Harry Watkins (actor)

Harry Watkins, c. 1860s

Harry Watkins (January 14, 1825 – February 5, 1894) was an American actor, theatre manager and playwright, whose career spanned the latter half of the nineteenth century. He is best remembered for his diary, kept from 1845 to 1860, which is considered a rare source of firsthand information about the theater during the antebellum period.

Life and career

Watkins was born in New York.^[1] He began his acting career in 1845 and, although he was constantly employed as an actor for nearly five decades, he never achieved widespread fame. On February 5, 1854, Watkins married Harriet M. Secor^[2] with whom he had two children.^[3] It is not yet known what became of Harriet and their children, but in 1860, Watkins married English-born actress and singer Rosina Shaw (widow of Charles Howard), who used the stage names Rose Howard and Rose Shaw.^[4] Watkins became manager of P. T. Barnum's American Museum's theatrical enterprises in 1857,^[5] where he wrote, presented, and acted in, among other things, The Pioneer Patriot.^[6] He and his wife, Rose, performed in England from 1860 to 1863. He was described by the British press as "decidedly one of the best delineators of Negro character", but in general his wife had more success in England.^[7]

Watkins played such roles as Edward Middleton in The Drunkard, Wool in his own adaptation of The Hidden Hand, and Titus in Brutus by John Howard Payne.^[8] He was the author of more than 25 plays by 1889.^[9] He was also actively engaged in politics, often expressing his views in his diary as well as in bulletins, such as How Shall I Vote? (1885),^[10] and in his book His Worst Enemy: Photographed from Life In New York (1889).^[9]

Watkins is fictionalized in the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, in a scene where The Five Points Mission presents a dramatization of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Barnum had presented H. J. Conway's popular version of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the American Museum in the 1850s, which varied from the novel especially in ending happily.^[11]

Diary

Watkins' diary, which he kept during the first fifteen years of his acting career (November 20, 1845 – 1860), is a rare source of firsthand information about the theater during the antebellum period.^[12] It "is the only known diary of its size and scope written by an American actor during the decade prior to the Civil War".^[13]

Although Watkins' daughter, Amy Lee, had intended to use his diary as support to write a book about him, she exchanged it with Maud Durbin Skinner (the wife of Otis Skinner), probably due to financial hardship, for the amount of her dentist bill and a small compensation.^[14] The complete thirteen volumes of the original manuscript are available online at the Harvard Theatre Collection website of the Harvard College Library in "Papers of the Skinner Family". In 2012, a group of scholars began to digitize the Watkins Diary. The project, A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century American Actor, aims to shed new light on pre-Civil War theatre culture as the conditions of artists during that period.^[13]

Personal

Watkins and his first wife Harriet had two sons, George Washington Watkins (named after Harry's brother) and Harry Clay Watkins.^[3] With his second wife Rose, Watkins had two more sons, Charles Howard Watkins and William S. Watkins, and a daughter, Amy Lee Watkins. All three children became actors. Both of his sons with Rose died in 1887, the former of consumption, and two weeks later the latter from a grape seed lodged in his appendix, which caused an inflammation and abscess, leading to a perforation of the intestine. Charles was 29, and William was 19.^[15]

Notes

References

• Skinner, Maud and Otis. One Man in His Time: The Adventures of H. Watkins, Strolling Player, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1938).
• Watkins, Harry. The Diary of Harry Watkins, Skinner Family Papers, Harvard Theatre Collection

External links

• Photo of Watkins
• Watkins' Diary
• Transcription Project