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The Rise of Mass Culture and the Production of Celebrities

It would be quite easy to see celebrity culture and celebrity journalism as fairly recent phenomena, commanding our attention primarily in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. But by the early nineteenth century, celebrities—what they stood for, what fans invested in them, what behind-the-scenes or self-aggrandizing promoters sought to extract financially from them—had come to assume an unprecedented role in the cultural life of the country. And despite the absence then of electronic media, which is now so central to celebrity production, many precedents were set about how stars were created, promoted, and embraced. This trend was enabled by the rise and intersection of several key technologies—the telegraph that expedited the spread of news, the railroads that carried entertainers around the country, photography that made the famous visible more quickly and cheaply, and, most important, the explosive rise of daily newspapers and then mass-circulation magazines, nearly all supported by advertising, that made celebrity construction and maintenance possible.

The Astor Place Riots

In 1849, in what was still the early republic, a feud between two well-known actors—or, more accurately, their fans—caused a riot in New York City in which twenty-two people were killed, 150 injured, and eighty-six arrested. It was the deadliest event of its kind in the city up to that point. The melee was ostensibly about which actor was better. But conflicts about celebrities are never only about them. Ever.

Celebrities—their appearance, behaviors, their expressed attitudes, their biographies, their failings, their scandals—have, in the past and the present, served as flashpoints for clashes about larger contentious issues gripping a culture. In this case, what came to be known as the infamous Astor Place Riots was a battle about class identity, resentments over economic and cultural privilege, and about manhood and national pride. It was a battle personified by allegiances to two actors and what they stood for: the British performer William Charles Macready and the American Edwin Forrest, both celebrated Shakespearean actors.1 Today, we associate Shakespeare with “high art” and culture, but in the nineteenth century Shakespeare was by far the most popular playwright in the United States, beloved by people across a range of socioeconomic classes. His plays were performed in venues from opulent theaters to saloons, and many knew key lines so well that they would recite them along with the actors.2 By the 1840s cities like New York, despite religious and moral opposition among some of the educated elite to the potential corruptions of theatergoing, had a robust theater culture with known actors. Thousands of new theaters, especially in cities, were built between 1850 and 1900.3 The theater, then, was one of the first venues for the production of entertainment celebrities in the United States.

Early nineteenth-century theaters—often very rowdy places known for their shouting, spitting, the smell of booze—contained audiences (mostly men) from all walks of life who were then spatially segregated by income, line of work, class, and race. The expensive boxes above and to the side of the stage were reserved for the wealthy. Below the boxes (what we would today call the orchestra) was “the pit,” where the emerging middle class—manual laborers, sailors, mechanics, tradesmen, and, in New York, the Bowery b’hoys—sat. Known for their boisterous (often drunken) behavior, bright clothes, and love of the theater, the b’hoys were single, working-class men, mostly firemen and mechanics. Above and behind the pit were the cheap gallery seats (today’s mezzanine) occupied by newsboys, apprentices, and other lower wage workers; segregated from everyone in the upper third tier were African Americans (assigned the very worst seats), and prostitutes and their clients.4 Those in the gallery were known to pelt actors who displeased them (as well as those in the boxes) with rotten fruit, eggs, peanuts (hence the peanut gallery), and pennies. Those in each sector of the theater resented the others. As the historian David Nasaw noted, “The box holders were disgusted by the rowdiness of the pit and gallery; the pit was offended by the box holders’ continuous chatter and inattention to the stage; the gallery was disgusted by the actors’ fawning attention to the box holders.”5 As you can imagine, this was becoming a tinderbox of class resentment.

As a result, this segregation within theaters began to give way to segregation between theaters. The new, luxurious Astor Place Opera House opened late in 1847 and was meant for the rich.6 In May 1849, William Charles Macready, known for his restrained, intellectual style, was slated to perform Macbeth there. Indeed, most of the big names in American theater at this time were English actors who, with their reputations as stars already established, would come to perform in the United States. At the same time, Edwin Forrest, the country’s first great tragic actor,7 a more dramatic, extravagant performer deemed to embody the “American” style of acting, was to portray Spartacus at another theater just a few blocks away. A feud had begun between them, and Macready had already denounced Forrest’s “vanity,” his “deficiency in taste and judgement,” and especially “the facetious applause of his supporters, the ‘Bower lads.’”8 Forrest—and his fans—were still smarting from Forrest having been hissed when he performed in England. In retaliation, he allegedly hissed at a performance of Macready as Hamlet,9 and declared that Macready “should never be permitted to appear again upon the stage” in New York City.10

The rise of theaters coincided—and interacted with—the rise of the “penny press,” which embraced and fanned such conflicts to increase circulation and sales. As their name suggests, penny papers, which began to proliferate in the 1830s, were tabloid-style newspapers purchased for a single penny, which traded in lurid crime, gossip, and social stories. In doing so, they prompted a reconsideration of the standards of newsworthiness—what, and who, is worthy of public discussion. Unlike their six-cent counterparts, which targeted a more affluent audience, both their content and cost were designed to reach the greatest number of possible readers, especially the emerging middle and working classes. So the penny press played an important role in the creation of the mass public and constituted a crucial communications network in the nineteenth century. Much like the gossip magazines and websites today, the penny press also provided a new vehicle for the creation and discussion of celebrity. Theater owners used the penny press as well as playbills to promote their productions and actors, and between dueling promotions of the theatrical performances and the bad blood between the two famous men, enmity was in the air. The penny press fanned, especially, the personal attacks between the actors.11

Hundreds of Forrest’s supporters, many of them the b’hoys, bought tickets to Macready’s first performance on May 8, stoked in part by broadsides that asked “Working Men, Shall Americans or English Rule in this City!” It urged them to “express their opinions” at the “English Aristocratic Opera House,” which indeed they did. As Macready sought to perform, Forrest’s supporters shouted him down and threw rotten eggs, potatoes, and other vegetables. He swore he would return to England, but the city’s elite persuaded him to stay and continue the engagement, which he resumed on May 10.