"Casy At The Bat" Still Appeals To The Crowd But It Leaves De Wolf Hopper Without A Smile

The man who made Casey, the hamball-player, famous is sick of him. The act that has made audiences all over the world for 36 years go wild, is a deadly automatic performance for the genius who created it. The thrill of the first recital of "Casey at the Bat" repeated in almost every large city in the United States, has disappeared and it is now a matter of dull routine.

Such was the admission of DeWolf Hopper, the famous comedian who is giving a repertoire of comic opera at the Boston Opera House, when he was interviewed in his dressing room by a CRIMSON reporter. Mr. Hooper will begin a week's performance of "Pinafore" on Monday, and between the acts, he will give again the dramatic presentation of this poem by a Harvard man, which he has already given over fifteen thousand times.

"I am so sick of Casey, now. I could kill him sometimes. I have done him so often that it has become part of my physical machine and my mind wanders anywhere while I am doing it. Then I wake up, forget where I am, and am in a hole. I have Casey miss that ball six or seven times, and I have had him miss it only once. It never makes any difference to the crowd.

Casey First Published Anonymously

The extraordinary history of the poem has been a matter of conjecture and speculation ever since it was written in 1888. A well-known magazine conducted an extensive inquiry as to its author, and many men have claimed to have signed the initials "E. L. T." which appeared under the poem in the San Francisco Examiner. Mr. Hopper, while waiting his cue as "Colonel Popoff" in "The Chocolate Soldier", explained the true authorship to the CRIMSON reporter.

Ernest Laurence Thayer '85, leaving Harvard with William Randolph Hearst, accompanied the latter to California, where he worked under the father of the newspaperman, himself a great journalist. "Casey at the Bat", Mr. Thayer's masterpiece, was dashed off in a very short time as a space filler for the paper. It attracted little attention, until six, months later when it was brought east by Archibald C. Gunter, the well-known author, and given to Mr. Hopper, with the suggestion that he might some day be able to use it. "I was playing at the time at Wallack's Theatre", Mr. Hopper explained, "and we were giving a special performance for the Chicago White Sox and the Giants, who were then playing a series in New York. It so happened that I was passing through a serious personal crisis, my young son being desperately ill on Long Island. I felt too utterly miserable, to do anything, I was sitting in front of the theatre in the snow, the wires had been blown down by a storm and I had no news of my son. One hour before the performance, I heard word that my boy had passed the dangerous stage and was no longer to be feared for. In that hour, still sitting in the snow, I learned and studied the whole poem. The first evening, before that crowd of baseball men, little as I knew the poem, saw the finest rendering and the wildest applause I have ever received. Since then, I have given it every year, sometimes four or five times in a day, and I have never recaptured the supreme perfection of a first recital.