The Genesis of Toby: A Folk Hero of the American Theater Author(s): Jere C. Mickel Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 80, No. 318 (Oct. - Dec., 1967), pp. 334-340 Published by: American Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/537410 Accessed: 22/04/2010 21:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois and http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=folk. 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MICKEL The Genesisof Toby A Folk Hero of the American Theater THE VERYNATURE OF FOLKLOREusually precludes any possibility of watching the processof its development.If we know the actualcreator of the work of folk art, this knowledge tends to forbid its classificationas folklore; and in an art of such public natureas the theater,folk activitywould be especiallyinhibited, since theatricaleffect is usuallycontrolled by one or two professionalsor a very small professionalgroup. Yet, paradoxically,in the development of the popular theatricalcharacter "Toby,"we have a full recordof his ancestry,knowledge of his very beginnings in FredWilson's portrayalof Tobe Haxton in Cloudsand Sunshine,and the story of the developmentand modificationof the characterthrough audience response throughoutthe next twentyyears. This extraordinarytale has been noticedand written about for the past thirty- five or forty years in Sundaynewspaper feature articlesand theatricaljournals, but it has been presenteduncritically and inaccurately.Here is Toby's story,told as accuratelyas careful study of the printed recordsand the traditionhanded down orally and throughpersonal correspondence permits. Although theaterhistorians have lately begun to take some notice of the tent repertorycompanies,1 their historyalong with that of the companiesplaying the small-towntheaters or "operahouses" during an earlierperiod, has been gener- ally neglected,and the creationof the Toby charactereither scornedor ignored. This attitudegrew out of the contemptof the cities for the small towns and the resultingprejudice that the only theatricalactivity worth writing aboutwas that of the big cities. Even so, this small-towntheater, with its own traditionsand techniques, flourishedcompletely independent of the metropolitantheater. In time a distinctiveliterature of melodramaand comedybased on the tastes and attitudesof the audiencesdeveloped, and two distinctivecomedy characters orig- inated: the "Toby,"the red-headed,freckle-faced youngster who is smarterthan he looks, and the G-string,the garrulousand officiousold man who is too easily gulled. Nevertheless,both the plays and these two charactershave their roots in generaltheatrical tradition. THE GENESIS OF TOBY 335 These buffoons,both the old and the young, are almost as old as dramaticlit- eratureitself. Each appearsin the comediesof Plautus,the one as the impudent clown slavewho is not so stupidas he looks, and the otheras the tyrannicalfather who is not so clever as he thinks. In any discussionof the prototypesof Toby, William in As You Like It and Abel Drugger in Johnson'sThe Alchemist are alwaysmentioned; but it was not until a little over a hundredyears ago that the characterof Toby in his typical Americanform of comic rube youngsterbegan to develop, and a little over fifty yearsago that Toby finallybecame his nameonce and for all. One of the earliestplays with a proto-Tobyin the cast is the William Pratt version of Ten Nights in a Barroom,2first presentedin Boston in i847, where he is namedSample Switchell. In a twentieth-centuryversion used by the L. Verne Slout Playersof Vermontville,Michigan, he is describedas "Comedy,Toby (or originally) New Englandrube." In the earlierversion of the play he is described as "a Yankeetippler, very much alive." Another proto-Tobyappears on the Americanstage at the BroadwayTheater in New York, March7, I85I-- Toby Twinkles,in a play calledAll That Glitters Is Not Gold by Thomas and J. M. Morton.3The play is of English origin and had had a premiereperformance at the OlympicTheater in London on January 13 of the same year. Toby's entranceis describedthus: "he enterswith his back to the audiencesparring and hitting out violentlywith both hands,"certainly an entrancecharacteristic of the later Toby. His nose has just been brokenin a fight at the mill where he was defending MarthaGibbs, a beautiful but poor mill worker.His costumefor the first act is "blue vest, moleskintrousers, apron and sleeves (Brown Holland), paper cap," but there is no mention of a