After four years with John
Ellsler’s company in Cleveland, Ohio, Joseph Haworth was
offered a twenty-week tour playing Laertes opposite Edwin
Booth’s "Hamlet." Joe turned down Mr. Booth, and
instead joined the Boston Museum Company as its leading juvenile. It
was a brilliant decision. Joe’s years in Boston developed him into
an actor of unequaled range, and provided him with a home base
audience that he could return to year after year.
Joe had a growing reputation when
manager R. F. Field hired him for the Museum. Official news releases
touted a bright young talent out of the west who was arriving to
strengthen the Museum’s acting ensemble. His September 7, 1877
debut was as Count Henri de Beausolet in Satin in Paris. Joe
then did five seasons of rigorous and frequently changing repertory,
playing leading roles in every piece produced. He played in new
commercial comedies and dramas including Dion Boucicault’s The
Shaughraun and Lester Wallack’s Rosedale. He also acted
in the beloved "old comedies" such as School for
Scandal, in which he played Joseph Surface, and She Stoops to
Conquer, in which he played Hastings. Joe gained experience
performing in romantic costume dramas such as Ruy Blas and Guy
Mannering, and melodramas like The Marble Heart and The
Two Orphans. For all four seasons, Joe shared the stage with the
comic genius of William Warren, and the Museum’s versatile leading
man Charles Barron.
Joe also had great success in the
theatre’s comic opera productions. The Museum staged the American
premiers of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore (1879) and
Patience (1881). The sophisticated satire of these works was
new territory for Boston audiences who were more accustomed
conventional operettas like The Little Duke. Kate Ryan in her
book "Old Boston Museum Days" wrote: "Everyone about
the theatre was somewhat doubtful as to the success of Pinafore.
Even Mr. Field was uncertain about the outcome till the song ‘He
is an Englishman,’ sung by Joseph Haworth, took the audience by
storm and received encore after encore. Joseph Haworth played the
part of Bill Bobstay and added greatly to the success of the
opera." As Grosvenor in Patience, it was said that Joe
danced and sang with as much ease and abandon as though he had been
reared in a burlesque company.
But Joe’s primary ambition was to
play the great classical parts. For his benefit performance on
February 12, 1881, he selected the role of Romeo opposite ingénue
Nora Bartlett. In his final 1882 season, he played Iago opposite
Charles Barron’s Othello, and Romeo opposite Mary Anderson’s
Juliet. The latter production set a Boston box office record for a
single night’s gross receipts. It was Haworth’s driving ambition
in the classics that led him to decline the Museum’s 1882 offer to
make him leading man, instead joining forces with the great Irish
tragedian John McCullough. Joe made a notable return to the Boston
Museum in November of 1896, appearing in his New York success Sue.
In subsequent appearances at other Boston playhouses, he was often
billed as "Boston’s Favorite Actor."
