John B. Mason
Encyclopedia
John B. Mason was an American stage actor popular over the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century.
the son of Daniel Gregory and Susan W. (née Belcher) Mason. He was the son of a publisher and a grandson of Dr. Lowell Mason
, a well known educator and composer of Christian music. Mason was a cousin to composer and music critic Daniel Gregory Mason
and could trace his American lineage back to Robert Mason, an Englishman who settled in Salem, Massachusetts in 1630. His mother was a direct descendant of Jonathan Belcher, a colonial governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
. John Mason was educated in private schools in America and overseas at the Frankfort Gymnasium, before enrolling at Columbia University
in 1876.
in Philadelphia. During his first season he appeared opposite such lumanaries of the day as Lawrence Barrett
, Mary Anderson
, Lotta Crabtree
, James K. Emmet, J. C. Williamson
, Mme. Janauschek, Fanny Davenport
and Frank C. Bangs. The following year he began a 12-year association with the Boston Museum
working with William Warren
, Dion Boucicault
, Lester Wallack and other well-known actors of that time. He later appeared in every original Gilbert and Sullivan
opera production in America and created the leading roles in the plays Hands Across the Sea , The English Rose and as Kerchival West in Bronson Howard
's Civil War
play, Shenandoah.
After the death of his mother in 1890, Mason went to London where he found success at the St. James Theatre playing Simeon Strong in C. Haddon Chambers'
popular play, The Idler. Later back in America, Mason starred for three seasons in an adaptation of the comic opera L'Ami Fritz, with Marion Manola. After a brief foray into vaudeville
, Mason returned to the legitimate theater to revive his role in The Idler, and later at the Garrick Theatre
playing Col. Moberly in Augustus Thomas
' Alabama.
Mason returned to United States the next year to form the Mason-Manola Company and tour with a revival of L'Ami Fritz. In 1898 he creating the character Horatio Drake in Hall Caine
's successful play The Christian, at the Knickerbocker Theatre
in New York. In his later years Mason performed in companies headed by Elsie De Wolfe
, Daniel Frohman
Minnie Maddern Fiske
among others. His greatest role came in 1907, playing Jack Brookfield in Augustus Thomas's play, The Witching Hour, which had a run of 970 performances. Augustus Thomas once compared Mason to the great French actor Lucien Guitry
: "He has all that Guitry has and in addition he has the ability to wear a dress suit and to conduct himself in a salon with the grace of a nobleman.”
after a failed gallstone
operation. Adelaide Mould, her daughter from a previous marriage, became the bride of the novelist and playwright Rupert Hughes
.
Mason married actress Katherine Grey
not long after his divorce from Marion; the same fate that befell this union in 1905. Mason spent some time in the Ludlow Street Jail
in 1902 after Marion convinced a judge he was not meeting his alimony obligations. A decade earlier, Mason and his brother Lowell served a brief time behind bars in a dustup over an unpaid bill with a former business partner.
. He had fallen ill a few days earlier at Providence, Rhode Island
during a premier performance of The Woman in Room 12. Death was attributed to complications from Bright's disease
.
Early life
John Hill Belcher Mason was born at Orange, New JerseyOrange, New Jersey
The City of Orange is a city and township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 30,134...
the son of Daniel Gregory and Susan W. (née Belcher) Mason. He was the son of a publisher and a grandson of Dr. Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason
Lowell Mason was a leading figure in American church music, the composer of over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His most well-known tunes include Mary Had A Little Lamb and the arrangement of Joy to the World...
, a well known educator and composer of Christian music. Mason was a cousin to composer and music critic Daniel Gregory Mason
Daniel Gregory Mason
Daniel Gregory Mason was an American composer and music critic.-Biography:...
and could trace his American lineage back to Robert Mason, an Englishman who settled in Salem, Massachusetts in 1630. His mother was a direct descendant of Jonathan Belcher, a colonial governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
Province of Massachusetts Bay
The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony in North America. It was chartered on October 7, 1691 by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England and Scotland...
