THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN ON THE AMERICAN STAGE
During World War II every GI drooled over Betty Grable. During the Civil War, Billy Yank drooled over Fanny Brown.
Slightly less than middle height for that era, Fanny had coal black eyes, dark curly hair, a fair and delicate complexion, a soft smile, a pleasing voice, and a “rounded and glorious form.”1 T. Allston Brown, editor of the New York Clipper, the newspaper of the stars and wannabees, personally knew or knew about every actor and actress in the business. In Allston Brown’s opinion, no actress came close to Fanny’s matchless beauty.2 Captain Noble D. Preston, Tenth New York Cavalry, was among the hundreds if not thousands of civilians and soldiers who fell asleep every night with Fanny’s picture tucked away in a pocket.3
The average age of the Civil War soldier was twenty-six.4 Many were between eighteen and twenty-one. They were mostly farm boys and men who had rarely been more than a hundred miles from home. Long-time friends from the same town often joined the same regiment. None of them were prepared for the rigidity, routine, and tedium of camp life. Most of the time they were drilling, marching, gathering wood, or standing picket duty and coping with the boredom of it all. To while away the time waiting for orders, they played dominoes, cards, dice, checkers, and chess. They read books and, even better, letters from home from mothers and fathers and the wives and girls they left behind.
Fanny Brown. “The Most Beautiful Woman On The American Stage.” Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Division.
For fifteen or twenty-five cents, men and teenage boys who had no one to dream about at home sent away for cartes de visite of “the mysteries and delights of naked female beauty”5 or less racy photos of the actresses they had seen on stage or in newspapers, to fantasize over them.6 Four of the five photos in John’s pocket when he died were actresses. Three of those four were rather ordinary headshots. The other was a full-length photograph of (fully-clothed) Fanny Brown, “the most beautiful and bewitching [woman] that ever graced the American stage.”7
Fanny was born in Cincinnati in 1837 to itinerant circus performers. She made her stage debut in 1843 at the age of six as an extra in Cinderella at the Boston Museum on Tremont Street.8 Her salary was two dollars a week, paid to her mother. At sixteen, “pretty Fanny Brown” was cast as “little Eva” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.9 A year later she was the “circus-rider’s child” in a dramatic version of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. For the real-life daughter of a circus-rider mother, it was art imitating life. It wasn’t a very prominent part, the Boston Herald’s critic said, but Fanny had made it “conspicuous by her fine rendition,”10 undoubtedly coached by her mother.
Just before her final year at the Boston Museum, fans turned out for a benefit for the eighteen-year-old girl who had “grown up in the Museum.”11 At her curtain call she was showered with bouquets of flowers. One of those bouquets had a diamond ring with ten jewels attached. It was, the Boston Herald said, “a deserving tribute to the merits and industry of this favorite young actress.”12
The next season, Fanny was the star attraction at the recently remodeled Burton’s New Theatre on Broadway. The “unsightly boxes in the second tier” had been removed, new chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, the walls were painted, and a new green cloth curtain replaced the old drapery. A new company had also been formed with “celebrated artistes,” among them “Miss Fanny Brown, from the Boston Museum.”13 Not long after settling in at Burton’s New Theatre, Fanny met Fred Buckley, one of the famed, minstrel Buckley’s Serenaders performing down the street from Burton’s New Theatre at the New Hall Theatre.14
Fred Buckley (1833–1864) was also a child star. At eight, he was a violin virtuoso nicknamed “Little Ole Bull” and “Master Ole Bull”15 after a famed Norwegian violinist. Like John Wilkes Booth, Fred Buckley was “undisputably [sic] handsome,” received love letters daily, and had many affairs.16
Four months after they met, nineteen-year-old Fanny and Fred were married in January 1857.17 Fanny spent the next four years living with her mother in Boston and taking care of her newborn son while Fred was away on tour.18 Three years into the marriage, they divorced.19
With Fred no longer sending her money and her own meager funds running out, Fanny left her toddler in her mother’s care and went back to work. Boston’s one-time favorite child actress is “no longer ‘Little Fanny,’” commented a Boston theatre critic.20 When she appeared at the Varieties Theatre in New Orleans the following season, theatre critics saw the beauty, not the talent. She has a “sweet and pleasant face” and “did her best . . . perhaps that’s enough,” they reckoned.21
In October 1861, Fanny was at the Winter Garden in New York, starring in John Sleeper Clarke’s production of The Octoroon.22 Nights were spent mingling with New York’s “Bohemian” writers, artists, musicians, and entertainers at Ada Clare’s house on West Forty-Second Street. The men at Ada’s were “clever and distinguished,” and the women were “beautiful and brilliant,” but none of the women were “as beautiful as Fanny Brown.”23 Fanny is “one of the most fascinating actresses it has ever been our lot to see,”24 opined the National Republican.
