James A. Herne

James A. Herne, born James Ahearn on February 1, 1839, in Cohoes, New York, was an American actor, playwright, and book writer whose Broadway career spanned from 1869 to 1900. The son of poor Irish immigrants, he was pulled from school at thirteen to work in a brush factory, but within a year had resolved to pursue acting. He was twenty years old before he secured a place with a traveling troupe, making his stage debut in 1859 playing George in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Troy, New York.

Herne built his early reputation through engagements in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., with the John Thompson Ford company in the early 1860s, and subsequently served as leading man for the Lucille Western Touring Company from 1865 to 1867. During that same period he was briefly married to Lucille's sister Helen Western, an actress who later became romantically involved with John Wilkes Booth. He managed the Grand Opera House at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in New York City for a season before relocating to San Francisco in 1870 to oversee several additional theaters. It was in San Francisco that he formed a lasting professional relationship with David Belasco, with whom he would eventually collaborate on multiple plays, and where he also met and married his second wife, actress Katherine Corcoran. The couple had five children: a son, John, and four daughters, Alma, Dorothy, Julie, and Katherine Chrystal, who performed professionally as Chrystal Herne. Dorothy and Julie also pursued careers on the stage.

Herne's first successful play, Hearts of Oak, was written and produced in collaboration with Belasco in 1879. His subsequent output as a playwright included The Minute Men in 1886, Drifting Apart in 1888, and the controversial Margaret Fleming in 1890, a work that drew attention to complex social realities and is often credited with having initiated modern drama in America. Some critics designated Herne the "American Ibsen" in recognition of his commitment to dramatic realism and his departure from the romantic melodrama that dominated nineteenth-century American theater. Shore Acres followed in 1893, a play Herne wrote in part to promote the political economy of Henry George, whose Georgist philosophy he embraced. He continued to perform as well as write, and in 1897 appeared as Nathaniel Berry in Shore Acres at the Harlem Opera House — the sixth consecutive season he had played that role.

His Broadway credits include East Lynne, The Reverend Griffith Davenport, which premiered in 1899, and Sag Harbor, which opened in 1900. It was during a Chicago engagement of Sag Harbor that Herne fell ill in early 1901. He died on June 2, 1901, at his home at 79 Convent Avenue in Manhattan, succumbing to pneumonia at five o'clock in the afternoon. He was sixty-two years old.