. John Mason was educated in private schools in America and overseas at the Frankfort Gymnasium, before enrolling at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1876.
Career
John Mason (often referred to by the press as Jack Mason) made his professional stage debut two years later at the Walnut Street TheatreWalnut Street Theatre
The Walnut Street Theatre , located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 825 Walnut Street, is the oldest continuously operating theatre in the English-speaking world and the oldest in the United States...
in Philadelphia. During his first season he appeared opposite such lumanaries of the day as Lawrence Barrett
Lawrence Barrett
Lawrence Barrett was an American stage actor.-Biography:He was born Lawrence Brannigan to Irish emigrant parents in Paterson, New Jersey. He made his first stage appearance at Detroit as Murad in The French Spy in 1853...
, Mary Anderson
Mary Anderson (stage actress)
Mary Anderson was an American stage actress.-Early life:...
, Lotta Crabtree
Lotta Crabtree
Lotta Mignon Crabtree was an American actress, entertainer and comedian. She was also a significant philanthropist....
, James K. Emmet, J. C. Williamson
J. C. Williamson
James Cassius Williamson was an American actor and later Australia's foremost theatrical manager, founding J. C. Williamson Ltd....
, Mme. Janauschek, Fanny Davenport
Fanny Davenport
Fanny Lily Gipsy Davenport was an English-American stage actress. The daughter of Edward Loomis Davenport and Fanny Vining, she was born in London, England, but was brought to America when a child and educated in the Boston public schools...
and Frank C. Bangs. The following year he began a 12-year association with the Boston Museum
Boston Museum (theatre)
The Boston Museum , also called the Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, was a theatre, wax museum, natural history museum, zoo, and art museum in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts...
working with William Warren
William Warren (actor)
William Warren was an American actor, for many years connected with the old Boston Museum.He was born in Philadelphia and educated at the Franklin Institute in that city...
, Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
, Lester Wallack and other well-known actors of that time. He later appeared in every original Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
opera production in America and created the leading roles in the plays Hands Across the Sea , The English Rose and as Kerchival West in Bronson Howard
Bronson Howard
Bronson Howard was a well-known American dramatist and son of Detroit mayor Charles Howard. He prepared for college at New Haven, Conn., but instead of entering Yale he turned to Journalism in New York. From 1867 to 1872 he worked on several newspapers, among them the Evening Mail and the Tribune...
's Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
play, Shenandoah.
After the death of his mother in 1890, Mason went to London where he found success at the St. James Theatre playing Simeon Strong in C. Haddon Chambers'
Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers was an Australian-born dramatist, active in England.-Early life:Chambers was born in Petersham, Sydney, the son of John Ritchie Chambers, who had a good position in the New South Wales civil service, came from Ulster, his mother, Frances, daughter of William...
popular play, The Idler. Later back in America, Mason starred for three seasons in an adaptation of the comic opera L'Ami Fritz, with Marion Manola. After a brief foray into vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, Mason returned to the legitimate theater to revive his role in The Idler, and later at the Garrick Theatre
Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster. It opened on 24 April 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero. In its early years, it appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama, and today the theatre is a...
playing Col. Moberly in Augustus Thomas
Augustus Thomas
Augustus Thomas was an American playwright, born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a doctor, he worked a number of jobs including a page in the 41st Congress, studying law and gaining some practical railway work experience before he turned to journalism and became editor of the Kansas City Mirror...
' Alabama.
Mason returned to United States the next year to form the Mason-Manola Company and tour with a revival of L'Ami Fritz. In 1898 he creating the character Horatio Drake in Hall Caine
Hall Caine
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE , usually known as Hall Caine, was a Manx author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular, and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his...
's successful play The Christian, at the Knickerbocker Theatre
Knickerbocker Theatre
Knickerbocker Theatre can refer to:* Knickerbocker Theatre * Knickerbocker Theatre...
in New York. In his later years Mason performed in companies headed by Elsie De Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe
]Elsie de Wolfe was an American actress, interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book The House in Good Taste, and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society...
