Max Freeman

Maurice "Max" Freeman was born in Berlin, Germany in c. 1852. He made his professional stage debut in Berlin in 1868 as Francis in Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers. In 1871 he left Germany and came to the United States where he began his life as the theatre manager for the Germania Theatre at 4th Ave and 8th St in New York City. By 1873 he had left New York City for San Francisco, California where he was an actor in the California Theatre Stock Company His first role with that company was as Count Kantschukoff in the first English language staging of Franz von Suppé's comic opera Fatinitza. He then joined the Emelie Melville Opera Company where he had tremendous success in light operas touring the United States.

Freeman's first success on the New York stage was in Henry E. Abbey's 1882 production of Victorien Sardou's Divorçons at the Abbey's Park Theatre where he achieved great comic effect as the waiter in Act 3 of the play. Other roles on Broadway soon followed, including Bertrand in Bartley Campbell's Siberia (1883), Koulikoff Demetrovitch in A Russian Honeymoon (1883, an adaptation of a play by Eugène Scribe by Mrs. Burton Harris), Cragin in William Young's The Rajah (1883),[https://books.google.com/books?id=p4g7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA276 Play advertisement with cast listing], The Critic, p. 276 (June 16, 1883)Brown, p. 419 and Count de Brionne in Anselma (1885). The latter play was an English-language adaptation of Sardou's 1873 French-language play Andréa which was created by Leander Richardson for the Austrian actress Antonie Janisch (1848–1920), known on the stage as Madame Janisch.Adams, p. 51 During its Broadway run, the play was at the center of several court battles over the performance rights to Sardou's work, and was ultimately barred from any further performances by the New York Supreme Court in December 1885.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1885/09/11/archives/mme-janishs-anselma-in-injunction-against-its-production-refused.html|title=MME. JANISH'S "ANSELMA."; IN INJUNCTION AGAINST ITS PRODUCTION REFUSED|work=The New York Times|date=September 11, 1885|page=2}}{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1885/12/11/archives/the-right-to-anselma.html|title=THE RIGHT TO "ANSELMA."|work=The New York Times|date=December 11, 1885|page=8}}

Freeman adapted Jacques Offenbach's Orfée aux enfers into the English language 'Orpheus and Eurydice which was performed for the grand opening of Broadway's Bijou Theatre on December 1, 1883.The Sun (New York). December 2, 1883{{Cite news |date=August 19, 1883 |title=Bijou Opera-House |work=New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1883/08/19/106251788.pdf}}Brown, pp. 272–287 Freeman also performed the role of Pluto in the production."nyt" In 1886 he portrayed Chevalier de Brabazon in the United States premiere of Edward Jakobowski's Erminie.{{cite journal|journal=The Theatre|volume=2|editor=Deshler Welch|year=1887|title=THE THEATRE, ERMINIE|url=https://archive.org/stream/theatrevolume01welcgoog/theatrevolume01welcgoog_djvu.txt}} In 1890 Freeman's original play Claudius Nero, a stage work Freeman adapted from Ernest Erkstein's novel Nero, premiered at Niblo's Garden on 22 October. The work was essentially an early musical, including songs and ballet.Bordman & Norton, p. 121

Freeman directed his first stage work on Broadway in 1896, the comic opera Santa Maria by composer and librettist Oscar Hammerstein I.Franceschina, pp. 1894 & 1911 Other works he directed on Broadway included the musical Miss Manhattan (1897, libretto by George V. Hobart);{{cite journal|journal=The Turf, Field and Farm|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z74xAQAAMAAJ&dq=Miss+Manhattan+1897+Max+Freeman&pg=PA493|title=The Stage|date=March 26, 1897|page=493|volume=64}} Reginald De Koven's operetta The Highwayman (1897);Franceschina, p. 1897 the Edgar Smith and Louis De Lange musical's The Little Host (1898) and Mother Goose (1898);Gänzl, p. 1881Franceschina, p. 1911 and the 1899 revival of Erminie in which Freeman also returned to the stage as Brabazon.Adams, p. 504 He directed and starred in a few more plays on Broadway, including Ludwig Englander's The Rounders (1899, as Joseph), Hubert Henry Davies's Cynthia (1903), Gustav Kerker and Harry B. Smith's The Blonde in Black (1903, M. Carrousel Ladjos), and Henri Dumay's Mademoiselle Marni (1905); the latter being his last Broadway credit as a director. His other directing credits on Broadway included Broadway to Tokio (1900), Stanislaus Stange's Quo Vadis (1900), Sweet Anne Page (1900), Theodore Burt Sayre's Manon Lescaut (1901), A Modern Magdalen (1902), Gretna Green (1903), Love's Lottery (1904), and a A China Doll (1904).

Freeman continued to perform on Broadway into the end of career, with his last performance on the New York Stage being the role of Professor Diggs in Philip Bartholomae's Over Night in 1911.{{cite news|title=STAGE FRIGHT SEALS YOUNG AUTHOR'S LIPS; Bartholomae Is Dumb Before Plaudits Marking the Success of "Overnight" at Hackett|work=The New York Times|date=January 3, 1911|page=12|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1911/01/03/archives/stage-fright-seals-young-authors-lips-bartholomae-is-dumb-before.html}} His other late career performances on Broadway included roles in Heidelberg (1902), Divorçons (1907), The Girl from Rector's (1909), and The Girl in the Taxi (1910). His final stage performance was in Cleveland in 1912 in A. H. Woods's Modest Suzanne. In addition to his many accomplishments as an actor, director, and producer on Broadway, Freeman also had lengthy tenures at the stage manager for first the Madison Square Theatre and later the Casino Theatre.

Freeman committed suicide and his body was discovered March 28, 1912 at the Hotel Grenoble in New York City. Having hung himself, it was determined that he died either sometime in the morning on March 28 or possibly late in the evening on March 27, 1912.{{cite news|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1912/03/29/100357939.pdf|title=Max Freeman, Stage Manager, A Suicide|work=The New York Times|date=March 29, 1912}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|chapter=Anselma|year=1904|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XTAoAAAAMAAJ&dq=Victorien+Sardou+Anselma&pg=PA61|author=William Davenport Adams|publisher=B. Franklin|title=A Dictionary of the Drama: A Guide to the Plays, Playwrights, Players, and Playhouses of the United Kingdom and America, from the Earliest Times to the Present. A-G}}
• {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVdShkzkX74C|title=American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle|author=Gerald Martin Bordman, Richard Norton|year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199729708}}
• {{cite book|author=T. Allston Brown|url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6864656_002/pages/ldpd_6864656_002_00000435.html|title=A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901, volume 2|year=1903|publisher=Dodd, Mead & Co.}}
• {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sQJGDwAAQBAJ|title=Incidental and Dance Music in the American Theatre from 1786 to 1923 Volume 1|author=John Franceschina|year=2018|publisher=BearManor Media}}
• {{cite book|chapter=Freeman, Max|title=Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism|author=James Fisher and Felicia Hardison Londré|year=2017|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers|isbn=9781538107867}}
• {{cite book|title=The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre: O-Z|author=Kurt Gänzl|year=2001|isbn=9780028655741|publisher=Schirmer Books}}

• [https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/max-freeman-7652 Max Freeman] at the Internet Broadway Database

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Category:1850s births

Category:1912 deaths

Category:1912 suicides

Category:19th-century German male actors

Category:19th-century German dramatists and playwrights

Category:Male actors from Berlin

Category:German stage actors

Category:German musical theatre actors

Category:German theatre directors

Category:Suicides by hanging in New York City

Category:Emigrants from the German Empire to the United States