Food Feature: Tragedy at a comedy

Among northwest D.C’s broken glass and sprawled winos stands a memorial to a national nightmare. Ford’s Theater is the site of almost two dozen deaths, including the most famous murder in United States history.

Surprisingly, the 135-year-old ghost who most seized my imagination on a visit there wasn’t Abraham Lincoln, but Maryland native John Wilkes Booth. As a theater person I’ve met many actors for whom real life is less real than fantasy. They prefer living in the worlds created onstage; plays are deeper, richer and better-crafted than the shapeless quotidian. Booth wasn’t crazy. He just got carried away with his role.

Booth was a superstar admired for athletic performances and killer looks. Lincoln was one of his fans. His fearless love for the Confederacy wasn’t quite fearless enough for him to join the Rebel Army. Instead, he led a boozy gang in a presidential kidnapping plot. It failed. Then Gettysurg happened. Booth was pissed. When someone in the box office mentioned that Lincoln would be attending a performance on Good Friday, Booth decided he’d play Brutus on a national stage, hoping that by murdering Lincoln, he’d plunge the nation into chaos from which the South would rise again. He drilled a spy hole through the door of Lincoln’s balcony box and hid a stick there to jam it shut once he got in.

Presidential security was laughable. Even after one assassination attempt, Lincoln refused heavy security. Perhaps he found the illusion of being a private citizen greater comfort than a military escort.

That fatal night Booth galloped to Ford’s, threw his reins to a stagehand and went inside. Though D.C.’s swampy summer heat hadn’t yet rolled in, it was still pretty skanky. About 1,700 people (almost twice today’s capacity) were packed in the small theater in an age when baths were sparse and deodorant nonexistent.

Lincoln arrived late with Mary Todd Lincoln, a young officer named Major Rathbone and Rathbone’s fiancee. Abe tried sneaking in, impossible even without the hat. The audience rose and applauded as the orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief,” then that night’s comedy, “Our American Cousin,” resumed.

Booth sweet-talked his way past the valet outside Lincoln’s box shortly before the play’s biggest laugh lines were delivered. He entered, barred the door and, as the audience burst into guffaws, shot Lincoln in the head. Rathbone tackled Booth. Booth stabbed him and leapt onstage, a 12-foot drop he’d previously jumped in performance. His boot spurs caught on the balcony flag and sent him sprawling, breaking his ankle. He sprang up shouting “Sic semper tyrannis!” and dashed off. The audience laughed, assuming it was part of the play. Then Mrs. Lincoln screamed.

According to newspaper reports, officers took Lincoln and “carried him tenderly” across the street to Petersen’s Boarding House. Knowing that if Lincoln ever regained consciousness, he’d be blind, a doctor held his hand all night so that the president would know he was not alone. Lincoln died that morning.

Booth’s fantasy of being the Southern Savior died with Lincoln. Instead, he turned the man he hated into an American saint and, by murdering a reconciliatory president, made way for a vindictive one backed by a vengeful public.

Twelve days later, Federal troops cornered Booth in a Virginia tobacco shed and shot him. He died paralyzed, looking at his hands, muttering, “Useless. Useless.”

The co-conspirators were hanged. Major Rathbone married his fiancee and later murdered her. Mary Todd Lincoln was institutionalized. Prevented by federal troops from reopening his theater, Ford sold it to the government, which converted it into a records depository. In 1893 three floors collapsed, killing 22 people.

Today Ford’s is an active theater, open for tours unless a play’s in progress. It includes a morbidly fascinating museum (though the fatal bullet and parts of Lincoln’s skull are on view at D.C.’s National Museum of Health and Medicine). Booth’s final performance could not be called a success, but he did leave us with pointers on how to play our own parts: 1. Always walk the set beforehand. 2. Be sure your props are in place. 3. It helps to be friendly with the box office. 4. Pay attention to other actors’ lines. 5. Never wear your boot spurs onstage. 6. Don’t take “break a leg” literally. 7. If you want to be a hero, join the army.

For information on National Historic sites Ford’s Theater and Petersen’s Boarding House, call 202-347-4833.