, Daniel Frohman
Daniel Frohman
Daniel Frohman was a Jewish American theatrical producer and manager, and an early film producer.Frohman was born in Sandusky, Ohio...
Minnie Maddern Fiske
Mrs. Fiske
Minnie Maddern Fiske , born as Marie Augusta Davey, but often billed simply as Mrs. Fiske, was one of the leading American actresses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She also spearheaded the fight against the Theatrical Syndicate for the sake of artistic freedom...
among others. His greatest role came in 1907, playing Jack Brookfield in Augustus Thomas's play, The Witching Hour, which had a run of 970 performances. Augustus Thomas once compared Mason to the great French actor Lucien Guitry
Lucien Guitry
Lucien Germain Guitry was a French actor.In 1885, while living in Saint Petersburg, he appeared at the French Theatre. His son, the future actor, writer and director Sacha Guitry, was born in Saint Petersburg and named in honour of Tsar Alexander III...
: "He has all that Guitry has and in addition he has the ability to wear a dress suit and to conduct himself in a salon with the grace of a nobleman.”
Marriage
John Mason married actress Marion Manola, on May 1, 1891, in London, England ending months of speculation in the press. Marion Manola (née Stevens) was a star of comic opera who though born in New York was later raised in Orange, N.J. The couple met in London while she was playing Maid Marion in a musical production of Robin Hood and he was starring in the The Idler. Their marriage would prove to be an unhappy affair that began with an injury to her vocal cords. This was compounded by financial set backs due to the failure of the Mason-Manola Company and a mental breakdown she suffered in 1894 that was most likely fueled by alcohol and opium. Though she later recovered, their marriage would end in divorce by the close of the decade. Marion Monala died in 1914 at New Rochelle, New YorkNew Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
after a failed gallstone
Gallstone
A gallstone is a crystalline concretion formed within the gallbladder by accretion of bile components. These calculi are formed in the gallbladder, but may pass distally into other parts of the biliary tract such as the cystic duct, common bile duct, pancreatic duct, or the ampulla of...
operation. Adelaide Mould, her daughter from a previous marriage, became the bride of the novelist and playwright Rupert Hughes
Rupert Hughes
Rupert Hughes was an American historian, novelist, film director and composer based in Hollywood. Hughes was born in Lancaster, Missouri. His parents were Felix Turner Hughes and Jean Amelia Summerlin, who were married in 1865. His brother Howard R. Hughes, Sr., co-founded the Hughes Tool Company....
.
Mason married actress Katherine Grey
Katherine Grey (actress)
Katherine Grey was a Broadway actress in New York City.-Biography:She was born in 1873 in San Francisco, California. She joined the Augustin Daly company. Her first New York appearance was in the The Golden Widow....
not long after his divorce from Marion; the same fate that befell this union in 1905. Mason spent some time in the Ludlow Street Jail
Ludlow Street Jail
The Ludlow Street Jail was New York City's federal prison, located on Ludlow Street and Broome Street in Manhattan. Some prisoners, such as soldiers, were held there temporarily awaiting extradition to other jurisdictions, but most of the inmates were debtors imprisoned by their creditors. The two...
in 1902 after Marion convinced a judge he was not meeting his alimony obligations. A decade earlier, Mason and his brother Lowell served a brief time behind bars in a dustup over an unpaid bill with a former business partner.
Death
John Mason died on January 12, 1919 at a sanitarium in Stamford, ConnecticutStamford, Connecticut
Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643, making it the fourth largest city in the state and the eighth largest city in New England...
. He had fallen ill a few days earlier at Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
during a premier performance of The Woman in Room 12. Death was attributed to complications from Bright's disease
Bright's disease
Bright's disease is a historical classification of kidney diseases that would be described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. The term is no longer used, as diseases are now classified according to their more fully understood causes....
.