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American playwrights #4: Augustus Thomas
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Augustus Thomas
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, playwright Augustus Thomas lived from January 8th 1857 to August 12th 1934. His father was a doctor who had a deep interest in theatre, oratory and the classics, and who had traveled to operate the St. Charles Theatre in New Orleans (also employing such notables as actor John Wilkes Booth) when Augustus was a boy. During his teens, Augustus organized a traveling company which played at stops along Missouri's then-bustling train routes. He then worked as a Congressional page, and later on the railways.
In 1889, he became editor of the Kansas City Mirror, and later went on to develop a lesser-known short story by Frances H. Burnett into the full-length play The Burglar starring Maurice Barrymore, great-grandfather of modern actress Drew Barrymore.
What may be his first fully original play, Alabama, was produced in 1891, and was successful enough that Augustus was able to take to writing full time. It is thought that Thomas was one of the very first true American playwrights, that is to say, playwrights who made use of purely American material. Later works include Arizona, In Mizzoura, Colorado, Rio Grande, The Copperhead and The Witching Hour.
Augustus helped transform many of his works into early films, as well as those of other authors and playwrights. Such titles include The Bonnie Brier Bush (1921) and The Family Secret (1924), starring the famous child star "Baby Peggy".
Of all his works, the most successful may have been The Copperhead, a generation-spanning piece of Civil War Americana starring Lionel Barrymore. The Witching Hour was also very popular with audiences, being a play about telepathy and the supernatural at a time when such things had seized the country's imagination. While mainly a writer of dramas, Augustus was also know to pen the occasional farce, such as The Earl of Pawtucket as well as some historical pieces.
In all, Augustus Thomas wrote sixty plays in his forty years as a playwright.
Augustus Thomas is considered mainly to be an unimportant figure in the literary history of America. His plays were without the artifice that earns critical acclaim, but were very important to the strong theatre audience of the time. He is quoted as saying: "...the theater is a place for the visualizing of ideas... vital only when it is visualizing some idea then and at the time in the public mind. The theater is a vital part of everyday life... as an institution it has a claim upon the popular attention principally in that fact. When it becomes a thing preservative, a museum for certain literary forms, or a laboratory for galvanizing archaic ideas, it is almost useless, and seldom successful as a business enterprise."
Augustus Thomas was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received the National Institute's gold medal in 1913.
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