James A. Herne: “The American Ibsen”

Time was, all American theatre-goers knew the name of James A. Herne (James Ahearn, 1839-1901), not just a few scholars.

Herne ranks with figures like Dion Boucicault and Steele MacKaye in the ranks of America’s top pre-O’Neill playwrights. After O’Neill, theatre people tended to sneer at these earlier figures but in recent decades their reputations have been partially restored if only for the purposes of historical investigation.

Originally from Cohoes, New York (near Albany) Herne was the son of working class Irish immigrants (no idea if he was related to vaudeville trick cyclist Charles Ahearn!). He started out as an actor with traveling stock companies from around the age of 20, acting in staples of the age like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and East Lynne. For a time he was married to actress Helen Western (sister of the more famous Lucille), who later was courted by John Wilkes Booth. Circa 1870, Herne’s base of operations became San Francisco, where he collaborated with David Belasco on at least three plays, Within an Inch of His Life, Marriage By Moonlight, and the better known Hearts of Oak, which was adapted for the screen in 1914 and 1924, on the second occasion by John Ford.Hearts of Oak originally opened in Chicago in 1879 starring Belasco. It concerns a woman who dutifully marries her guardian rather than the man she loves. Like Belasco, Herne became known for his realism and willingness to take on difficult topics. His best remembered play Margaret Fleming (1890) concerned an illegitimate birth, the kind of stuff that earned Herne his nickname “The American Ibsen“. William Dean Howells was influenced by Margaret Fleming. Herne was was also a follower of Progressive economist Henry George, author Progress and Poverty and incorporated his reformist beliefs into his works. Herne was acting in his play Sag Harbor in Chicago in 1900 when he fell ill with the pneumonia that killed hin. When the show opened on Broadway a couple of months later, Lionel Barrymore played the role.

Herne’s second wife was actress Katherine Corcoran. All four of their five children who lived to adulthood followed their parents onto the stage for a time. Julie (1880-1955) acted on Broadway from 1900 through 1918, also becoming a playwright and a scenarist for silent films at Paramount in the ’20s. She committed suicide in 1955, it is said, over a bad review. Crystal Herne (1883-1950) was the most illustrious of the brood, having appeared in nearly 40 Broadway productions, many of them historic. She was especially associated with the works of Shaw, starring as the title character in Arnold Daly’s 1905 production of Candida, as well as the first Broadway productions of Mrs. Warrens Profession (as Vivie) and John Bull’s Other Island that same year, and revivals of You Never Can Tell and Arms and the Man. She was the title character in the original production of George Kelly’s Craig’s Wife(1925) and appeared with Dustin Farnum in the 1911 revival of The Squaw Man. She was in Clyde Fitch’s Major Andre (1903) and her sister Julie’s play Richter’s Wife (1905), among much else. Her husband Harold Pollard was an editor at the New York World. Dorothy Herne (1885-1921) was married to drama critic and author Montrose Jonas Moses (one of his books, surely not coincidentally, is about Ibsen.). Dorothy too was an actress, but she died young. A brother, John Herne, had also been actor, but he eventually went into publishing, working for Scribner’s.