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Clay M. Greene

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Clay M. Greene
Born(1850-03-12)March 12, 1850
San Francisco, California, U.S.
DiedMay 9, 1933(1933-05-09) (aged 83)
San Francisco, California
OccupationPlaywright
SpouseAlice Randolph Wheeler (First) Laura Hewett Robinson (Second)
Parent(s)William Greene (1812–1871)
Anne Fisk (1830–1901)
RelativesHarry Ashland Greene (brother)

Clay Meredith Greene (March 12, 1850 – September 5, 1933) was an American playwright, lyricist, theatre critic, and journalist. A native of San Francisco, Greene was often referred to as either the "first American child" or "first white American child" born in that city during his lifetime; a controversial claim which the author himself was responsible for spreading. A graduate of Santa Clara University (SCU), Greene was the author of a Passion Play which was written for and staged as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the city of Santa Clara, California in 1901. That work was performed repeatedly every three years at SCU during Greene's lifetime.

Greene was the brother of American businessman and philanthropist Harry Ashland Greene, and he began his professional life as a stock broker. With his brother he co-founded the brokerage firm Greene & Company. While working in that field, he began writing plays with his first work being the 1874 play Struck Oil. By 1878 Greene had moved to New York City, and by 1879 he was actively employed in New York as both a playwright and journalist. He lived with his wife for three decades in a home in Bayside, Queens for approximately thirty years. He was the author of an estimated 80 stage works, encompassing both plays and musicals. Several of his works were staged on Broadway.

Greene served as the president of the New York City arts social club The Lambs (called "The Shepherd") from 1891–1898, and again from 1902–1906. He resigned from that post in 1906 when he left New York City to go back to San Francisco. He remained in San Francisco until his death in 1933.

Early life and education

Clay Meredith Greene was born on March 12, 1850, in San Francisco, California, to William Harrison Greene (1812–1871) and Anne Elizabeth Fisk (1830–1901). Some sources claim he was the "first American born in San Francsico"; although his obituary in The New York Times was careful to point out that he was born six months before the California Statehood Act. This assertion originated with Clay M. Greene who controversially claimed he was "the first white child born in San Francisco". While it is possible that he may have been the first white child born in San Francisco when it was a mining supply camp in 1850; the overall historicity of this claim was drawn into question by reporters who pointed out that white children were likely born at the Mission San Francisco de Asís much earlier during the Spanish colonial period.

Clay grew up in a house his father built on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. He was educated at the College of California (now University of California) when it was located in Oakland, California on 12th st. At that time the school was a college preparatory school, and Greene did not earn a university diploma from that institution. He did however attend City College of San Francisco and Santa Clara University. His younger brother was the American businessman and philanthropist Harry Ashland Greene. He worked as a stock broker in San Francisco prior to his career as a playwright. After initially working that capacity on his own, he co-founded his own stock brokerage firm, Greene & Company, with his brother Harry.

Playwright, librettist, and lyricist

Greene was active as a dramatist between the years 1874 and 1925. He was the author of approximately eighty stage works which encompassed plays, opera libretti, and lyrics and books for musical theatre. He was part of a group of American playwrights who emerged during the 1870s that provided a new surge of popular melodramas and comedies to the American theatre. Others in this group included Augustin Daly, Bronson Howard, James J. McCloskey Jr., and Thomas Blades de Walden.

Many of Greene's plays, particularly his early and late ones, were first staged in San Francisco. Three of his successful plays were set during the California Gold Rush: M'liss (1877, based on a story by Bret Harte; co-authored with A. Slason Thompson), Chispa (1882, co-authored with A. Slason Thompson), and The Golden Giant (1886).

Early writing career in San Francisco

Kate Mayhew as M'liss.

Greene's earliest success as a dramatist was the play Struck Oil which he created for the actor J. C. Williamson. Premiered in 1874, this work was adapted from Sam Smith's one-act play called The Dead, or Five Years Away. It became a hit for Williamson who toured in the work both in the United States and in Australia. That same year he wrote the four act play The Cut Glove for the comic duo P. F. Baker and T. J. Farron; a work the duo toured in the southern United States.

With A.G. Thompson, Greene co-wrote the play Freaks of Fortune which had its premiere at the Grand Opera House in San Francisco in 1877. J. C. Williamson acquired the rights to the work after its original successful run, and brought the play to the Boston stage. Williamson and his company performed other plays by Greene at The Boston Theatre in 1878, including Struck Oil and The Chinese Question.

In April 1877 Greene began working on the play M'liss for the actress Kate Mayhew. Mayhew had obtained the rights to a play by Richard H. Cox based on the story "The Work on Red Mountain" by Bret Harte which featured a feisty miner's daughter, Melissa Smith, aka "M'liss", as it central figure. Harte's story had originally been published in four chapters in The Golden Era in 1860, and its popularity led to the addition of ten more chapters by Harte in 1863. Cox had adapted Harte's story into a play in 1873. Unhapppy with Cox's writing, Mayhew hired Greene to substantially rewrite the play. Greene's altered version was used for the play's premiere on July 5, 1877 at the New Market Theater in Old Town Historic District of Portland, Oregon, and a subsequent run that immediately followed at the California Theatre in San Francisco.

