ABSTRACT
A fellow manager once dubbed John A.McCaull “dynamite John.” It was an apt description of his explosive temperament. He was fearsomely energetic, impulsive to a fault, kindness personified to those he liked, and implacably hostile to anyone who crossed him. Perhaps the only time he found an adequate outlet for his combative nature was during the Civil War, when he rose to the rank of colonel in the Confederate Army. Before becoming embroiled in the exciting, insecure world of theatrical management, he had spent more than a decade practicing law in Baltimore, the city in which he had been raised after emigrating as a boy from his native Scotland. Just how he came to be bitten by the theatre bug was something of a mystery, but it probably stemmed from his work as legal adviser to Baltimore’s most famous theatrical identity, John T.Ford.
