\"Playwright\" Denman Thompson Cut Signature Dated 1907 For Sale

Up for sale "Playwright" Denman Thompson Clipped Signature Dated 1907. 

ES-7365E

Rufus Thompson, a carpenter, and his wife

Anne Hathaway Baxter moved in 1831 from West Swanzey, New Hampshire to Girard, Pennsylvania, near Erie,

where their son Henry Denman Thompson was born.[1] In 1847, they returned to West Swanzey, where

he was educated and at nineteen began work as a bookkeeper in Lowell, Massachusetts.

While there, he developed an interest in theatre and decided to make it his career. He first went

on the professional stage in 1850 at the Howard Athenæum in Boston, where he His first speaking role was in 1852 at Lowell,

playing Orasman in the military drama, The French Spy. He moved to Toronto in 1854 to train at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and

in 1860 married Maria Bolton, with whom he had three children. But Thompson had a disregard for serious study

or rehearsals, and a manner unsuited for serious drama.

With his large, good-natured eyes and thick red hair brushed straight up,

audiences might laugh, ruining the gravitas of any scene. So he abandoned tragedy, and by 1862 was in England, performing at the City of London Theatre as

a low comedian. Thompson

returned to Toronto that fall, then moved to his native United States in 1868, where he continued to work in

theatre. Years later, he was with a vaudeville troupe when he wrote a short sketch about

"Joshua Whitcomb," a New to the big city. When Thompson performed the routine for the first time

in 1875 at Pittsburgh, it was warmly

received, and became quite popular during the next few years. In 1885, he

rewrote his sketch into a four-act play, entitled The Old Homestead.

The new play opened in Boston in April 1886 with Thompson in

the lead role, and became a very successful production that made him wealthy,

with both a West Swanzey gentleman's farm and nearby lakefront summer

cottage. Thompson toured with the play throughout the United States,

debuted with it on Broadway in 1904, and

returned as a revival in 1907. In 1915, after his death, it was made into a

silent film of the same name by

the Famous Players Film Company. Thompson wrote other plays,

including some collaborative efforts with George W. Ryer (1843–1902), of which

several were made into motion pictures. Their 1886 Broadway play became the

basis for the 1926 film Sunshine of Paradise Alley, as was the case

with their 1903 Broadway production of Our New Minister, which

became the basis for the script for the 1913 Kalem Company film starring Alice Joyce and Tom Moore. In 1914, the Kalem Company also made the highly

successful adventure film serial, The Hazards of Helen,

based on Thompson's work. Denman Thompson died when aged 77 at his home in West

Swanzey. He is featured on a New Hampshire near New Hampshire Route 32 in

Swanzey.