James McIntyre (8 August 1857 – 18 August 1937) was an American minstrel performer, vaudeville and theatrical actor, and a partner in the famous blackface tramp comedy duo act McIntyre and Heath.
Family and early career McIntyre was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and began working at a young age to support his widowed mother.McIntyre at age 13 is described as an "actor in travelling theatre" in 1870 US Federal Census, Kenosha Ward 1, Kenosha, Wisconsin, Roll M593_1770, p. 201, document available to subscribers at http://www.ancestry.com. He showed an early aptitude for dancing and acting. McIntyre sold candy on trains and when "the passengers were in danger of being bored Jim would get out in the aisles and entertain them with his clever acting." He learned the dance form known as clogging, which is part of the tap dance style. In his early teens he was keen on joining the circus troupes that passed through Kenosha. His mother initially prevented him from doing so. In 1870, he joined the McKenzie circus and then in 1871 joined the Burton and Ridgeway minstrels and toured the South and Western states for a year. Later he performed with the Katie Putnam Troupe, and toured with the Great Transatlantic circus in 1873.See entry "James McIntyre" in Olympians of the Sawdust Circle, Circus Historical Society.
He married Emma Maude Young (1862–1935). She was a dancer and balladeer known by the stage names of "Maude Clifford", and "Maud Clifton" and she performed as part of the Katie Putnam Troupe. Although they had no natural born children of their own they did adopt a daughter Maud Ainsworth Young (1892–1966).Maud McIntyre aged 17 is described as "adopted daughter" in 1910 US Federal Census, Brooklyn Ward 32, Kings County, New York, Roll: T624_985, p9B, Enumeration District 1000, available to subscribers at http://www.ancestry.com. She was the biological daughter of Emma's older sister Annie Young (1860–1906) and Emma's brother-in-law Joseph Charles Ainsworth.Robert L. Brown and Rosemary Brown, They Lie in Wait To Deceive, Volume 3, Mesa, Arizona: Brownsworth Publishing, 1986, pp. 86–87. In adult life Maud Ainsworth McIntyre became the wife of the Brooklyn criminal trial lawyer and Kings County judge George Washington Martin II (1876–1948)."Mr McIntyre left no close relatives. Chief mourner was an adopted daughter, Mrs Maud Martin wife of County Judge George W. Martin of Brooklyn" in "Old Stage Friends at M'Intyre Rites" New York Times, August 21, 1937, p. 15. Emma sometimes assisted her husband in negotiating theatre contracts.For example see the letter dated September 14, 1898 from M. Shea to Maude McIntyre concerning a contract for 1 week's performances at Shea's Garden Theatre. Letter held in Box 4 Theatre Correspondence, The McIntyre and Heath Archive 1878–1936, at Charles Deering McCormick Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Emma wrote theatrical scripts using the pseudonym Emily Louise Young, and these included The Rag Time Opera of Trial Marriage (1916),See Box 6 item F.10 "the rag Time Opera of Trial Marriage" "A Merry Musical Melange" 1916 by Emily Louise Young, 80 pp. in The McIntyre and Heath Archive 1878–1936, at Charles Deering McCormick Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois and she co-wrote Red Pepper and Hello, Alexander.See letter dated December 7, 1911, F51 in Box 4 "Theatre Correspondence" from Edgar Smith and Emily Young co-authors of play "Red Pepper" relinquishing rights to McIntyre and Heath in The McIntyre and Heath Archive 1878–1936, at Charles Deering McCormick Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
In his peak years as a star performer he gave an interview with the New York Times in which he claimed to have been responsible for introducing to vaudeville the Buck and Wing style of dance that is one form of tap dance.
Partnership with Heath
In 1874, he met Thomas Kurton Heath (1853–1938) in Texas. They developed a blackface tramp duo minstrel act. McIntyre played the character of Alexander Hambletonian who was a buffoonish stable-boy. Heath acted as "Henry Jones" a clever black entertainer who frequently outwits Alexander. Their routines included an oft-performed skit known as the Georgia Minstrels where the character Henry persuades the witless Alexander to quit working as a stable-boy and joins a traveling show where he is promised fame and fortune. None of the fame or fortune materializes and Alexander has comical and outrageous tasks to perform under Henry's direction which allowed them to act out comedic dialogue, dance and songs. Another skit, called the Ham Tree, and which formed the nucleus of a later stage play, involved the two characters discussing how ham grows on trees that are three hundred feet tall.
Their acting partnership endured for some fifty years as they worked under the twin influential theatre managers of Tony Pastor and Benjamin Franklin Keith appearing as stars in both vaudeville and Broadway. Their blackface minstrel shows were an influential model followed by later film stars such as Al Jolson. Their best known plays included:
The Ham Tree that was performed ninety times at the New York Theatre between August and November 1905. Included in the cast were Belle Gold and W. C. Fields, in his Broadway debut. In Hayti was performed fifty-six times at the Circle Theatre between August and October 1909. Hello, Alexander was performed fifty-six times at the 44th Street Theatre between October and November 1919. Red Pepper was performed at the Shubert Theatre in 1922.
Death McIntyre died aged eighty at his estate in Noyack, New York. He was buried in Southampton Cemetery.
References
Further reading
Daniel Blum, A Pictorial History of the American Theatre 1900 – 1950, (New York: Greenberg, 1950). Harold E. Briggs and Ernestine Bennett Briggs, "Early Theater on the Northern Plains," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 37, no. 2 (September 1950), pp. 231–264. Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville Its Life and Times (NY Dover 1963, reprint of 1940 ed). Mark Knowles, Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002), pp. 113–114. Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Leslie Joyce Pasternack, "The Bride Wielded a Razor: Images of Women on the Blackface Stage of James McIntyre and Thomas Heath," Comparative Drama, Volume 40 no 4 (Winter 2006–2007). Don Wilmeth, "James McIntyre and Thomas Heath," in The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, edited by Martin Banham (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). "James McIntyre" in Almanac of Famous People, 9th ed. (Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2007). "James McIntyre" in Biography Index, Volume 4 September 1955-August 1958, (New York: H. H. Wilson, 1960). "James McIntyre" in Oxford Companion to American Theatre edited by Gerald Bordman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). "James McIntyre" in Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994). "McIntyre and Heath" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, 2 Volumes, ed. Dennis Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
External links
"James McIntyre" in Olympians of the Sawdust Circle, Circus Historical Society.
Archives The Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts contains photographs and theater memorabilia. The McIntyre and Heath Archive 1878–1936 10 Boxes held in the Charles Deering McCormick Library at Northwestern University in Illinois holds fan mail, photos, playbills, posters, correspondence with Emma Young, texts of comic operas, and contracts. Some playbills and theater programs for McInytre & Heath are held at the Brooklyn Public Library, refer to Guide to the Brooklyn Theater Playbills and Programs Collection 1875–1972 . Four digital photographs of McIntyre and Heath (one dated 1874, another 1909, and two undated) can be viewed by searching in Macauley's Theatre Collection, in the photographic archives of Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville.