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Fanny Kemble: Pierce Butler
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Jane Seymour stars in this made-for-cable biographical drama as Fanny Kemble, a popular British stage actress of the 19th Century who, at the height of her career, quit acting to marry Pierce Butler, a successful planter in the American South. Kemble was deeply disturbed by the treatment of slaves on her husband's plantation, which she soon discovered was par for the course in the South at that time. Eventually, her disgust led her to leave her husband, become an outspoken activist for abolition, and write a book about slavery in America -- Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, which caused a scandal in her native England and led to British support of the Union during the Civil War. Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble ... stars Keith Carradine and James Keach. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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Based on the journals Fanny Kemble wrote throughout her life, Unbound engagingly dramatizes her experience of the theater world of a bygone era and the cataclysmic forces that would forever change Antebellum America. After wowing audiences in London and New York with her Shakespearean performances, Fanny surrenders to that ultimate entrapment called romantic love. She marries a gentle Philadelphian aristocrat, Pierce Butler (Austin Jones), and insists on following him to his place of business, the family rice plantation on Butler’s Island, Georgia. There, Fanny learns about the true source of their wealth and the despicable realities of American slavery.
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Fanny Kemble (Frances Anne Kemble), 1809–93, elder daughter of Charles Kemble, made her debut as Juliet in 1829 under her father’s management at Covent Garden. Her success was immediate, and her stature as an actress grew in both comedy and tragedy. She was the original Julia in The Hunchback, written for her by Sheridan Knowles. She scored a great success when she made a two-year tour of the United States with her father. In 1834 she married Pierce Butler, a wealthy Philadelphian with rice and cotton plantations in Georgia, where she lived for a time and where she formed a lasting antipathy to slavery. During the Civil War she was in England, writing against slavery for the London Times.
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Fanny Kemble was a hugely successful actress from a major theatrical family; her father was Charles Kemble and her aunt, Sarah Siddons. Following a string of London hits she travelled to America, touring with her father. There she married a rich American planter, Pierce Butler, in 1834. Visiting his estates in Georgia, she was appalled to discover that the source of his wealth was slavery and she tried to alleviate some of the worst suffering she found there. The marriage was clearly doomed and they finally divorced in 1848-9. With the outbreak of the American Civil War, her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-9 was published in 1863 by abolitionists, detailing the horrors she had witnessed.
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Tired of touring the provinces, British stage legend Fanny Kemble (Jane Seymour) accepts the proposal of Pierce Butler (Keith Carradine), a dashing American plantation owner. Ingenuous Fanny doesn't mind abandoning her career but balks at betraying her principles. Unfortunately, gallant Pierce has lied about freeing his slaves. When they settle in Georgia in 1846, headstrong Fanny crosses Pierce by improving the servants' medical treatment. read more
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In 1832 the famous English tragedian Charles Kemble and his beautiful actress-daughter Fanny arrived in the United States on an acting tour. They were an immediate success, playing in theaters from New York to New Orleans until her sudden retirement from the stage in 1834 shortly after marrying Pierce Butler of Germantown, Pennsylvania, the owner of a large plantation in Georgia. In May 1835, she published her two volume sprightly account of her tour, commenting on the customs she had observed and on the people she encountered, among whom were President Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Noah Webster, Washington Irving, John Howard Payne, Catherine Maria Sedgwick and members of such New York families as the Hallacks, Hoffmans, Hosacks and Hones. To keep peace with her domineering husband, from whom she was later divorced, most proper names were deleted from the printed text. Around 1860 she annotated this copy with names, notes on the people she met, and comments on her unhappy marriage; the diary was given by Fanny Kemble to her devoted friend Charles B. Sedgwick, and his daughter donated it to the Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum in 1926.
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Pierce Butler