BANDMANN, DANIEL E.

(1840-1905)

   Born in Cassel, Hesse, Germany, Bandmann came to New York and performed in the German-language theatre in the 1860s. Later he formed a company and barnstormed throughout the western United States, gaining a reputation as a pioneer. Lewis C. Strang described him in an essay on Julia Arthur (1899, 165) as "an eccentric German tragedian, who probably played Shakespeare in more outlandish places than any actor that ever lived." At the end of his life, he settled on a ranch near Missoula, Montana, where the university's players eventually honored his memory by establishing the annual Daniel E. Bandmann Achievement Award for Outstanding Success in All Phases of Theatre [awarded to one of the authors of this book in 1962]. Bandmann's memoir An Actor's Tour; or, 70,000 Miles with Shakespeare was published in 1886.