Lester Wallack
(1819-1888)

He returned to New York with his father and made his American debut in 1847 at New York's New Broadway Theatre as Sir Charles Coldstream in Used Up under the stage name J. Lester. (Not until sometime later did he adopt the name Lester Wallack.) Like his father, Lester was noted for his comeliness of feature and form. The elder Wallack formed Wallack's Company, an ensemble that was to be one of America’s greatest companies for over three decades. Lester was a leading player and after his father's death in 1864, he took over its management. During his career with Wallack’s Company he played nearly 300 hundred roles, excelling in Orlando, Benedick, Charles Surface, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Marlow, as well as leading parts in such contemporary works as Ours, Diplomacy, A Scrap of Paper, and Sir Elliot Grey in his own dramatization of Rosedale (1863). His tenure was praised for the excellence of his productions and his actors’ performances, but was also criticized for his failure to mount many classics and his dismissal of native American works. The tradition of the Wallack's was distinctly English, and to the time of his last appearance on May 29, 1886, he was true to his English taste. To see Lester Wallack at his best, one had to see him as Shakespeare’s Benedick or Mercutio; as Dumas’s D’Artagnan, or in the social suavity of the Tom Robertson "cup-and-saucer" plays and contemporary French drama. The British tradition seemed so inevitable to Lester Wallack that when Bronson Howard took him a piece called Drum Taps, Wallack did not dare take a risk on so American a theme as the Civil War. He returned it to the young author saying, "Couldn’t you make it the Crimea?"

The 1887 season was an extraordinary one for Joseph Haworth. A string of successes began with his succeeding the legendary Lester Wallack as Elliott Grey in Rosedale. Wallack had played the role for twenty-five years, and decided to pass it on with blessings and instructions. With enormous fanfare, Joe opened at Mrs. Drew’s Arch Theatre on September 12, 1887. He then toured to Miner’s Brooklyn Theatre, played a week of one-night stands in the New York area, then Miner’s Theatre in Newark, the Jersey City Theatre, Albaugh’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and the Holliday-Street Theatre in Baltimore.

The dashing lieutenant of lancers Elliott Grey could make love, sing a song, or knock a man down with equal facility. Rosedale presented yet another opportunity for Haworth to become a one-part actor, and he was called upon to produce the play many times. Yet in all subsequent revivals, Joe insisted that Rosedale be performed in repertory with heavyweight classical roles like Richard III, Hamlet, or Richelieu. When Joe brought the play to Broadway in 1893, the New York Tribune wrote: