Play it again, Ham

As a Folger staff member, I am used to seeing Shakespeare’s face everywhere, but the image from this month’s Crocodile Mystery made even me do a double take. This month’s mystery was a stumper! The Hamlet behind Shakespeare/Yorick was Edwin “Eddie” Foy, a famous comic performer of the vaudeville era.

Of all the roles available to a performer in Foy’s irreverent domain, it is curious that Hamlet is the one that haunts this jokester’s career. Hamlet is the centerpiece of three important moments during Eddie Foy’s long command of the vaudeville stage. As a longtime fan of the melancholy Dane, it appears that when Eddie Foy had a choice, he chose to “Play it again, Ham.”

Another Edwin

Eddie Foy, as told in his 1928 autobiography Clowning through Life (with Alvin F. Harlow), got his start on the stage as a supernumerary in a wide range of productions. He recounts with detail his impressions of Edwin Booth’s deep voice and commanding stage presence during an 1870 production of Hamlet in which Foy appeared “sometimes as a guard or attendant, sometimes as one of the strolling players.”¹

Eddie Foy sung this humorous song in Mr. Blue Beard during the matinee opening performance at the brand-new Iroquois Theatre in Chicago on December 30, 1903—a performance that could not have been more tragic. During this performance, the deadliest theater fire in United States history took the lives of at least 602 people in 8 minutes. Eddie Foy and his son Bryan (who happened to attend the show that day) survived the conflagration—a miraculous outcome considering that Eddie Foy remained onstage until he could only see smoke, trying to calm the crowd fleeing toward the single, unmarked exit.⁹

Even though the show did not continue its run in Chicago after the tragic fire, the song “Hamlet was a Melancholy Dane” stood on its own as an Eddie Foy hit that typified the Jerome and Schwartz era of his career.

Mr. Hamlet of Broadway

Near the end of Clowning through Life, Eddie Foy recounts his successful performance in a production of The Orchid (1907), after which a reviewer wrote, “‘I didn’t believe he had it in him,’ was the remark made by many who have seen Foy only in his conventional roles. But take care, Eddie. This doesn’t mean that you can play Hamlet.”¹⁰ In an interview with the press shortly after, Foy countered, “I have as much right to play Hamlet as anyone else, I paid 15 cents for a copy of the piece, and that’s all it cost anybody else…Yes, I used to sing ‘Hamlet was a Melancholy Dane,’ but I did not state it as a fact, and even if it were so, that has no bearing on the case.”¹¹

The rumor that Eddie Foy would shift his career to tragedy—and his surname to Fitzgerald—at the apex of his fame was fostered by his producers, the Shubert Brothers. They were at work with Foy on a top-secret show—a burlesque version of Hamlet. Eddie Foy strategically (and hilariously) kept the press in the dark and instead of owning up to the truth, treated himself to swindling earnest journalists into believing he intended to become the next Edwin Booth.¹²

The Shuberts and Foy mercilessly pursued their press gambit during the Summer of 1908 to conjure interest in their new venture. Upon learning this story, I promptly jumped onto my go-to website for researching in American newspapers—Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers from Library of Congress. Using Advanced Search, I found a wealth of interviews, reviews, and advertisements for Mr. Foy ahem…Fitzgerald’s new Hamlet show.

The newspaper record for Eddie Foy’s press stunt provided more joy and information than I could have imagined. In this typical example, he starts the interview speaking only in Hamlet quotations or Shakespearean dialect—“Whither wilt thou lead me, speak”—but obviously the joke is on the interviewer who is “at a loss for a quotation.”¹³ Clearly, Foy enjoyed the practical joke—proving the comedian had not left comedy after all.

Cured of his “attack of Hamletitis,”¹⁴ Eddie Foy’s joke ended when the real show premiered in Fall 1908. We have come full circle to the images that began our post and solved the mystery—Mr. Hamlet of Broadway, “a screaming musical whimsicality,”¹⁵ included scenes from Hamlet situated in a story in which summer guests at “Starvation Inn, Lake Putrid” in the Adirondacks put together a summer theatrical.¹⁶ When the famous tragedian engaged for the show strands the production without a leading man, circus clown/hotel janitor Joey Wheeze (Eddie Foy) fills in as Hamlet.

The play was popular—some accounts describe standing-room only matinees and extended or sold out runs up to 7 weeks long.¹⁷

‘Remember me’

Today, if he is remembered at all, Eddie Foy’s legacy stems from his family act, “The Seven Little Foys.” Eddie Foy’s second act as the head of his family show captured the imaginations of screenwriters, who made both a TV movie and feature-length biopic—both called The Seven Little Foys—the latter starring Bob Hope as Eddie Foy.

In this scene from The Seven Little Foys (1955), Eddie Foy (Bob Hope) and George M. Cohan (James Cagney, reprising his role from Yankee Doodle Dandy) perform an energetic, tabletop dance-off—four minutes well worth your time!

Foy’s son, Eddie Jr., made a career of impersonating his father, snippets of which you can watch in a tribute video on YouTube. His impressions of his father are the closest we will find to his father’s spluttering speech and finger-snapping, collar-clicking song-and-dance routines. There have been many actors who have played Hamlet through the ages, but none quite like Eddie Foy. After sharing his song and story, I feel a stronger connection with him, the world of vaudeville, and the fans who sustained his six-decade-long career.