# Rotten Tomatoes for Rotten Performers?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 2, 2008, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416 "2008-12-02T22:37:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2008, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/1 "2008-12-02T22:37:54Z")
Its a staple of stories and movies - but did audiences ever really throw tomatoes or vegetables or other items, at stage performances that were…below expectations???
If “Yes”, do they still anywhere?
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### Author:  [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2008, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/2 "2008-12-02T22:45:51Z")
I don’t see how it could be true. Would people actually carry rotten tomatoes with them to a show just in case it was bad? What if it wasn’t? Now you’re stuck sitting through a decent show with smelly tomatoes under your seat. Also, you’re presumably dressed up to go to a show. Are you really gonna lug around some rotten tomatoes all evening (or fresh ones for that matter?) Just seems like a whole lotta trouble 😛
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### Author:  [@ticker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ticker)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2008, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/3 "2008-12-02T23:56:34Z")
I always assumed it was based on crowds at Music Hall/Vaudeville. With a number of acts on the bill one was bound to stink and throwing stuff would be all part of the entertainment for a rowdy crowd.
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### Author:  [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2008, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/4 "2008-12-02T23:59:51Z")
I assumed it was from the era of travelling theater. Peasants would bring stuff with them to throw. I was also under the impression that it was originally thrown at the evil guy, not a bad actor.
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### Author:  [@Doug\_Bowe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_Bowe)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/5 "2008-12-03T00:12:13Z")
> [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#):
>
> I don’t see how it could be true. Would people actually carry rotten tomatoes with them to a show just in case it was bad? What if it wasn’t?
Well, if we use Mark Twain as an example…
I know, Huckleberry Finn was fiction. But remember when the two grifters, The Duke and the King put on a bad show to part the audience with their money?
The first night they got away with it. The next night the audience came loaded with ammo.
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### Author:  [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/6 "2008-12-03T00:14:20Z")
> [@Doug\_Bowe](#):
>
> Well, if we use Mark Twain as an example…
>
> I know, Huckleberry Finn was fiction. But remember when the two grifters, The Duke and the King put on a bad show to part the audience with their money?
> The first night they got away with it. The next night the audience came loaded with ammo.
Exactly! The NEXT night! As in, they knew what to expect and they were ready. They weren’t just hanging on to the rotten stuff that first night!
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### Author:  [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/7 "2008-12-03T03:03:44Z")
> [@UncleFred](#):
>
> Its a staple of stories and movies - but did audiences ever really throw tomatoes or vegetables or other items, at stage performances that were…below expectations???
There’s a story [here](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9D0DE1DD1538E033A2575BC2A9669D94629FD7CF&oref=slogin) (PDF) from the NY Times of 28 October, 1883.
An actor making his stage debut on Long Island experienced a minor setback in his budding career when the audience began to aerially distribute a fusillade of rotten tomatoes in his general direction.
Remind me never to play that theatre.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/8 "2008-12-03T03:36:46Z")
> [@Chez\_Guevara](#):
>
> There’s a story [here](http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9D0DE1DD1538E033A2575BC2A9669D94629FD7CF&oref=slogin) (PDF) from the NY Times of 28 October, 1883.
>
> An actor making his stage debut on Long Island experienced a minor setback in his budding career when the audience began to aerially distribute a fusillade of rotten tomatoes in his general direction.
>
> Remind me never to play that theatre.
On the other hand, if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. . .
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### Author:  [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/9 "2008-12-03T07:54:12Z")
> [@kunilou](#):
>
> On the other hand, if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. . .
True, but I wouldn’t be prepared to jeopardise my carefully nurtured sense of self-esteem.
The aspect of the story that strikes me the most is the accuracy of the audience:
> [@](#):
>
> As he lay upon the (trapeze) bar, with his face toward the audience, a large tomato thrown from the gallery struck him square between the eyes, and he fell to the stage floor just as several bad eggs dropped upon his head.
Of course I am unaware of the theatre’s design and configuration, but anyone who can hit a trapeze artiste between the eyes from the average gallery seat surely deserves our appreciation, if not our attendance.
When’s the next show?
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### Author:  [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2008, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rotten-tomatoes-for-rotten-performers/475416/10 "2008-12-03T08:34:35Z")
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, i highly recommend the historian Lawrence Levine’s book [Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America](http://www.amazon.com/Highbrow-Lowbrow-Emergence-Hierarchy-Civilization/dp/0674390776). Much of Levine’s fascinating work is devoted to tracing the changes in the behavior of audiences in America in the nineteenth century, and he spends plenty of time on the unruliness of theater audiences.
And it was not just at vaudeville and other “lowbrow” entertainment that audiences tended to be unruly. Levine’s first long chapter looks at the performance of Shakespeare plays in America, and discusses the way that early American audiences for these works did not treat the plays or the performances with the sort of deference that theater audiences give them in the twentieth century.
Here’s a description of one incident from Levine’s book:
> [@](#):
>
> English actors, who were _ipso facto_ suspected of unpatriotic and undemocratic leanings, had to tread with particular caution. Edmund Kean failed to do so in 1821 when he canceled his performance of _Richard III_ in Boston because only twenty people were in the audience. The next day’s papers denounced him for insulting and dishonoring the American people and suggested that he be taken “by the nose, and dragged…before the curtain to make his excuses for his conduct.” Four years later, when Kean returned to Boston, he attempted to make those excuses, but it was too late. The all-male audience that packed the theater and overflowed onto the streets allowed him neither to perform _Richard III_ nor to apologize for what he admitted were his “indiscretions.” A barrage of nuts, foodstuffs, and bottles of odorous drugs drove him weeping from the stage and the theater, after which the anti-Keanites in the pit and gallery turned on his supporters in the boxes and did grievous damage to the theater.
>
> p. 61
There was an incident in New York involving the English actor William Charles Macready, who had become involved in something of a professional battle with popular American actor Edwin Forrest. The American crowds took sides:
> [@](#):
>
> Macready’s performance, at the Astor Place Opera House, was never heard—he was silenced by a storm of boos and cries of “three groans for the codfish aristocracy,” which drowned out appeals for order from those in the boxes, and by an avalanche of eggs, apples, potatoes, lemons, and, ultimately, chairs hurled from the gallery, which forced him to leave the stage in the third act.
>
> p. 63
As you might glean from these snippets, Levine argues that audience unruliness was often an outlet for class conflict, with those in the cheap seats of the gallery and the pit often taking their feelings out not only on the actors, but on the wealthier folks in the boxes.
The book also contains tales of theater troupes being run out of towns by men with guns for poor performances or some other insult. Levine finishes by describing the taming of the audience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the decline of the sort of loud, participatory crowds that had characterized the earlier period.
It’s really a fascinating read.