The Man Who Wrote the Man Who Killed Lincoln

[emma1231]

I have a 5x7 of one of Stern's photo prints of the Garrett house , with his writing in pencil on the verso. It's the very one in his book. A play based on his JWB book was produced shortly after its publication, starring Richard Waring. It bombed. Many yrs. ago I discvd that a typewritten copy of the script and notes for its adaption to the stage are in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the NYPL (at Lincoln Center). The library will not allow it to be reproduced without permission of Stern's descendants. I think they're all gone now. Fortunately, Stern gave me written permission to get a copy. They microfilmed it for me, and from that I had it printed out on paper. It's one of the rarest scripts in my large collection of plays about Booth and the assassination. Stern died a couple of years later. Sorry, I will not copy it for anyone. It isn' t really a bad play, tho dated by today's standards. But it is somewhat sympathetic to Booth, which no doubt accounted for its failure. Waring wasn't surprised that it failed. "After all," he told me, "the son of a ***** shot Lincoln!"