All the Marbles

April 27 was the birthday of stage actor Dan Marble (1810-1849). Marble was one of the great “stage Yankees” like Ezra Kendall, John E. Owens, Cal Stewart, Charles Mathews, James Hackett, George Handel Hill and Joshua Silsbee.

Hailing from East Windsor, CT, Marble debuted in New York’s Chatham Garden Theatre in 1831 in Fortune’s Frolic, a popular English play of 30 years’ vintage. In 1834 he scored a hit in Yankee Land, or The Foundling of the Apple Orchard (1834) by Cornelius Ambrosius Logan, and this set the tone of the rets of his career. Later, he would score again with a Yankee character named Deuteronomy Dutiful in Logan’s The Vermont Wool Dealer (1838), which he later toured with to London. But it was as the real life character Sam Patch that Marble was forever to be associated. He started playing the famed daredevil on stage in 1836 with Sam Patch the Yankee Jumper. This was followed by Sam Patch at Home and Sam Patch in France. His last credit was in O.E. Durivage’s The Stage Struck Yankee (1849). He died of cholera while playing Louisville, Kentucky.

Two years after his death there was a biography of Marble penned by Jonathan Falconbridge Kelly, and actor James Hubert McVicker purchased the right to revive his plays, which he toured to England with in 1855 with great success.

Marble married into a prominent theatrical family. His wife Anna was a daughter of British-American actor-manager William Warren (1767-1832). His daughter Mary married actor Samuel Meyers in 1855. They became stars at McVicker’s Theatre, which opened in Chicago in 1857. Marble’s son Edward Marble was an actor and songwriter who wrote the vaudeville sketch “Tuxedo” which Thatcher’s Minstrels toured the circuits with in the 1890s. Edward’s daughter Anna Marble, in turn married playwright Channing Pollock, whom we wrote about here.

And that’s all the Marbles.

For more on show business history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.