Daniel Bandmann
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1837-1905
Missoula, Montana (and beyond)
It is unlikely that the golfers playing the greens at the Canyon River Golf Club deep in Hellgate Canyon near East Missoula realize they are treading on the homesteaded ranch of a famed late 19th century German-Jewish tragedian. Daniel E. Bandmann portrayed some of Shakespeare’s most complex and controversial characters on stages around the world, but he was equally known for his tempestuous personal life and horticultural achievements.
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Born to merchant Solomon Bandmann and Rebecca Katz in Hesse-Kassel, Germany in 1839, young Daniel’s first thespian experience was to portray various Biblical characters. He accompanied his parents to the United States at the age of fourteen, was naturalized in 1858 then returned to Germany for several years to study theatre. But, by January 1863 Bandmann was back in the US, making his English language debut as Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” at Niblo’s Garden in Soho, Manhattan.
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An 1868 “London Times” review praised: “Herr Bandmann is one of the most striking actors, on a grand scale, that have [sic] made a debut in London for many years.” His physicality and sword-fighting prowess caused more than one actor to flee the stage as “… [Bandmann would] very often forget his surroundings and put up a real fight…” reported the June 18th, 1897 “Jewish South” weekly.
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In February 1869, Bandmann married English actress Millicent Palmer in an Anglican ceremony at the Parish Church in St. Marylebone, a wealthy London enclave. Millicent accompanied her husband to Australia where daughter Lily was born in about 1870 with son Maurice born in New York City three years later. Bandmann apparently chafed at such domestic tranquility, however, and determined to launch a two-year tour of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, China, Singapore, Ceylon, and Hawaii as he later recounted in his 1885 book, “An Actor’s Tour or Seventy Thousand Miles with Shakespeare.”
Play advertisement with Bandmann headlining. His companion Louise Beaudet is also listed.
The whirlwind tour also brought French-Canadian actress Louise Beaudet into his sphere as his favored leading lady and romantic partner. Deserted, a broken-hearted Palmer and their children decamped for Germany. Over the next several years, Bandmann and Beaudet continued their romance and extensive touring with their first Montana engagements performing in Helena, Butte, and Missoula in May 1884. There is no definitive documentation as to why the renowned actor determined to homestead in Montana, save Beaudet’s observation that he had become “infatuated” with the cattle business. He proved up his Hellgate Canyon homestead in 1889. The unmarried couple also jointly invested in Bitterroot Valley properties--or so Beaudet believed.
By 1893 Beaudet, wearied from her fruitless entreaties to Bandmann for an “accounting” of their joint real estate and cash assets, sued him in Helena’s circuit court. Nearly simultaneously, Millicent Palmer who, by then, was living in England, filed for divorce in Missoula’s district court. The issue with this matter was that Bandmann claimed to have married 21-year-old Mary Kelly whom he had taken “under his charge for stage instruction” in May 1892. (Kelly had earlier borne Bandmann a daughter on a train en route to the West Coast, they would eventually have four children together.) Bandmann contended that he had divorced Millicent in a Park County court years earlier, but it was ruled void.
Bandmann’s notoriety continued in international, national and Montana newspapers with daily coverage of both suits’ proceedings. In the end, Millicent obtained her divorce with alimony, maintenance for their children, and Bandmann’s London property. The “Anaconda Standard” reported: “Immediately after the decree of divorce had been granted, Bandmann, with an evident study for sensation and effect, stepped up to Judge Woody and demanded to be married to his wife, Mary Kelly…”
His assets greatly reduced from these settlements, Bandmann owed property taxes and was forced to forfeit his thoroughbred Percherons and Holstein cattle for a $4,200 bank attachment. But he was able to retain ownership of his apple orchards, winning a bronze medal for his McIntosh reds at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase exposition and receiving orders for his fruit from as far away as New York City.
In some respects, it seems that the consistent coverage of Bandmann’s turbulent personal life might have eclipsed his artistic accomplishments. But theatre historians, especially those in the Pacific Rim, have revived his professional reputation by contextualizing his character interpretations performed in India, Australia, and New Zealand as “radical revisionism.” One academic notes: “German-Jewish actor Bandmann’s Shylock both evoked the dramaturgical techniques of the British theatre in this role and pushed the limits of English conventions essentially to rework the enactment of Shylock for a modern Victorian audience for specific dramaturgical ends.” Other scholars, utilizing contemporary newspapers, have also addressed the tragedian’s protracted vitriolic defenses to criticisms of his productions and portrayals.
How did Bandmann regard his Jewish identity? His marriages were either in the Anglican church--which likely required a conversion--or in the courtroom; none of his wives were known to be Jewish. (Little is known of a purported first marriage.) He was buried according to the Elks’s ritual and eulogized by the University of Montana’s president. Given his father is buried in B’nai Abraham cemetery in Newark, New Jersey, Daniel might have been reared in a household that was observant to some degree. Was the impetus for his reinterpretation of Shylock related to his Jewish heritage or was it a purely artistic impulse? Bandmann is the only one who could tell us.