Notable People
When you're in the papes, you're famous!
Kid Blink (Louis Ballatt)
One of the two newsies inspiring the character of Jack Kelly, Kid Blink was one of the first newsies' union leaders as well as the original leader of the 1899 strike. He got his name due to his blindness in one eye (which he covered with an eye patch). The young teen (many people have said he looked to be about thirteen years old during the strike) gave many speeches throughout the strike, and is one of the most quoted newsies in the newspapers. Kid Blink was featured as a secondary character in the Newsies movie, but is not in the musical at all.
Morris Cohen
Another newsies’ union leader, Morris Cohen was a speedy seller and a confident leader. He sold about 300 copies of the World per day in City Hall Park. He was one of the original organizers of the strike and also helped to lead the rally at New Irving Hall. After David Simons was accused of being bribed by the newspapers, Cohen was elected the new union president. In Newsies, Jack Kelly is based on both Kid Blink and Morris Cohen.
David Simons (pictured above)
Born on Ludlow Street, David Simons sold papers from the age of eight while also attending school. By the time the strike started, Simons was twenty-one years old, and quickly became another prominent figure in the rebellion. He was elected president of the union due to his ability to inspire others, but the newsies grew skeptical of him and Kid Blink after rumors spread of the pair being bought out by the newspapers. When the newsies discovered Simons selling papers during the strike, they mobbed him and his friends and destroyed 6,000 newspapers. Morris Cohen replaced him as union president. David Simons inspired the character of Davey in the show.
Joseph Pulitzer (pictured above)
Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), owner and publisher of the New York World was born in Hungary in 1847. Pulitzer immigrated to the United States at 17 years old to join the Union Army, and by the end of the Civil War, he traveled from New York City to St. Louis to find a job. After three years of working as a fireman, dockworker, waiter, and gravedigger, Pulitzer was offered a job writing for the Westliche Post, a German newspaper. He was so successful that he was named managing editor and eventually purchased the St. Louis Dispatch, one of the major newspapers in the city. Pulitzer then purchased the New York World in 1883 and turned the failing paper into one of the most widely read publications in the city. Although Pulitzer was not physically present during the newsies’ strike in 1899 (due to poor health, he lived in Maine and ran his paper from there), his character in Newsies is an antagonist who represents the excesses of capitalism. Pulitzer married American Kate Davis in 1878, and by the time of the strike, he had become the rather distant father of seven children – the oldest of which, Ralph, took over the World in 1911 upon his father’s death at age 64. As part of his legacy, Pulitzer left enough money to Columbia University to start a journalism school. The Pulitzer Prize, an award for excellence in journalism, literature, and music, was named in his honor.
Don Seitz
Don Seitz (1862-1935) journalist and author, worked for several publications over the course of his lifetime. After college, he started his career at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle where he worked from 1889 until 1891, first as the Albany correspondent and then as its city editor. After that, he was an assistant publisher of the New York Recorder before joining the New York World. He held a number of positions, including managing editor of the Brooklyn World and eventually business manager of the New York World, a position he held from 1898 until 1923. Seitz sent Pulitzer daily reports on all topics. During the 1899 strike, Seitz was managing the newspaper’s relationship with the newsies on the ground, and his letters to Pulitzer convey the newspaper’s side of the story.
William Randolph Hearst (pictured above)
William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), owner and publisher of the New York Journal, was born into a wealthy family in San Francisco. After attending Harvard University, Hearst became the manager of a paper his father owned, the San Francisco Examiner. At the Examiner, he published stories by some of the best writers of the time, including Mark Twain and Jack London. In 1895, he decided to purchase the New York Morning Journal, becoming a fierce competitor for Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World. Hearst became so successful in the newspaper that at the peak of his career, he owned over 20 newspapers across the U.S. Hearst died at the age of 88 in 1951. Although Hearst is not a character in Newsies, his son makes a cameo appearance.
