The Frank Chanfrau Bicentennial

Born 200 years ago today the great actor-manager Francis S. “Frank” Chanfrau (1821-1884).

Chanfrau was a star of the New York stage during the middle part of the 19th century. Born and raised on the Lower East Side, most sources describe him as French, and he was known to include French characters in his repertoire. Only one scholar, Heather S. Nathans (in this article) identifies him as Jewish. In many cases, I would dismiss the outlier, but Nathans is heavily credentialed. I’m inclined to suspect that she researched it farther than most other writers, and it does track with the neighborhood. Like the Dreyfuses he may have been a French Jew, and that could also explain the immigration in the first place.

As a young man, Chanfrau acted with the companies at the Chatham, Park, and Olympic theatres. He was known for his impressions of other actors, especially Edwin Forrest, whom he seems to have taken great pains to physically resemble. He was also expert at dialects.

Chanfrau’s greatest claim to fame was having played the Irish Bowery B’hoy Mose the Fireman in a series of plays from 1848 through a good part of the 1850s. A smash hit with the great unwashed, it prompted Chanfrau, as manager of the Chatham and Bowery theatres to free working class audiences from their customary restriction to gallery seating, to sit anywhere they liked, basically allowing them to take over the house. As manager of the Bowery Theatre, he presented Dan Rice’s Circus and Shakespeare in addition to his Mose and Forrest specialties. In 1868, he commissioned a play with a new character, Kit, the Arkansas Traveler, which he also played with great success. at Niblo’s Garden. In his later years he was also known for playing the title role in Sam, a part inspired by E.H. Sothern’s delineation of Lord Dundreary inOur American Cousin.

The most thorough article on Frank Chanfrau I have come across is his obituary in the October 11, 1884 issue of the New York Clipper, available at various archives to be found online.

Chanfrau’s wife was the actress Henrietta Davis Baker Chanfrau. Previously she had acted with the company of an actor-manager named Lewis Baker. I don’t know if they had been married (her born surname was Davis). Nor do I know if there was any relation to Benjamin A. Baker, author of A Glance at New York, the first play to feature the character of Mose the Fireman. Anyone wants to run that down, be my guest.

For more on early American stage history,pleaseconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.