In January 1863, Fanny was slated to appear at the Drury Theatre in Pittsburgh in the title role of Pocahontas. The theatre critic was ecstatic over her upcoming appearance. Pittsburgh, he wrote, had a “new aspirant for fame in the histrionic world,” a “dashing beauty . . . in the person of Miss Fanny Brown.”25
When Fanny did not show on time, Bill Henderson, the Drury Theatre’s manager, sent her a telegram asking where she was. Fanny’s manager answered that Fanny’s mother had died.26 It was true, but it was not the reason Fanny didn’t show. When Fanny told John Sleeper Clarke she would be leaving, he had offered her an extended stay at the Winter Garden. Fanny was having too good a time hobnobbing with New York’s elite to leave for the “Burgh.”27 She also needed to go back to Boston to make arrangements for someone to take care of her son now that her mother had died. It was while Fanny was in Boston that she met John Wilkes Booth.
John had just finished an engagement at the Howard Atheneum in September 1863 with veteran actress Mrs. Julia Bennett Barrow. In between engagements, they had put together a “Booth-Barrow Combination,” a small core company to tour New England’s lesser theatres until their next scheduled booking at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn.
Next to fame, John’s “chief passion was [still] for women,”28 and Fanny Brown was beautiful. John invited her to be part of his company. Fanny was just as passionate about handsome men. She accepted.
The “Combination” scheduled performances in six towns with two or three nights at each. Critics in each town expected the dramatic entertainment coming their way would be “the finest and best ever produced here.”29 While John came in for most of the press coverage, Fanny wasn’t totally ignored. The company, the Springfield Republican reported, included “the beautiful Fanny Brown, from the Winter Garden, New York.”30
Three days later John and Fanny were in Providence at the Academy of Music. John opened with Richard III. This time Fanny had more press coverage. “The Pretty Miss Brown, as Lady Anne,” said the Providence Daily Journal’s critic, “drew largely upon the interest of the audience.”31 It was their love scenes and John’s performance in The Lady of Lyons, however, that got the most attention. Booth, the Providence Daily Journal added, “need fear no rivals in artificial love making.”32
The Hartford Courant reported the same sanitized review of John and Fanny’s love scenes when they appeared in the same play in that city. “There is so much art in love-making that the skill of an actor must be remarkable to portray faithfully all the warmth, passion and ‘dignity’ which is mandatory to give enchantment to the mimicry.”33 What the Providence Daily Journal and Hartford Courant did not know was that for John, it was not so much stage skill as offstage practice.
Although John and Fanny were booked into separate rooms during their tour for appearance’s sake, their rooms were next to one another with adjoining doors.34 In November 1863, there were rumors that “J. Wilkes Booth will shortly lead to the hymeneal altar the beautiful and fascinating Fanny Brown.”
Enigmatically, the short notice in the New York Clipper about the rumored wedding ended with “Where’s Dolly?”35 While rumors were floating around about John getting married, he was also seeing a woman known only as Dolly.36
By the time the New York Clipper got around to the story, the whirlwind affair was over. In early November Fanny was in Philadelphia at the New Chestnut Street Theatre,37 and John was in Washington, D.C., at Ford’s Theatre for the start of a two-week engagement.38 When John died two years later, Fanny’s full-length photo was in his pocket.