author
Frank Dumont
1848–1919
A lively figure in American popular entertainment, he spent decades on stage as a singer, writer, performer, and manager. He is often remembered as one of the last major names of the old minstrel era.
1 Audiobook
The Quiet Hotel: A Farcical Sketch in One Act
by Frank Dumont
About the author
Born in Utica, New York, on January 25, 1848, Frank Dumont built a long career in nineteenth-century American entertainment. He worked as a tenor singer, wrote sketches, songs, and plays, and became widely known as a minstrel show performer and manager.
Over the course of his career, he appeared with several companies before establishing Dumont's Minstrels in Philadelphia. He was closely associated with that city’s theater scene and remained active for many years, becoming a well-known late representative of a form of popular stage entertainment that had once been hugely successful in the United States.
Dumont died in Philadelphia on March 17, 1919. Because his career was so bound up with minstrelsy, his life is also tied to a performance tradition now understood as deeply racist, which makes him a notable but complicated figure in theater history.