Sam Wanamaker
Sam Wanamaker was a prominent American actor and director born in 1919 in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish parents. He developed a passion for acting and Shakespeare during his youth, leading him to study at the Goodman School of Drama. After making his Broadway debut in 1942, he became involved in radio dramas and later transitioned to film. His career faced significant challenges during the McCarthy era due to his affiliation with the American Communist Party, resulting in a blacklist that forced him to relocate to England.
In the UK, Wanamaker continued to thrive as both an actor and director, becoming a leading figure in promoting Shakespearean performance. He is best known for his powerful portrayals, including the role of Iago in "Othello," and for his significant contributions to theater, notably as head of the New Shakespeare Company and in the establishment of the restored Globe Theatre in London. Wanamaker's determination and vision for recreating this historic venue became his lifelong obsession, culminating in its construction shortly before his death from cancer in 1993. His legacy lives on through the Globe Theatre, which stands as a testament to his passion for Shakespeare and the theatrical arts.
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Sam Wanamaker
Actor and architect
- Born: June 14, 1919
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: December 18, 1993
- Place of death: London, England
Wanamaker was a distinguished actor on radio and television and in the American and British theater. He spearheaded the campaign to reconstruct the Globe Theatre of William Shakespeare’s times.
Early Life
Sam Wanamaker (WAHN-uh-may-kur) was born in Chicago in 1919 to Ukrainian Jewish parents Manes (later Morris) Wanamaker and Molly Bobele. The original family name was Watenmaker. It is conceivable that the family adopted the name of the prominent non-Jewish Wanamaker’s department store family. Sam Wanamaker attended Drake University and studied acting at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago. His early days as an actor were modest, apparently spent performing in midwestern summer stock companies during the 1930’s. As a teenager, he became enamored of the works of William Shakespeare when he saw one of his plays performed.
Life’s Work
Wanamaker made his debut on the Broadway stage in 1942 after having worked in various touring companies. His sonorous baritone voice was also heard in dramas on the radio. In 1940, he married Charlotte Holland, an actor in radio soap operas, and they had daughters, including the distinguished actor Zoë Wanamaker. (Later, perhaps in the 1970’s, the American film actor Jan Sterling became his longtime mistress.) In 1943, while performing the role of a Russian soldier, Wanamaker became interested in communism and joined the American Communist Party. It was an act that was to affect his career seriously in the early 1950’s. He served in the military from 1943 until 1946, and afterward he may have withdrawn his party membership. He returned to Broadway after his discharge and made his first Hollywood film, My Girl Tisa, in 1948. In 1951, he publicly supported some of the Hollywood Ten, screenwriters and directors who had been singled out for supposed Communist sympathies by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Not long thereafter, he was blacklisted and prevented from working in American cinema or television. While filming in England Wanamaker decided to remain in that country and pursue his career there. The United States government then revoked his passport. Several years after his death in 1993 it was discovered that he had been under long-term surveillance by the British security service MI-5 and by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Apparently in the 1950’s, during the height of the Cold War, the British government had considered interning him because of his Communist sympathies and even discussed sending him back to the United States. He was referred to as a “suspect” American; however, in 1957, the Wanamaker family was granted permission for an indefinite stay in Britain.
In England, the leonine Wanamaker continued to act on the screen and the stage, and he became a director of numerous plays and a few films. He was described as a powerful actor: passionate, virile, honest, and seemingly spontaneous. The role of the treacherous Iago in William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice (1604) was one of his signature parts. He performed on television also, becoming the star of a series called Berrenger’s, which was about a department store owner. One of his most praised television performances was in the miniseries Holocaust. He also played supporting roles in such films as Taras Bulba (1962), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Death on the Nile (1978), Irreconcilable Differences (1984), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and Private Benjamin (1980).
Wanamaker was appointed head of the New Shakespeare Company in Liverpool in 1957, and the promotion of Shakespearean performance became one of the fervent pursuits of his life. His company was supposedly the first in modern days to bring noted West End performers to the “provinces,” reversing the usual path for British actors. Two years later he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was also the director of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in 1974. In the last twenty-five years of his life, Wanamaker pursued a single goal: to rebuild the fabled Globe Theatre, the venue where the great plays of Shakespeare originally had been performed. In both his professional and private lives, he was described as single-minded and abrasive, and even his daughter said that he could be a “monster” if he did not get his way. However, perhaps those attributes may have been necessary in order to fulfill his obsessive dream. Wanamaker lived to see his project under construction, but he died of cancer in 1993 before it was completed.
Significance
The restored Globe Theatre will stand as Wanamaker’s lasting monument; it is noteworthy that it was an American who brought this to fruition. He was considered a distinguished theater actor, particularly in England, and he was a director of some note. Wanamaker was awarded, posthumously, the Society of London Theatre Special Award in 1994. He might have had an equal reputation in the United States had not his career been cut short during the excesses of Senator Joe McCarthy’s investigations in the early 1950’s. Although Wanamaker came from Jewish roots, he apparently made little of that in his professional career.
Bibliography
Carson, Christie, and Farah Karim-Cooper, eds. Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2008. An account of the new Globe Theatre from the point of view of the productions staged there and how it functions as a modern-day theater.
Day, Barry. This Wooden “O”: Shakespeare’s Globe Reborn, Achieving an American’s Dream. New York: Limelight, 1998. A reprint of a 1996 British publication that discusses the rebuilding of the Globe Theatre and Wanamaker’s leading role in accomplishing this feat.
Macmillan Reference. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2d ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. A well-regarded reference work containing an article about Wanamaker.
Mulryne, J. R., and Margaret Shewring, eds. Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997. A lavishly illustrated and scholarly account of the rebuilding of the Globe Theatre. It encompasses many subjects, including the theater’s craftsmanship and archaeology and the fund-raising that enabled its reconstruction.
Newman, Danny. Tales of a Theatrical Guru. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Newman was a press agent for many celebrities, including Wanamaker.