Augustus Thomas (1857-1934) Playwright

Son of a St. Louis doctor, young Augustus Thomas (right) was a page boy of the 41st Congress, after which time in the hallowed halls of government he spent six years as a railroad worker. He turned to journalism as a "special writer" for newspapers in St. Louis, Kansas City, and New York. He was briefly editor and "proprietor" of the Kansas City Mirror.

Smitten early by the theatre, he began writing plays when he was just fourteen years old. By the time he was seventeen years old, Thomas had organized an amateur company with which he had toured. The earliest plays whose title have survived are his eighteen year old's Alone (1875), and later, A Big Raise (1882). The titles suggest the earnestness of adolescence and yearnings of youth.

But his first real job in theatre was as assitant treasurer for Pope's Theatre, where his "quasi-administrative" duties included opening the box office in the morning; supervising the bill poster and making sure they had what they needed from the advance man of whatever star or package was coming into Pope's; supervising the cleaning staff; sorting the mail for the visiting company; and making sure all the posters, half-sheets and lithographs were distributed to the hotels, and salloons, and barber shops. The real advantage of the position was that he could observe first hand the likes of all the important stars of the day. And while at Pope's, he "had been given an inside knowledge of the theatre in all its departments..."

But observing is not doing. In St. Louis during the summer of 1883, he joined with W. G. Smythe (who went on to become a theatrical manager), and Edwin Smith (budding actor, who went on to become a playwright), and formed the Dickson Sketch Club (there they are on an outing to Minnehaha falls on the left) to try his hand at production. He wrote a one-act play based on a story by Frances Hodgson Burnett called "Editha's Burglar," in which Thomas played the burglar, Bill Lewis.

The group recruited Della Fox (below, right)to play Editha. She went on to become the famous "girl with the curl," parlaying that sartorial splendor into a successful career.

Thomas took this brief experience and this little play, expanded it to four acts as The Burglar and was fortunate to have Maurice Barrymore (below, left) in the title role. And so Thomas' career was launched

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In Thomas we see a stage smitten fellow willing to learn the practical necessities of the stage and apply them to stories that appealed to a restless, if not rebellious spirit. The fellow who could spend time on the floor of Congress and on the railroad and in a newsroom and a box office would not be happy following someone else's patterns and plans.

A prolific writer of plays, he is best known for his explorations of American character, Alabama (1891), and In Mizzoura (1893) , Colorado (1901), and Arizona (1899). But he also wrote farces On the Quiet (1901) and The Earl of Pawtucket (1903) ; historical plays, Oliver Goldsmith (1899); and even a play catering to the then popular taste for spiritualism The Witching Hour (1907). In all, he wrote over sixty plays or adaptation in a forty year career.

He left a book of memoirs The Print of My Remembrance, Charles Scribner's Sons 1922.