Description: The Hanlons--a family of six brothers from Manchester, England--were one of the world's premiere performing troupes in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet their legacy has been mostly forgotten. In The Hanlon Brothers: From Daredevil Acrobatics to Spectacle Pantomime, 1833-1931, Mark Cosdon carefully documents the careers of this talented family and enumerates their many contributions to modern popular entertainment.
Review Quotes:
"The Hanlons are to physical comedy on stage what Chaplin and Keaton are to the slapstick in the silent movies. So far their influential contribution has been overlooked by historians. Mark Cosdon sets this to rights in his scrupulously researched, entertainingly written study. His skills as trained scholar and circus performer combine to provide insight into the Hanlons' techniques and their significance. After this, any account of the nineteenth-century American theatre will have to recognize the entrepreneurial talents and the comic legacy of the Hanlon dynasty."--Laurence Senelick, author of The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance
"Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Mark Cosdon's The Hanlon Brothers: From Daredevil Acrobatics to Spectacle Pantomime, 1833-1931 offers new insights into the history of the performance troupe that pioneered many of the safety practices, physical routines, and comic traditions we recognize today everywhere from tightrope acts at the circus to slapstick gags in Marx Brothers' movies."--Heather S. Nathans, author of Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People