Theodore Roosevelt (pictured above)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 33rd governor of New York, previously served as a New York State Assembly member, U.S. Civil Service commissioner, president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners, and assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy. As the leader of the “Rough Riders” (the nickname of a small but notable volunteer cavalry regiment that fought in Cuba) during the Spanish-American War in 1898, Roosevelt became a national hero and was elected governor of New York later that year. As governor, he improved labor laws, outlawed racial segregation in New York public schools, and advanced park and forestry programs. Although Roosevelt and Pulitzer were often on opposite political sides, their interaction over the strike in Newsies is fictional. However, some of Roosevelt’s lines in Newsies are directly adapted from real things he said, such as “Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground,” and “There’s only one thing worse than a hard heart, and that’s a soft head.” In 1900, Roosevelt became vice president under William McKinley and assumed the presidency after McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Roosevelt was reelected as the Republican nominee three years later.
Robert Van Wyck (pictured above)
Robert Van Wyck (1849-1918), 91st mayor of New York, began his public career as a judge and later rose to chief justice of the City Court of New York, working closely with Tammany Hall, the city’s powerful Democratic Party political machine. In 1898, he became mayor of New York, and the first to preside over the newly incorporated five boroughs. Mayor Van Wyck also awarded the city’s first subway contract, valued at $35 million. In 1900, he was implicated in an Ice Trust scandal by owning a large sum of shares in the American Ice Company before it planned to double the price of ice from 30 to 60 cents per 100 pounds. The American Ice Company was he sole ice provider for the city, and therefore an illegal monopoly. An investigation was conducted by Governor Roosevelt. Although the mayor was found to be not guilty, the scandal cost him the election in 1901. Van Wyck continued to work as a lawyer and in 1906 moved to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1918.
Nellie Bly (pictured above)
Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was the pen name of journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. In a time when female reporters did not cover much beyond the society pages, Bly made a name for herself as a legitimate journalist. She reported on her record-breaking trip around the world and even faked a mental illness to report on the experience of a patient in a mental institution. Newsies’s Katherine Plumber was inspired by Bly.
Jacob Riis (pictured above)
Jacob Riis (1849-1914), photojournalist, was born in Denmark in 1849 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1870. He began work as a police reporter for the New York Tribune in 1877 and soon after was employed as a photojournalist for the New York Evening Sun. Sometimes referred to as one of the fathers of photography, Riis published a photo-account of poverty in the city, How the Other Half Lives, in 1890. His work later caught the eye of President Theodore Roosevelt, and the two became lifelong friends. Riis spent much of his professional life documenting impoverished children and laborers in the nation’s urban centers. Riis’s work was an inspiration for Jack’s illustrations in Newsies of the horrors of The Refuge which lead to its closure and the arrest of its warden, Snyder.
Aida Overton Walker (pictured above)
Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), performer, was one of the premiere African-American artists at the turn of the 20th century, known for her original dance routines and refusal to conform to the stereotype of traditional black female performers. Overton had a successful career as a star of the Bowery and beyond. She married fellow performer George Walker in 1898, and the pair became one of the most revered African-American couples on the stage. Before her death in 1914, Walker worked hard to aid young black women striving to make a name for themselves. She organized benefits in honor of the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls and played an active role in the development of young Black women as stage performers. The Newsies character of Medda Larkin was reconceived between the Paper Mill and Broadway productions, with Walker serving as new inspiration.
Mother Jones (pictured above)
Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones, 1837-1930), a social reformer in support of labor rights, visited the Kensington Textile Mills near Philadelphia in 1903 and was horrified when she saw what had happened to the child workers. Most of them were only 9 or 10 years old and many had lost fingers or crushed bones from working with dangerous machines. Mother Jones organized the children and took them on a cross-country “Children’s Crusade” that led them to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt. Although the president refused to see them, Mother Jones brought the issue of child labor to a much wider audience. In Newsies, Katherine’s article for the Newsies Banner is called “The Children’s Crusade” in honor of Mother Jones.