One of his sons became the
greatest actor of his generation! The other son killed Lincoln! Yep, if you think
there’s a play in life of Junius Brutus Booth, the most notorious actor on the American stage in the mid-19th century, you’re not the only one: Booth, his
self-destructive arc as an actor, and the family and friends he sucked
into that tragic orbit, are subjects that Austin Pendleton has been obsessing over
for more than 50 years.
Here are some artifacts from the first version of a Booth-centered play that
Pendleton wrote while at Yale in 1961. Booth
Is Back In Town! was originally staged as a near three-hour musical, with
songs by James Massengale and lyrics by Peter Bergman, first performed at Yale
in May/June 1961. Phil Proctor played Junius’ son Edwin. It was the second time
Bergman had worked alongside Proctor, his soon-to-be collaborator in The
Firesign Theatre (the first being the original play Tom Jones, which also debuted at Yale). Here’s the track listing of
the 1961 original cast album:
Overture
The Book of Mr. Booth
Lettin’ My Feet Run Free
Booth Is Back in Town
Jenny Joanne
Round Clear Tones
Why Was I Born, Mother, Tell Me
Now at the Farm
American Fireman Sequence
Everybody Knows
La Lune Est Tombee
The Southern Fried
The Green Lime Tree
We’ll Never Waltz Again
Seeing the Elephant / Finale
Pendleton later revised the play and retitled it Mr. Booth, with Arthur Rubinstein coming
on board to write new music and Bergman returning to write new lyrics. The
revised version debuted in Williamstown, Massachusetts in August 1963.
A cache of ephemera survives in Bergman’s collection,
including an original cast album from 1961, three advertising flyers, some
vintage photos of Bergman, Pendleton, et al from the 1960s, press clippings
from the local papers in 1961 and 1963, the 1961 Yale program and the 1963
Williamstown program, and a typed script from 1961. Massengale became a
musicologist and went on to teach at UCLA; Rubenstein did music for television
and films including Blue Thunder and WarGames; Bergman became one of the
hippest people ever to set foot in a radio station; and Pendleton became an
acting teacher, theatre director, playwright, and actor with approximately 6
trillion credits.
DISCLAIMER: To the best of my
knowledge, this work is out of print and not available for purchase in any
format. If you are the artist and are planning a reissue, please let me know
and I’ll remove it from the blog. Also please get in touch if you’ve lost your
art &/or sound masters and would like to talk with me about my restoration work.
