(2 of 2)
Booth in Blackface. From 1850 to 1880 minstrelsy was the biggest thing in the U.S. theatre. Famed players like Edwin Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, William Macready and Edwin Booth were hard put for audiences in any town where "cullud opera" was playing. In 1850 the great Booth himself gave a blackface performance at Bel Air, Md. P. T. Barnum once corked his own face and appeared in such early favorites as Zip Coon, The Raccoon Hunt, Gittin' Up Stairs. Stephen Foster wrote his masterpieces for minstrels. John Philip Sousa, Gentleman Jim Corbett and George M. Cohan's father all did their blackface stints.
Minstrelsy gradually died with the onset of the vaudeville chains, then the movies, then the radio. "I doubt," said pensive Neil O'Brien last week, "whether people would pay much more than $1 to see a good minstrel show today."