M'liss was well received in Portland but had a lukewarm reception in San Francisco. Mayhew was unsatisfied with Greene's version of the final act of the play, and he began working on a second revision in late 1877 while still living in San Francisco. However, according to Mayhew, he ultimately abandoned this project to A. Sisson Thompson to finish when he decided to leave San Francisco and relocate to New York City. Greene and Thompson copyrighted their dramatic version of Harte's story, M'liss, A Romance of Red Mountains in February 1878; a copyright which Mayhew disputed in court later that year claiming that she owned the copyright to the work.

New York City writer

By 1878 Greene had moved to New York City, and by 1879 was working as both a journalist and playwright in New York. His most active years as a dramatist were during his years living in New York where he was well known among the literary establishment; including befriending Mark Twain. When his first wife died on Christmas Eve 1910, her obituary reported that she and Clay M. Greene had resided at a home in Bayside, Queens for thirty years. During that time he was an prominent member of The Lambs, a New York City social club that nurtures those active in the arts. Greene served as the president of The Lambs (called "The Shepherd") from 1891–1898, and again from 1902–1906.

With Slauson Thompson, Greene co-authored the four act farce Sharps and Flats as a staring vehicle for the comedy duo of Robson and Crane. A send-up of the speculative New York stock market and its buyers during the Gilded Age, it premiered at the Standard Theatre in Midtown Manhattan on November 8, 1880. In the Spring of 1883 Greene collaborated with the Hanlon Brothers to create for them a new play; ultimately writing for them Pico; or , The legend of Castle Molfi. This work was reworked and eventually became the fairy pantomime Fantasma which had a long stage life in the Hanlon Brothers repertoire. In 1886 his play The Golden Giant was produced by Charles Frohman at Broadway's Fifth Avenue Theatre in a production starring McKee Rankin and his wife Kitty Blanchard. While successful in New York, the play was a flop on the road and lost Frohman a considerable amount of money while on tour.

Greene was the author of the libretto to the 1887 musical Our Jennie starring Jennie Yeamans which was staged on Broadway at the People's Theatre. He was the lyricist to the 1889 musical Blue Beard, Jr. which he created with composers Fred J. Eustis, Richard Maddern, and John Joseph Braham Sr. It premiered at the Grand Opera House, Chicago on June 11, 1889; and then toured nationally, including a stop on Broadway at Niblo's Garden in 1890.

Greene wrote the libretto to the musical Peti, the Vagabond which starred Hubert Wilke in the title role and premiered at the California Theatre on Bush Street in San Francisco on August 25, 1890. He co-authored the 1892 play The New South with the actor Joseph R. Grismer; a work which centered on racial animus in the Southern United States after the American Civil War. The story followed a white United States Army captain who is sent by the federal government of the United States to arrest individuals illegally making and selling moonshine. The captain's support of African Americans in that community puts him at odds with the white southerners and his life is threatened. While the authors intended to critique racial prejudice, the work propagated racial stereotypes and theatre scholars James Fisher and Felicia Hardison Londré described both it and a 1916 silent film adaptation of the play as "exploitive".

Greene collaborated with J. Cheever Goodwin on the libretto to the musical Africa which premiered in San Francisco in June 1893 prior to its Broadway run later that year at the Star Theatre. This followed soon after by the musical The Maid of Plymouth; to which Greene based his libretto on the story of Plymouth Colony historical figures Priscilla Alden and Myles Standish. This work opened at the Broadway Theatre on January 15, 1894 and starred Margaret Reid as Priscilla and Eugene Cowles as Myles.

With composer William Furst, Greeene adapted Victor Roger's 1892 operetta Les 28 jours de Clairette for the Broadway stage. He greatly modified the original French language libretto by Hippolyte Raymond and Antony Mars, and his English language version, entitled The Little Trooper (also known as Little Miss Trooper), was crafted as a starring vehicle for the actress Della Fox. It opened at Broadway's Casino Theatre on August 30, 1894. Greene's 1894 play Under the Polar Star was a murder mystery investigating the death of the leader of an expedition in the Arctic. It was adapted by David Belasco for an 1896 production on Broadway at the Academy of Music.

Greene wrote the book to Ludwig Englander's musical In Gay Paree which ran at the Casino Theatre on Broadway in March-April 1899. With the composer A. Baldwin Sloane he was the lyricist for the musical Aunt Hannah which premiered on Broadway at the Bijou Theatre where it opened on February 22, 1900. The following month a second Broadway musical with a book by Greene, The Regatta Girl, was staged at Koster & Bial's Music Hall.

For the Golden Jubilee celebration of the founding of the city of Santa Clara, California, Greene penned a Passion Play that was staged at Santa Clara University in 1901. It subsequently repeated every three years. Other plays he was known for included Forgiven (1886), A Man from the West (1900), and The Silver Slipper (1902).

