Actors' Fund of America

The Actors’ Fund of America was founded in 1882 largely through the efforts of Harrison Grey Fiske, the owner of a theater trade publication, the New York Dramatic Mirror. The Fund got off to a rousing start, fueled by Fiske’s enthusiasm; by the “instinctive generosity of show people” (Simon, p. 3); and – most important – by the backing of the nineteenth-century theatrical elite, the actor-managers who owned and operated the theaters and from whose ranks the Fund’s officers and trustees were drawn. Notable donors and founding members of the Fund included: Albert M. Palmer, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Edward Harrigan, and P. T. Barnum. In the founding year, the New York Herald generously donated $10,000. The primary mission of the Actors’ Fund was to care for members of the theatrical community when they fell ill and to bury the dead. Its unstated goal was to bring respectability to a profession that was scorned by moralists, and whose members were often refused aid by church-run charities.

As early as 1880, Fiske wrote a series of impassioned editorials criticizing the practice of running theatrical benefits for non-theatrical causes. The benefit performance had been a long-standing theater tradition, though in the late nineteenth-century, proceeds were often filling the pockets of only one individual, usually the lead actor or actress in a particular theater company. Fiske was a crusader for changing the nature of the benefit performance, broadening its purpose to provide assistance to the larger theatrical community. He proposed the establishment of a “Sinking Fund,” which would differ in one important respect from other theatrical relief organizations; while the latter were funded by membership dues, effectively shutting out the neediest individuals who could not afford to pay, Fiske’s fund would be underwritten by benefit performances – one per theater per year.

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