George Kunkel (theatre manager)

His son, George Kunkel, was also an entertainer who worked as an opera singer and a silent film and stage actor.

As an entertainer, George Kunkel was a leading performer in minstrel shows of the 19th century, and was particularly associated with the role of Uncle Tom; a character he portrayed in blackface.

With Ford and Thomas L. Moxley (died 1890)[1] as his occasional partners, he became a prominent theatre manager of the mid 19th century.

[3] The troupe contained several well-known blackface entertainers of the period, among them Cool White, Jim Sanford, Tony Winnemore, and Eph Horn.

[8] The revived troupe began performing at the Baltimore Museum Theatre[8] where Kunkel had taken a post as manager a few months after the beginning of the American Civil War.

[19] Ford exited the partnership a few years later, but Kunkel and Moxley continued as managers of the theatre until the spring of 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War.

[22] His older brother Edwin had been performing on the Richmond stage since 1856; often playing the title roles in tragedies like King Lear and Henry V.[23] Together, the Booth brothers starred in several Shakespeare plays at the Marshall Theatre during Kunkel's tenure, among them Hamlet with Edwin in the title role and John Wilkes as Horatio.

[25][3] Their daughter, Mamie was also a singer,[25] and their son George became a silent film star, comedic stage actor, and operatic baritone.

He first performed this role with Kunkel's Nightingale while they were on tour to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861, the year the American Civil War began.

This version was entirely anti-slavery and, in it, Kunkel made the character highly sympathetic, virtuous, dignified, and sharply intelligent with a quality of manly strength often missing in the submissive portrayals of other adaptations.

[29] One Southern critic wrote of Kunkel's performance in an 1881 review, The individual who took the part of Uncle Tom had no more conception of the negro character than an Esquimax [sic] (Eskimo) would have.

Instead of the simple, credulous, and true style of the old time darky, he tried to make the character similar to Richelieu, Virginius, Lear, Spartacus, and Brutus as played by Booth, McCullough, and Barrett.