Manuscript Poem and Promotional material.
The First Jewish American Superstar:
A Publicity Archive
[Menken, Adah Isaacs]. “The Whistler” and “Tom and Jerry or, Life in London” Advertising Broadside. Boston: Howard Athenaeum. Saturday Evening, July 5th, 1862.
Broadside: 7 ¾ x 18 ½”; 7 x 6” engraving of Menken in the center.
Together with:
[Menken, Adah Isaacs]. “Great Expectations” Advertising Broadside: Last night but two. Boston: Howard Athenaeum. Thursday Evening, July 10th, 1862.
Broadside: 6 ¼ x 18 ½”.
Together with:
[Menken, Adah Isaacs]. “Boys and Girls of Modern Times” Advertising Broadside: Last night but one. Boston: Howard Athenaeum. Thursday Evening, July 10th, 1862.
Broadside: 6 ¼ x 18 ½”.
Together with:
[Menken, Adah Isaacs]. “The Child of the Sun” Advertising Broadside. [London:] Astley’s. Monday, November 6th, [1865].
Leaflet: 10 x 15”; four pages, printed on two outside leaves only.
Together with:
[Menken, Adah Isaacs]. Writ of Summons for proceeds due to John Brougham, author of “The Child of the Sun.” December 21, 1865.
Single leaf, 6 x 11 ¾”; printed and autograph on recto and verso; stamped twice on recto.
An archive of promotional material related to Menken’s appearance in 1862 at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston; and an advertisement and writ of summons related to her London tour in 1865.
The origins of Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1968), the first Jewish-American actress to cultivate star power on and off the stage, remain cloudy. Contemporary historians offer conflicting accounts; more than one places her in New Orleans at birth and identify her mother as, perhaps, a “very beautiful French Creole,” and her father as “a highly respected ‘free’ Negro of Louisiana.”
Her public life began when she took the lead in “Mazeppa; or The Wild Horse of Tartary,” by Henry Milner, based on a poem by Byron. After playing the climactic scene scandalously clad in nude tights and strapped to the back of a horse, her fame was secured. Samuel Dickson, a cultural commentator of the 1920s and ‘30s, has remarked,
Bohemian San Francisco took Adah Menken to its gay and ample bosom. She was an actress and it loved actresses; she was a painter and it loved artists; and, above all, she was a poetess, and it adored poets and poetesses. Wherever you went, to whomever you talked, the two favorite topics of conversation in San Francisco—topics of equal importance—were the progress of the Civil War and the success of Adah Isaacs Menken.
Not all quarters of the country had been socially liberated, however. “Even in the context of the 1860s, when most Americans looked upon actors as ‘loose’ and disreputable, Menken was notorious for violating norms. She cropped her dark hair close to her head (she may have been the first important American woman to do so) and smoked cigarettes in public.” For this last offense, in concert with her popularity among young men and her inability to maintain a stable home, her first husband divorced her.
Menken’s first marriage, to Alexander Isaacs Menken, imparted to her a legacy of active and devout Judaism which she would pursue aggressively. In Cincinnati, “then the center of Reform Judaism in America,”
Adah learned to read Hebrew fluently and studied classical Jewish texts. …[S]he contributed poems and essays on Judaism to Isaac Mayer Wises weekly newspaper, The Israelite. Menken saw herself as a latter-day Deborah, advocating for Jewish communities around the world. She urged the Jews of Turkey to rebel against oppression and place their faith in the coming of a messiah who would lead them to restore Jerusalem. She publicly protested the Mortara Affair, the kidnapping by Italian Catholic officials of a young Jewish boy whom the officials claimed the Jewish community had stolen. She also spoke out forcefully when Lionel Nathan was denied his seat in the English Parliament. And long before Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax did so, Menken refused to appear on sta
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