Joseph R. Grismer
| Joseph Rhode Grismer | |
|---|---|
Photograph of Joseph R. Grismer from Who’s Who on the Stage, 1906
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| Born |
Joseph Rhode Grismer November 4, 1849 Albany, New York, USA |
| Died | March 3, 1922 (aged 72) New York, New York, USA |
| Occupation | Actor, Director, Playwright and Producer |
| Spouse(s) |
Phoebe Davies Olive Chamberlin |
Joseph Rhode Grismer (November 4, 1849 – 1922) was an American stage actor, playwright, and theatrical director and producer. He was probably best remembered for his play The New South and for his revision of the Charlotte Blair Parker play Way Down East.
Joseph Rhode Grismer was born in Albany, New York, on November 4, 1849, the middle of three girls and two boys raised by Irish immigrants, Christopher and Bridget Grismer. According to later records his birth parents may have been Valentine Grismer and Adelaide Huda. In his youth Grismer attended the Albany Boys Academy and upon graduation served with the 192nd New York Volunteer Regiment during the waning months of the American Civil War. After the war’s end Grismer returned to Albany where at some point he found his calling as a member of the Histrionic Amateur Dramatic Club.
Grismer made his professional stage debut in Albany around 1870 and by 1873 was playing principal roles at the Grand Opera House in Cincinnati. There Grismer appeared in hundreds of stock productions, some in support of such luminaries of the day as Charlotte Cushman, Laura Keene, Edward Loomis Davenport, Edwin Adams, Lawrence Barrett, Lilian Adelaide Neilson, John Edward McCullough, Charles Albert Fechter, and Charles James Mathews.
Grismer relocated to San Francisco in 1877 where for several seasons he played leading roles at the Grand Opera House, and later the California Theatre and the Baldwin Theatre. At the latter he met and fell in love with Phoebe Davies, a young actress from Wales who had come to prominence at the Baldwin playing Hortense in a production of Dickens’ Bleak House. They married in San Francisco on June 1, 1882, and not long afterward formed their own company of stock players known as the Grismer-Davies Organization and began playing theaters throughout California and eventually across the Western States and Provinces of North America.
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