red wig, for Toby did not acquirethis characteristicuntil Fred Wilson's naturallyred hairestablished the convention. In these and many other plays the conventionalAmerican rube comic was es- tablishedin the Americantheater and had definiteaudience appeal in smalltowns, particularlyin the Midwest.Toby himself, however,with his own nameand char- acteristicsdifferent from the usualrube comic, crystallized from a factualincident. The sudden popularityof Fred Wilson when he first played the conventional countryboy or silly kid began the developmentof the character,and the subse- quent demandof audiencesthat this role be playedwith the actoralways using at least two of the featuresWilson added, red hair and freckles,and alwaysthere- after appearingunder the name of Toby, establishedonce and for all the basic conventionsof this partas futureaudiences knew them. The name Toby comeswithout any doubt from Tobe Haxton, the name of the countryboy comic, or "firstcomedy" as it was alwayscalled by the rep actors,in an old melodrama,Clouds and Sunshine,by W. C. Herman.The generallyac- cepted version of the adoptionof this name is told in TheatreArts,4 by Robert Downing, who says that he did four yearsof research,including personal inter- views with Fred Wilson, in preparationfor his article.In one interviewDowning describesthe incident that promptedthe permanentadoption of Toby as the name for all future silly-kid characters.According to Downing, this happened in Crawley,Louisiana, where Wilson was playing with Murphy'sComedians. Wilson and Horace Murphy,the proprietorof the troupe, were strolling down 336 JERE C. MICKEL the main streetof the town when they were accostedby a ten-year-oldCajun boy, who had seen their show the previousnight. He observedthat Murphywas tak- ing his clown out for a walk. When Murphystopped to talk to him, he found that the youngsterwas puzzled by "the funny man," for he had seen Wilson as Toby Haxton in Clouds and Sunshine on Monday night, on Tuesdaynight as Toby Green in Out of the Fold, but on Wednesdayas Bud in Won by Waiting. This was perplexingto the young fan, for he could see no reasonfor the change in name from Toby to Bud if the actorwas to look, dress,talk, and act the same in all threeparts. Murphywas a man wise in the ways of show business."He and Wilson," says Downing, "appliedToby's name to all silly-kidparts in their repertory"from that time on. Downing dates the storyin I909. This is the legend, and, indeed, it is a legend. The principalitems are without doubt founded on fact, but the details of the story may be inaccurateand the date and place are almost certainlyin- correct.The title page of the copyrightededition of Cloudsand Sunshinein my possessionbears the date 191 I. It camefrom the officeof Alex Byers,proprietor of the Chicago ManuscriptPlay Co., who operatedhis companyduring the early yearsof the centuryin the old PalaceHotel at Clarkand Hubbardstreets in Chi- cago, and who was the firstbig supplierof new playsto the rep shows. The CopyrightOffice of the Libraryof Congressgives the date September5, I9I1.5 Robert L. Sherman in The Drama Cyclopedia6gives I911, but places the performanceat Lafayette,Louisiana. Since no such town as Crawleyis listed in any atlas, probablySherman's citation of Lafayetteas the place of original per- formanceis correct. HoraceMurphy7 also adds a mild correctiveto the storyWilson told to Robert Downing. He says, "regardingthe boy asking about Toby, there was no such incident."When Murphytook Wilson to task for the story,Wilson replied that he had used "author'slicense." Actually, he explained, "it was an old man who met us on the streetand said, 'Hi, Mr. Murphy,I see you have your idiot out for some fresh air.'" When Murphyasked Fred why he had told the story as he did, he replied,"I'd rather be calleda clownthan an idiot." Regardlessof whetherthe questionerwas a boy or an old man, or whetherWil- son was called an idiot or a clown, the incidentis basedon fact. Its significance lies in the first suggestion by a memberof the audiencethat, even though the plays were different,the same name should be given to the characterplayed the same way every night by the same man with never-changingphysical character- istics. Acting on this hint, Murphygave Wilson instructionsto convertall the "first comedy"parts in their shows to the Toby character.Tobe Haxton of Cloudsand Sunshine,whose first name easily and naturallyshifts to Toby, must therefore be consideredthe firstto emergeas Tobyhimself.