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We believe that the first boy to play Cedric in :"Little Lord Fauntleroy" was Tommy Russel. We know very little about him except that he played Cedric. We have virtually no biographical information or other information about his theatrical career. We know that he was very popular because of the number of surviving cabinent cards showing him in his Fauntleroy costume,
We have been able to find little information on Tommy Russel at this time. We think he was born abouit 1880, but have no biographical information about him at this time. Nor do we know much about his theatrical war. We do know When Mrs. Burnett open Little Lord Fauntleroy in New York, the role was split between Elsie Leslie, who had earlier played the part in Boston, and Tommy Russel. Tommy would have been born about 1880. We do not know precisely when he began playing the part. Presumably this means that he was the first boy to play the role, but we can not yet confirm this. He does appear to have been very popular in the role as there are a number of surviving cabinent cards like the one seen here. We have been unable to find any other information about Tommy. We would, however, be very interested in any informatrion readers may find.
Available images show Tommy in his costume during the late 1880s and early 90s. Tommy for the part wore a very elaborate Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit and long curls. The photographic portraits provide details on the costume he wore for his performances. He wears a velvet suit, perhaps black, but we are not positive (figure 1). The jacket is the style that buttons at the collar and not the small jacket style commonly worn by younger boys. There is a large lace collar, with matching trim at the wrist cuffs. The suit is a kneepants suit worn with long stockings. The stockings are dark, but did not look to be black. With his Fauntleroy suit he wears a large sash which we would guess was red. There were other costumes used in the play. He also wears what looks like a corduroy outfit, which he wears with a tam and leggings. Mrs. Burnett's book mentioned a sailor suit, but I do not know if tht was one of Tommy's costumes.
Tommy for his role of Cedric has long, curly hair that was not done in ringlets. It looks rather like a wig to us rather than his own hair. We know that some boys who played Cedric actually had long hair. This does not seem to have been true of Tommy. Unlike some of the boys who played the part, Tommy here appears to be wearing a wig, We are not, however, entirely sure.
A passage from a book by a Dutch immigrant to America Edward William Bok (1863-1930) reads, "When the stories of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Little Lord Fauntleroy were made into plays, Bok was given an opportunity for an entirely different kind of publicity. Both plays were highly successful; they ran for weeks in succession, and each evening Bok had circulars of the books in every seat of the theatre; he had a table filled with the books in the foyer of each theatre; and he bombarded the newspapers with stories of Mr. Mansfield's method of making the quick change from one character to the other in the dual role of the Stevenson play, and with anecdotes about the boy Tommy Russell in Mrs. Burnett's play. The sale of the books went merrily on, and kept pace with the success of the plays. And it all sharpened the initiative of the young advertiser and developed his sense for publicity ....." Unfortunately we do not know what the ancedotes about Tommy were.
A HBC reader has kindly contributed this fascinating image. He tells us, "I bought these images from a dealer at the Annual Giant Outdoor Sussex Flea Market/Car Antique Show and Auction. The seller was one whom I'd made purchases from in the past, and is from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He told me that he had aquired a collection of some 50-100 various signed images such as these from a museum in the Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island area that was liquidating a number of the museums' collections. I considered myself lucky to find such a little treasure in such a place as that which I did. I thought the tiger rug was pretty neat! Also the image with Tommy in a boxing position is the card that he wrote on the back "Allen Dale, I see you outside, Tommy Russell" I think it's a comedic play on the image on the front. Also on the back is written "A.A, Bartlett, 1989". I do not know who this is. I thought "A.A. Bartlett" may have been the photographer, or perhaps one of the players or -perhaps the photograph's original owner. Then I also thought it may be "W.A. Bartlett"... I can't really be sure, they were part of a larger collection, that I know for sure, but as to who the collector was that assembled and donated the images to the
PEI museum I do not know." Given the date, HBC believes it is probably the original or an early owner of the card.
There is another interesting feature of this cabinent card. Note the 1889 copy right logo in the lower righthand corner. That not only dates the image, but it is a very early effort to copyright a photographic image. When CDVs and cabinents cards appeared in the 1860s, it soon became fashionable to collect "celeberity cards". Many Vicyorian himes had photographic albums in the palor that were brought out for company. Families might add celberity cards to the family album. Avid collectors might have a sepecial album for these cards. They only became possible with the CDV and a few years latrer the cabinent card, because these formats were made with negatives. Photographers who made portaits of famoius people soon found there was money to be made by making copies of those portrairs and selling them to the general public. Then a kind of secondary market developed. Aggressive entrenepreneurs would copy one of those cards and sell the copies. Finally photogrtaphers sued and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The particular image involved was an portait of Oscar Wilde dressed in a velvet suit taken during his European lecture tour. That portrait was taken in 1882. The photographer in 1884 sued the company that made copy of his portrait. The case was litigated in various courts, funally in Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company vs. Sarony (1884), the Supreme Court found that a photograph was a work of art that could be copyrighted.
Bok, Edward William. The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
(New York: Scribner's, 1923).
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