In the 18th and early 19th centuries, an actress was considered little more than a prostitute. In the mid-19th century, attitudes began to change. It became popular among the wealthy to entertain leading actors and actresses.
The life of actors and actresses was difficult, requiring great physical stamina. In addition to a grueling performance schedule, actors had to withstand stagecoach, early riverboat travel, and makeshift lodgings. Actors often rehearsed three plays a day and then prepared for the night’s performance. By the Civil War, the season was varied and demanding. A season could consist of 40 to 130 plays, changing nightly. Utility actors in a company might be expected to know over 100 parts. The famous actress Charlotte Cushman could offer 200 different lead roles. Actors often had only two days or overnight to learn a new script.
In the antebellum period, beginning actors’ salaries ranged from $3 to $6 per week; utility players’ salaries from $7 to $15 per week; “walking” ladies and gentlemen, $15 to $30; and lead actors earned anywhere from $35 to $100 per week. Traveling stars could command $150 to $500 per 7- to 10-day engagement, plus one or more benefits. Except for the lowest ranks of actors, salaries were good at this time, especially for women, though they were paid less than men in comparable roles and must furnish their own costumes.
Many 19th-century actors and actresses came from theatrical backgrounds and started as child actors. “Child stars are an American tradition…but no period surpasses the mid-1800s for the sheer number of children appearing in live theatrical events or the degree of seriousness with which they were taken.
“Because the theatre has been remarkably free-thinking, women in the profession have always been relatively equal to their male colleagues. Bad managers have absconded with their salaries equally; audiences booed them equally; they starved equally between engagements; and their contributions to the traditions of the theatre have been equally forgotten.”(Turner) Women’s roles became somewhat ambiguous. Tradition required women to be delicate, fragile, and dependent. But, to withstand the rigors of the acting profession, they needed to be resilient, independent, strong-willed, and determined.
One more almost pleasant expectation was the dealing with fashions of the day. Clara Morris recounted that long trains on dresses were particularly vexing. She tells a story of Fanny Davenport moving continually on a crowded stage during a comedy scene and ending up with her trailing skirts tangled around a chair so that when she exited the stage, the chair went with her.
Neither Bernhardt or Duse had a promising start. Duse was born to a family of street musicians, making her professional debut at age four when she was pushed onto a stage to play Cosette in an early Les Misérables. Bernhardt, the daughter of a high-class courtesan, used her mother’s connections to get a spot with the famed Comédie-Française, only to suffer such terrible stage fright that she was let go.
Bernhardt excelled in the dramatic poses and exaggerated gestures early 19th-century actors used to convey character’s emotions so that even audience members in the cheap seats could follow what was going on. Her mastery of the technique won her devoted fans. Oscar Wilde wrote Salome for her, and Mark Twain raved, “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.”
Bernhardt traveled with a menagerie of exotic animals, marketed merchandise bearing her likeness from souvenir cards to bottled drinks, gave provocative interviews about her sex life, had herself photographed sleeping in a coffin, and, during her first U.S. tour in 1880, demanded $1,000 a performance (about $25,000 today).
Less flashy, Duse’s name might have been less familiar to modern audiences, but some considered her acting style more influential. Fourteen years younger than Bernhardt and more of an introvert by nature, Duse adopted a form of acting that sought to disappear within the characters she played. Thus, her gestures tended to be smaller and more naturalistic than most. Instead, she relied on the expressiveness of her face, which the newly introduced gas lighting helped illuminate.
But despite their acclaim, both women faced obstacles in pursuing their careers. Bernhardt, whose mother was Jewish, experienced anti-Semitism. Duse suffered from depression and bad choices in men, several of whom spent her money and left her in debt.
Men saw actresses either as mystical goddesses or trollops to socialize with in a more dignified way than visiting the local whorehouse.
From 1870-1880 the number of women listing “actress” as their profession rose from 780 to 4,652 (596%). By 1910, 15,432. This influx of women saw 25 new women to every new man, indicating economic opportunity, social and sexual independence. Women obtained wealth, mobility, and social power through the theater.
Stars could command a salary of up to $150 a week, while most chorus or ballet girls made between ten and twenty-five. Few were paid for rehearsal time, and players had long layoffs since the theater season lasted for thirty to forty weeks a year. Costumes cost between three hundred and four hundred dollars a season.
For all the apparent drawbacks of life on stage, there was also glamour, excitement, and public admiration. The theater lured women and gave those usually stuck in unrewarding jobs money, fame, and an opportunity to become a star.
Do you like reading about women trying to become actresses in the old west?
Would you have liked to be an actress in the old west?
I will do a giveaway of one ebook of my latest western, LULA MAE, one of my fantasy, A KISS AND A DARE, and also, a $5 Amazon card. Each of three winners will get one of these.
Charlene likes to say she began her fiction career in the third grade when she told the class, during Show and Tell, that a black widow spider came down from the garage roof and bit her (non-existent) little sister to death.
After two years of college as a fine arts major, and a divorce, she moved to Utah, planning to wow the world with her watercolor landscapes—until her sister introduced her to romance novels. She never picked up a paint brush again.
Originally published by Kensington in the ‘90s, Charlene is an Indie author now. She writes Victorian/western historical romance, except for one unpublished contemporary fantasy. It’s a frog princess story about a man napping beside a pond, who awakens when a frog jumps on his chest. The frog kisses him and voila!—he has a naked medieval princess sprawled over him. Charlene has a vivid imagination and a romantic soul.
Please excuse her now. She just heard a husky whisper from one of the dusty, shadowed corners of her office. Someone lurks there, someone long, lanky and lascivious, beckoning to her. She has no intention of playing coy.
Visit Charlene’s webpage, http://charleneraddon.com and sign up for her newsletter.
Her book cover site is http://silversagebookcovers.com.
Additional Links:
https://twitter.com/craddon
http://www.facebook.com/charlene.b.raddon
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1232154.Charlene_Raddon
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/charlene-raddon
https://www.pinterest.com/charraddon5080/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlene-raddon-00854629/
https://www.instagram.com/charrad75/
http://www.amazon.com/Charlene-Raddon/e/B000APG1P8?tag=pettpist-20