The Man Who Lit Lady Liberty: The Extraordinary Rise and Fall of Actor M.B. Curtis by Richard Schwartz; Berkeley, California: RSB Books © 2019; ISBN 9780967-820453; 307 pages including acknowledgments and index; $19.95.
Actor M.B. Curtis was born in 1849. Had he been born 40 years later, the world might rank his comedic genius at a par with those of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. However, by the time performances could be preserved in the form of movies, his star had dipped in the show-business galaxy to a point below the horizon. I’d venture to say that only a handful of theater afficionados today recognize his name, much less the character he played to great success at playhouses throughout this country.
Historian Richard Schwartz lives in Berkeley where the peripatetic Curtis made a part-time home, when he and his wife Marie were not barnstorming the country respectively in the roles of Sam’l of Posen, a well-meaning, funny, naïve, much beloved greenhorn Jewish immigrant, and Celeste, a French adventuress.
The plays about Sam’l Posen changed almost nightly, the loose scripts tailored to Curtis’s adlibbing and improvisations. The way he walked across the stage, his flamboyant clothes, his Yiddishisms, his manners, the clever way he looked at life, all served to delight audiences for several decades.
Schwartz researched Curtis through the reviews he garnered from theater critics, and from news reports about his ventures – he dabbled in building hotels and other grand constructions – and misadventures. The most notable misadventure was when he was accused of fatally shooting a San Francisco policeman. It took two mistrials before a third jury acquitted him of the deed.
The title of the book refers to the Statue of Liberty, whose everlasting symbolism initially was unappreciated by a parsimonious Congress, which failed to appropriate funds to pay for the nightly illumination of the statue. Curtis, then flush with cash and ever ready to make a grand gesture, embarrassed official Washington by paying temporarily for the Statue to be lit. Then starring in the play, Caught in the Corner, he said his intent was to rescue Lady Liberty from being “caught in the corner.” The abashed federal government soon thereafter found the funds.
Curtis lived large and drank large. His alcoholism contributed to his many scrapes, with actors in his troupe, and with theater owners, but not with audiences who continued to be delighted by his antics on the stage.
Schwartz deserves praise for illuminating Curtis’s life and career. He knitted the strands of Moritz Bertram Curtis (né Strelinger)’s life into a very readable and enlightening yarn.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World