From Booklist
During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, actor-comedian Fred Stone's name on the marquee meant big box office. He was the original Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz, onstage back in 1903, and Ray Bolger's movie embodiment of the character echoes Stone's rubber-limbed portrayal. More important to prospective readers of Fields' biography, Stone's career spanned a major transformation in American show business. When he began performing, circuses and tiny, fly-by-night touring companies predominated. He and brother Ed were acrobats and tightrope walkers before "graduating" to minstrel shows and touring productions of
Uncle Tom's Cabin. When regular train service fostered organized vaudeville circuits, Stone, with and without Ed, flourished on them. When New York became
the show-biz capital, Stone made his mark. And when movies began out-earning the stage, Stone went to Los Angeles and appeared in dozens of movies. Watching Stone adapt is one of the delights of Fields' well-researched if not always graceful book--a rich storehouse of information about pre-Broadway, pre-Hollywood show biz.
Jack HelbigCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Fred Stone was one of America's most versatile and talented of Broadway's colorful entertainers. Audiences quickly discovered he could do anything and everything, from tightrope walking and acrobatics to song-and-dance, musical comedies, and straight drama. This work chronicles his extraordinary life and career. He was born in a log cabin August 19, 1873, in Valmont, Colorado, to a family that was part of the covered-wagon migration into the virtually unknown West. He joined a traveling circus at age 11 and two years later, joined a different one as a self-taught tightrope walker. During his teens, Stone performed on the variety stage, and at age 22, met Dave Montgomery, with whom he performed for over twenty years, including Broadway musicals, notably as the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz. After Montgomery's tragic death in 1917, Stone continued to perform and shared his continued success with his closest friend Will Rogers, and Annie Oakley, Broadway producer Charles Dillingham, Western artists Charles Russell and Ed Borein, and author Rex Beach. Stone appeared in some 18 movies, from 1918 to 1940, including such western classics as
The Westerner and
Trail of the Lonesome Pine. In 1950, he retired from show business and during the last years of his life suffered from increasing blindness and heart trouble. He died at his Los Angeles home in 1959.
