Paul Dickey (May 12, 1883 – January 8, 1933) was an American actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and an early aviator. A star athlete in high school, he ran track and played football for the University of Michigan. A serious bout of typhoid fever ended his athletic career, after which he focused on dramatics, leaving college to enter vaudeville in 1906. Teaming up with journalist Charles W. Goddard, he had a successful playwriting career on Broadway, with The Ghost Breaker, an early comedy horror work, and The Misleading Lady which popularized the Napoleon imposter trope. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) during World War I, and served in France as an officer for a bomber squadron. After the war, he became involved with writing and directing silent films, had another Broadway hit with The Broken Wing, played the villain to Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, and directed the long-running musical Rose-Marie. Dickey also gave George Abbott his first Broadway role, keeping him in theater when he was ready to quit. Dickey's later career concentrated on directing and writing, as recurring heart trouble limited his performances. He died of a heart attack at age 49.
Early years
Paul Dickey was born on May 12, 1883, in Chicago,Paul Dickey, in the New York, U.S., Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917-1919, retrieved from Ancestry.com to Frank H. Dickey, a lawyer from New York, who later became a judge and co-founded a small Chicago-area bank. His mother, who was from Wisconsin, died when he was a child. Dickey and his two older brothers and younger sister lived with their father and paternal aunt, Isabel Dickey.1900 United States Federal Census for Paul Dickey, Illinois > Cook > Chicago Ward 4 > District 0348, retrieved from Ancestry.com Dickey attended South Division High School, where he took part in boxing, track, football, and dramatics. He also competed in a YMCA athletic meet, winning the pole vault and long jump events, and was a member of the relay race team from South Division that won a Chicago-wide interscholastic championship.
College After graduating high school in June 1902, he was actively recruited by the football programs of Chicago under Amos Alonzo Stagg and Michigan under Fielding Yost. Choosing the latter, he made the varsity squad as a freshman, playing substitute left halfback. Many years later, Yost said Dickey, although a sub, usually managed to get playing time in each game. While at Michigan, Dickey pledged Delta Upsilon fraternity and sang bass with the Men's Glee Club. Dickey also became a member of the University's Comedy Club, which performed many type of stage works. He was on Michigan's track and field team in the spring of 1903, but his athletic career was cut short in his sophomore year by an extended bout of typhoid fever, followed by an attack of appendicitis. He lost academic credit for 1903-1904, but was able to return to Michigan for another year and a half, during which he concentrated on dramatics. However, by May 1906 he had left college to pursue a vaudeville career.
Early stage career Vaudeville beginning
Dickey began his career in vaudeville doing a solo act of stage celebrity impressions,The term hadn't been popularized yet, and was referred to as being a "character change artist". at that time considered a novelty. He followed a vaudeville circuit from the West to New York City, where in August 1906 he joined Robert Edeson's touring company for Strongheart. A four-act play by William C. DeMille, this work centered around a Native American athlete at Columbia University who experiences racial prejudice while leading the football team to victory. Dickey stayed with the tour through April 1907, receiving a larger role when the production went overseas to London's Aldwych Theatre in May 1907.
After the Strongheart tour returned to America, Edgar Selwyn took over the lead, and Dickey was given a supporting role when it opened in Chicago during August 1907. The tour finished up in Poughkeepsie, New York on March 30, 1908. Dickey wrote a one-act play called The Counterfeit Champion in May 1908, which he was reportedly going to play in vaudeville that summer. However, he joined the Paul McAllister Stock Company in June, playing at Hurtig & Seamon's Music Hall in Harlem.
Pierre of the Plains Henry B. Harris, who had directed Dickey in Strongheart, cast him for a role in a new production during July 1908. For Pierre of the Plains, Dickey would again be supporting Edgar Selwyn, who had adapted the play from the stories of Pierre and His People by Canadian author Gilbert Parker. The production had a tryout in Pittston, Pennsylvania starting September 19, 1908, before its opening run in Toronto. A week later it went to Montreal, and on October 12, 1908, both the play and Dickey had their Broadway premieres at the Harris-owned Hudson Theatre. The New York Times reviewer noted that Paul Dickey was an unknown, but one that showed promise. Other newspaper critics had mixed opinions on the play, but were enthusiastic about Dickey and his spectacular third act fall.
As Jap Durgan, Dickey played the sworn enemy of the play's protagonist, the half-breed Pierre (Edgar Selwyn). Dickey's character fights Pierre, is stabbed by him, and falls eighteen feet down a "steep incline representing a hillside". In Montreal, Dickey had to be hospitalized once when the fall went wrong. He was injured again the second night on Broadway, but was able to limp offstage. Producer Henry B. Harris took out an insurance policy on Dickey, as the bowie knife fight came to be regarded as the "thing that sealed the success of the piece". A Cleveland newspaper even printed a drawing showing the various stages of the stabbing and fall. The stunt, whose success Dickey attributed to football experience in falling and padding, was widely celebrated in print.
