Adah Isaacs Menken - Career

Career

After Cuba, Menken left dance for the stage, and began working as an actress, first in Texas. According to Gregory Eiselein, she first married there, in 1855 to G. W. Kneass, a musician. It ended by some time in 1856.

There she met and in 1856 married the man more generally considered her first husband, Alexander Isaac Menken, a musician who was from a prominent Reform Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began to act as her manager, and Ada Menken performed as an actress in the Midwest and Upper South, also giving literary readings. She received decent reviews, which noted her "reckless energy," and performed with men who became notable actors: Edwin Booth in Louisville, Kentucky and James E. Murdoch in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 1857 the couple moved to Cincinnati, where Menken created her Jewish roots, telling a reporter that she was born Jewish. She did study Judaism and stayed with the faith, although she never formally converted. In this period, she published poetry and articles on Judaism in The Israelite in Cincinnati. The newspaper was founded by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who was crucial to the Reform Judaism movement in the United States. She also began to published in the Jewish Messenger of New York.

Ada added an "h" to her first name, and an "s" to Isaac; by 1858 she billed herself as Adah Isaacs Menken. She eventually worked as an actress in New York and San Francisco, as well as in touring productions across the country. She also became known for her poetry and painting. While none of her arts were well received by major critics, she gained a celebrity by her acting and her life that surpassed that of most poets, artists and legitimate actresses.

At this time, Menken wore her wavy hair short, a highly unusual style for women of the time. She cultivated a bohemian and at times androgynous appearance. She was deliberately creating her image at a time when an expanding media existed to publicize it.

In 1859 Menken appeared on Broadway in New York City in the play The French Spy. Her work was not highly regarded by the critics. The New York Times described her as "the worst actress on Broadway". The Observer said, "she is delightfully unhampered by the shackles of talent". Adah Isaacs Menken continued to perform small parts in New York, as well as reading Shakespeare in performance, and giving lectures around town.

Her second husband John C. Heenan, a boxer, was a popular, rallying national figure in the United States as sectional tensions increased before the American Civil War. While he was in London for a prominent match in March 1860, she billed herself as Mrs. John Heenan for a one-night run at the Old Bowery Theatre in New York, to great success. She gained other bookings as Mrs. Heenan in Boston, Providence, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, using his name despite their divorce within a year of marriage.

While in New York, Menken met the poet Walt Whitman and some others of his bohemian circle. She was influenced by his work and began to write in a more confessional style. In 1860-61, she published 25 poems in the Sunday Mercury, an entertainment newspaper in New York. (These were later collected with six more in her only book, Infelicia, published a few months after her death.) By publishing in a newspaper, she reached a larger audience than through women's magazines, including both men and women readers who might go to see her perform as an actress. At the same time, she used common conventions of sentimental poetry in her work.

In 1860 Menken wrote a review entitled "Swimming Against the Current", which praised Walt Whitman's new edition of Leaves of Grass, saying he was "centuries ahead of his contemporaries". She identified with him, and at the time, for a woman to support the controversial poet was a way of declaring her bohemian identity. That year, Menken also wrote an article on the 1860 election. As it was very unusual for a woman to write about politics, and even the Mercury expressed reservations, this was another piece that added to her image.

Having met Charles Blondin in New York, who was a famed tightrope walker, Menken did a vaudeville tour with him. After it ended, she appealed to her business manager Jimmie Murdock to help her become recognized as a great actress. Murdock dissuaded Menken from that goal, as he knew she had little acting talent. He offered her the "breeches role" (that of a man) of the noble Tartar in the melodrama Mazeppa, based on a poem by Lord Byron. At the climax of this hit, the Tartar was stripped of his clothing, tied to his horse, and sent off to his death. The audiences were thrilled with the scene, although the production used a dummy strapped to a horse, which was led away by a handler giving sugar cubes.

Menken wanted to perform the stunt herself. Dressed in nude tights and riding a horse on stage, she appeared to be naked and caused a sensation. Not only was she a woman playing the part of a man, and playing with conventions of gender, she heightened the sensationalism by appearing to be nude. New York audiences were shocked but still attended and made the play popular. Some of society thought it beneath them.

Looking for more acclaim, Menken took the production of Mazeppa to San Francisco. Audiences concerned less about convention flocked to the show and made it wildly popular. She became known across the country for this role, and San Francisco adopted her as its performer.

In 1862 Menken wrote about her public and private personae:

"I have always believed myself to be possessed of two souls, one that lives on the surface of life, pleasing and pleased; the other as deep and as unfathomable as the ocean; a mystery to me and all who know me."