Denman Thompson

Who was Denman Thompson?

Henry Denman Thompson was an American playwright and theatre actor.

Rufus Thompson, a carpenter, and his wife Anne Hathaway Baxter moved in 1831 from West Swanzey, New Hampshire to Girard, Pennsylvania, where their son Henry Denman Thompson was born. In 1847, they returned to West Swanzey, where he was educated and at nineteen began work as a bookkeeper in Lowell, Massachusetts. While there, he developed an interest in theatre and decided to make it his career. He first went on the professional stage in 1850 at the Howard Athenæum in Boston, where he played a supernumerary in Macbeth. His first speaking role was in 1852 at Lowell, playing Orasman in the military drama, The French Spy. He moved to Toronto in 1854 to train at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, and in 1860 married Maria Bolton, who bore him three children. But Thompson had a disregard for serious study or rehearsals, and a manner unsuited for serious drama. With his large, good-natured eyes and thick red hair brushed straight up, audiences might laugh, ruining the gravitas of any scene. So he abandoned tragedy, and by 1862 was in England, performing at the City of London Theatre as a low comedian.