Background Robert Edeson was determined to appear only in American dramas, as "a vital factor". It reportedly took deMille two years to complete the play. It was presented to Harris and Edeson at Boston in September 1904, at which time the title
Strongheart was chosen, over a suggested alternative of
Classmates. Edeson said "I think it will be the first time that an educated Indian will be the hero of a play". DeMille made clear in an interview that he never contemplated letting the romance between Strongheart and Dorothy Nelson go beyond verbal expressions of love. He couldn't countenance a marriage of the two characters, and insisted other dramatists he consulted agreed with the ending. DeMille also emphasized there was no embrace between Strongheart and Dorothy in the play. Another report of the same interview quoted deMille as saying: "No matter how strongly an American's reason tells him that the colored man or the Indian in any particular case is deserving of all happiness, even to the winning of the white woman he loves, no one of us is quite willing that the white woman should be our sister".
Strongheart came out at a time when college football was growing popular with the general public, and the
Native American players of
Carlisle were achieving surprising results against much larger and far wealthier schools. Edeson lamented to
Burns Mantle that he and Harris had
Strongheart in hand for two years, but when finally it was stage ready, "along came
George Ade with
The College Widow and another football scene". Rehearsals for the production were held in St. Louis during Christmas week 1904. During this time, producer Henry B. Harris came down with malaria, and eventually had to be sent back to New York to recover.
Cast Tryouts The play's first tryout occurred at the Metropolitan Theatre in
St. Paul, Minnesota on December 29, 1904. It was the fourteenth anniversary of the opening of this venue, and a rare production debut for this city. A local reviewer reported the play was "strong" and received enthusiastically by the large audience. However, they questioned the ending, saying the average tribal member doesn't care whether their chief has a wife or not, and certainly not what color she is. They conclude: "Where is the harm in the marriage of a white girl to an Indian when that Indian is educated, refined, and by far a better and stronger man than any of his white associates?" Another critic complained of the lack of sympathetic appeal for Strongheart in Edeson's interpretation, suggesting the easygoing banter of the other football players rendered him stodgy and humorless by comparison, a "man who had learned the English language from a schoolmaster rather than his mother". This same critic reinforced their view with a second column two days later, and went on in a more virulent manner: "There is something repellent in the spectacle of a full-blooded American Indian declaring his love for a white girl. You can scarcely applaud her for consenting to marry him, though you can readily sympathize with his love for her." And again, "There is something repulsive in the union of a white woman and a black man. The Indian, to be sure, is not a negro, but neither is he a Caucasian". From St. Paul, the company moved to the Metropolitan Theater in Minneapolis, where they first presented an older work, ''Ranson's Folly
. Strongheart
was performed in Minneapolis starting January 5, 1905. A reviewer for The Minneapolis Star Tribune thought Robert Edeson was growing into stardom with this role, and was enthusiastic about Edmund Breese as Coach Buckley, a type of character new to the stage. However, although they said Dallas Tyler as Dorothy Nelson was "a pleasing personality", they also labelled her as "colorless" and "conventional". After the tryouts in Minnesota finished, the production went back to New York. They rehearsed at the Hudson Theatre during the daytime, as Ethel Barrymore was playing in Sunday
during the evenings. Strongheart'' would premiere at that venue after her engagement closed on January 28, 1905.
Broadway premiere and reception Strongheart had its Broadway premiere at the
Hudson Theatre on January 30, 1905. Reviews acknowledged the racial theme but most avoided expressing opinions about it. Instead, they concentrated on the college sports environment of the play, and reported the enthusiastic reception of the first night audience. Both deMille and Edeson were required to give curtain speeches. One critic dismissed the racial dilemma by citing the precedent of
James Fenimore Cooper's Uncas in
The Last of the Mohicans.
The Evening World critic thought the play's depiction of college students and football much closer to real life than that of
George Ade's
The College Widow. But they also thought the character of Strongheart as a Columbia college student "overdrawn" and "improbable". The reviewer for
The Sun was an exception who focused on the race theme in the play. They identified racial prejudice as an inherent trait of "every tribe of human beings", and said the "play has not a happy ending but one that is true". During the final week of its Broadway engagement, four new actors who would accompany the subsequent tour were brought into the cast. These were
Marie Boland in the role of Dorothy Nelson,
Broadway closing The production closed its first Broadway run on March 25, 1905, at the Hudson Theatre. It immediately headed for Boston to start touring on March 27, 1905, at the
Park Theatre there. and a
West End premiere at the
Aldwych Theatre in May 1907. ==Adaptations==