Later life in California

In 1906 Greene returned to California to live once again in San Francisco. At the age of 60 he married his second wife, the playwright Laura H. Robinson, with whom he had previously collaborated on several plays.

While in Los Angles, Greene suffered from a vitreous hemorrhage in 1918 that caused him to lose sight suddenly in one of his eyes. He was an active member of San Francisco's Bohemian Club where he befriended Adolph B. Spreckels of the Spreckels Sugar Company. Spreckles and his wife, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, used their philanthropy to build the Legion of Honor art museum in San Francisco. Greene was so moved by the ground breaking ceremony of the museum in 1921 that he composed a poem, "The Groundbreaking", dedicated to the couple.

By 1923, Greene had joined the staff of the San Francisco Journal as a critic.

Greene's last public appearance was at a performance of his Passion Play at Santa Clara University in the spring of 1933. In May 1933 he broke his hip and was unable to walk for the remainder of his life. He died on September 5, 1933, in San Francisco, California.

Filmography as writer

References

Citations

  1. "Clay Greene, Playwright, To Wed Wealthy Widow." Oakland (CA) Tribune, February 16, 1911, p. 2.
  2. ^ "San Francisco's First Child". Reno Evening Gazette. May 24, 1933. p. 4.
  3. ^ Fisher & Londré 2009, p. 205.
  4. ^ "CLAY M. GREENE, ACTOR, DIES IN WEST; Was First American Born in San Francisco -- Shepherd of the Lambs Here 11 Times". The New York Times. September 6, 1933. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 15, 2020. Retrieved 2024-07-31.
  5. ^ "A Noted Coast Writer Gone". Reno Evening Gazette. September 6, 1933. p. 4.
  6. ^ "Clay M. Greene Stricken Blind" (PDF). The New York Times. March 17, 1918.
  7. ^ Watkins 1925, p. 341.
  8. ^ "Clay M. Greene on "The Desert"". San Francisco Call. February 25, 1912. p. 27.
  9. ^ "Katie Mayhew". The Indianapolis Journal. September 13, 1878. p. 5.
  10. ^ "Captain Williams; Clay M. Greene's Complaint". New York Herald. March 19, 1879. p. 8.
  11. ^ "Mrs. Clay M. Greene Summoned By Death". San Francisco Call. December 25, 1910. p. 28.
  12. Hardee 2006, p. 67. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHardee2006 (help)
  13. ^ "40 Years Ago Today". Oakland Tribune. January 27, 1926. p. 15.
  14. ^ Bancroft 1890, p. 732.
  15. Marsden, George M. (1994). The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 134–40. ISBN 9780195106503.
  16. ^ Gaer 1970, p. 60.
  17. Fisher 2015, p. 14.
  18. ^ Marcosson & Frohman 1916, p. 105.
  19. Dicker 1974, p. 197.
  20. "A New Play for Baker and Farron". The Memphis Daily Appeal. November 6, 1874. p. 13.
  21. "Academy of Music". The New Orleans Bulletin. November 15, 1874. p. 8.
  22. "Local Dramatic Jottings". The Boston Globe. December 30, 1877. p. 3.
  23. "Dramatic Matters; Struck Oil at the Boston". The Boston Globe. May 5, 1878. p. 3.
  24. Hall 2001, p. 104.
  25. Hall 2001, p. 105.
  26. Hall 2001, p. 106-107.
  27. Hall 2001, p. 107-108.
  28. ^ Fisher 2015, p. xliv.
  29. Fisher 2015, p. 400.
  30. Cosdon 2010, p. 109.
  31. Marcosson & Frohman 1916, p. 106.
  32. Bordman & Norton 2010, p. 106.
  33. Franceschina 2018, " Blue Beard, Jr.".
  34. "CHICAGO'S NEW SPECTACLE.; "BLUEBEARD, JR.," AS PRESENTED BY MANAGER HENDERSON". The New York Times. June 13, 1889. p. 5.
  35. "'Blue Beard, Jr.'". The Boston Globe. December 15, 1889. p. 10.
  36. Gänzl 1994, p. 76.
  37. Bordman & Norton 2010, pp. 119–120.
  38. Fisher & Londré 2009, p. 345.
  39. Bordman & Norton 2010, p. 147.
  40. ^ Bordman & Norton 2010, p. 148.
  41. Chapman & Sherwood 1955, p. 85.
  42. Lachman 2014, p. 173.
  43. Bordman & Norton 2010, p. 191.
  44. Dietz 2022, p. 9.
  45. Bordman & Norton 2010, p. 197.
  46. "Santa Clara Valley in Spring Dress for Players". Oakland Tribune. March 26, 1933. p. 30.
  47. Scharlach 2015, p. 141.
  48. "At the Theatres". Modesto Evening News. April 21, 1923. p. 26.
  49. "Clay M. Greene III". Oakland Tribune. June 18, 1933. p. 34.

Bibliography

External links

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