When Pierre of the Plains closed on Broadway, Dickey went on tour with it to Chicago, starting November 11, 1908. The tour reached Philadelphia in December, where it finished. While trying to secure lodging in Manhattan after Pierre of the Plains, Dickey clashed with another young fellow over a room in a 46th Street boarding house. This was journalist Charles W. Goddard from Portland, Maine. After a night arguing, they struck up a friendship. Dickey was impressed with the dramatic potential of a scenario Goddard had written called The Ghost Breaker. They would spend several months expanding it to a four-act "melodramatic farce".
Leading man
Dickey was signed to appear with Henrietta Crosman in January 1909. From late March 1909 he performed on Broadway as leading man for her in Sham, a comedy by Geraldine Bonner and Elmer Harris. Dickey played a western fellow come east to woo a penniless society woman (Henrietta Crosman) and was reported to act with "directesness and good taste". Dickey went on tour with Sham starting in May 1909. During this run, Dickey and Charles W. Goddard sold their play, The Ghost Breaker to Henry B. Harris.
While on the summer break for Sham, Dickey vacationed in Wisconsin. When the production resumed in August 1909 for a tour, Dickey met a replacement cast member, Inez Plummer. Plummer was the daughter of a Shubert Theater manager in Syracuse, New York. Dickey and Plummer stayed with the tour for Sham until it ended in late April 1910. By this time Harris had returned the manuscript for The Ghost Breaker, still unproduced, to Dickey and Goddard. Dickey joined the Stubbs-Wilson players for summer stock at Olentangy Park Theatre in Columbus, Ohio during May 1910. This provided Dickey and Goddard with an opportunity to stage a low-budget tryout for The Ghost Breaker at the same theater when the stock season ended. The authors financed it themselves, and Dickey played the leading man. The tryout resulted in national publicity when Dickey was nearly killed by a sword during one performance.
Besides The Ghost Breaker, Dickey also produced in Columbus a one-act play he and Goddard wrote, called The Man from the Sea. It was with this latter play that Dickey performed in vaudeville during the fall of 1910, sponsored by Maurice Campbell. The playlet dealt with wireless telegraphy in a bizarre love triangle that becomes a ghost story. By early February 1911, Dickey was in Chicago as leading man to Helen Ware in The Deserters.
Return to Vaudeville The Come BackIt was also listed sometimes as The Comeback. was Dickey's one-act comedy that originated with an incident from his freshman year at Michigan. By March 1911 he was playing it on the Orpheum circuit in New York City, under the billing Paul Dickey & Company. Dickey plays a college freshman, hazed by three upper classmen and an alumnus in a badger game variant, who gets even with the aid of a young woman. The sole female role was first played by Emma Littlefield, but Dickey replaced her with Inez Plummer by April 1911. The Come Back was performed in vaudeville through March 1912.
The Ghost Breaker was still being shopped to various producers without success. Meanwhile, Charles W. Goddard had become romantically involved with Dickey's younger sister Ruth, a professional violinist.U.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925, for Ruth Dickey, retrieved from Ancestry.com They were married in Chicago, during December 1911.Ruth Dickey in the Cook County, Illinois, U.S., Marriage Index, 1871-1920, retrieved from Ancestry.com
Paul Dickey & Company resumed playing The Come Back with an expanded cast of eight during September 1912. It was now considered a headliner act in vaudeville. It ran twenty minutes, and Dickey reportedly had a three-act version in preparation for the legitimate stage.
Broadway: 1913-1916 The Ghost Breaker
In October 1912 Goddard and Dickey sold The Ghost Breaker to Maurice S. Campbell, who had produced The Man from the Sea in 1910. He agreed to produce the play, only to find out that the Harris estateHarris had perished in the sinking earlier that year, and his estate was now in the hands of his wife Renee, who survived the disaster. had a lien on it. It took until December 1912 for the legalities to be settled, so Campbell could formally accept the play for production. The story concerns a Spanish princess who helps a Kentucky gentleman escape from the law in Manhattan, and he in turn helps rid her castle of a spirit. Dickey directed the production but didn't perform in it. The comedy was well-received by audiences, who held it open on Broadway for ten weeks, until contractual obligations of the star, H. B. Warner, forced it to close. It was later adapted for films in 1914, 1922, and 1940.
The Misleading Lady
After their first Broadway success, Dickey and Goddard were presented with a challenge from William Harris Jr., who had taken over his older brother Henry's production company. The younger Harris had signed West Coast actor Lewis Stone and wanted a star vehicle for him. Stone preferred playing rough characters to drawing room types. The new play would be needed in a month's time, so Dickey and Goddard, helped by an idea from Ruth Dickey Goddard, worked day and night in shifts to write The Misleading Lady. The script was completed in time for rehearsals to begin in September. Once again, Dickey staged the play but didn't perform in it.