Dead Famous by Greg Jenner

Author:Greg Jenner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion

Feud for thought

Mary Wells had the uncanny knack, or perhaps the unfortunate curse, of turning high-profile romances into media flame-wars. The Sumbel marriage was a particularly nasty grudge match. But feuding with other famous people is a long-established promotional technique that dates back to the very beginnings of celebrity culture. This performative enmity gave fans a rival star to hate (as we’ll hear in a later chapter), and produced a media narrative that made celebrity gossip exciting to consume. If you cast your mind back to the definitions in Chapter 3, we noted that celebrity is ‘human entertainment’, and what could be more fun than gladiatorial combat conducted, not in the blood-soaked arena of the Colosseum, but in the pages of the daily newspapers? Or perhaps in a theatre. Actually, maybe ‘fun’ isn’t the word.

In 1773, the very elderly Charles Macklin took to the stage in Macbeth at Covent Garden theatre, only to be hissed by fellow actor Samuel Reddish, who’d clearly taken a disliking to him. As Paul Goring notes: ‘a duel between the two actors was narrowly averted but Reddish’s supporters staged a riot at a performance of The Merchant of Venice where they demanded that Macklin be discharged. Macklin sued the rioters and won, but chose to take his winnings in £100 of theatre tickets rather than the £600 of damages.’39 This is an intriguing story, with violence at its core, but the upshot wasn’t nearly as bloody as what happened some eight decades later.

On 7 May 1849, in New York, things got much more heated between the snooty English actor William Charles Macready and the patriotic American star Edwin Forrest. The pair had been transatlantic rivals for years, and theirs was a clash of cultures: old world versus new, aristocracy versus plucky self-improvement, Britain versus America. Macready had been snobbish in criticising Forrest’s fans as a vulgar mob, and Forrest had defended his countrymen, being the first great American actor to have performed in Britain. Both men performed Macbeth that night, in two different theatres, but Forrest was cheered while Macready was booed off the stage in a hail of rotten food and broken chairs.

Macready was convinced by several notable figures not to let the bullies win, so he returned to the stage on 10 May. He just about got through the performance at the Astor Place Opera House, but found a huge mob gathered to oppose him outside. Macready versus Forrest wasn’t just a petty squabble between two luvvies, it had turned into a class war. The fact that Macready had been invited back by New York’s elite, after such a noisy protest stating he wasn’t wanted, felt like aristocratic oppression of ordinary New Yorkers. The crowd grew violent, then feral, and the police opened fire, killing twenty-two people, and wounding at least 120 more. It was a horrible atrocity that lived long in the city’s memory, but it had all begun with two celebrities beefing.40

There were many other celebrity feuds that sold papers, but thankfully didn’t result in deaths.

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