't really believe it. Curling is pretty cool.
It really helps me out every time you call me
Matt too. Yeah, Max, I know your name. We have
another show where there's a Matt, so I have a
little punchy right, I mean, I mean, how often do
you call Matt Max? I'm just saying it, mad Max.
(46:22):
I call sometimes. Yeah. I thought the name of the
film series was Matt Max just because I don't read
headlines or titles, but Matt Max is a is a
popular Germans children's television program or a candy bar. I
would try the uh anyhow two did? For our upcoming episodes,
(46:42):
will the uh? Will the tension continue to build to
a breaking point over curling? Only you can tell it
will be a very special week for all of us, folks.
We can't wait to hear from you. You can find
us wherever you get your podcast, and we'll join you
very too. If it's more ridiculous history, boy, will we
(47:02):
ever see you next time? Folks. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
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Noel Brown
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