Edwin Frederick Thorne (1845 or 1849 – May 4, 1897) was a 19th-century American stage actor. Thorne was born in New York City in 1845 or 1849 into a prominent acting family of the time. He was the son of Charles R. Thorne, an actor and theatre manager, and Ana Maria Mestayer (

Ann Maria Thorne Ann Maria Thorne, more widely known as Mrs. French ''('' Mestayer; 1813 Philadelphia – 20 June 1881 Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York) was an early American concert singer and actress from Philadelphia. As "Mrs. French," she was among the most famous ...

) (also from an acting family), a well known actor and singer. His siblings, Charles R. Thorne Jr., William Thorne, and Emily Thorne, were all actors. He first appeared on the stage in

Leavenworth, Kansas Leavenworth () is the county seat and largest city of Leavenworth County, Kansas, United States and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 37,351. It is located on the west bank of t ...

. Another biography has his first appearance at the old

Winter Garden Theatre The Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway theatre at 1634 Broadway in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It opened in 1911 under designs by architect William Albert Swasey. The Winter Garden's current design dates to 1922, when ...

, New York, under Jackson's management in 1859, after which he moved to California, where he played most of the available juvenile roles. He returned to New York in 1865, then to Toronto, Canada, where he played the leading man in several successful productions. He visited Australia on several occasions, to good houses and excellent reviews, most recently in 1889 for Henry Edwards. He was especially known for Shakespeare and quality romantic dramas. Thorne's popular roles included playing in ''The Black Flag'', a melodrama by

Henry Pettitt Henry Alfred Pettitt (7 April 1848 – 24 December 1893), was a British actor and dramatist. With Augustus Harris, he wrote the play ''Burmah'', produced on Broadway in 1896. With G. R. Sims, he created a substantial body of very successf ...

. He also wrote a play called ''The Crimes of Paris''. Thorne wrote and starred in the comedy play ''Billiards'', possibly the only stage production about

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions of ...

. Thorne died in New York City on May 4, 1897, after a long illness. Actor

Louis Aldrich Louis Aldrich, ''né'' Salma Lyon, (October 1, 1843 – June 17, 1901) was a stage actor who later became president of the Actors' Fund of America. Biography Aldrich was born at sea while his mother was on her way from Germany to the United ...

spoke at his funeral.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thorne, Edwin F. 1897 deaths 1840s births American male stage actors Male actors from New York City American dramatists and playwrights