“I think it's a really interesting reflection of history that's happened and history that's happening right now,” says Mary Alice Carnes, the director of Man of the People. The new play, by Delores J. Diaz, chronicles the true but larger-than-life story of John R. Brinkley, the medical charlatan who rose to prominence in the 1920s.
“He claimed to have a cure for impotence using goat gland transplants,” Carnes explains, “and his nemesis, Morris Fishbein with the American Medical Association, pushes back.”
“He's a fascinating hustler of a character,” says actor Tom Chamberlain, who plays Brinkley. “He started hustling when he was 17 years old, doing odd jobs. But he did learn some legitimate skills. He was a telegraph operator and he worked for Western Union, but apparently he didn't get paid enough. He took several jobs, still didn't feel like he was making enough money, and all the time in the back of his mind wanted to be an eclectic doctor like his father was. So he came from that tradition of patent medicine, of snake oil, basically.”
“But what's a reflection, I think, for current times is he takes advantage of emerging radio,” Carnes says, “and radio is a technology that he uses to advertise his goat gland transplants to everyone, and that's where the AMA comes in. They don't think that he should be advertising medicine on the radio and it's medicine that they don't think works. [But] he's very successful at it and he's charming. He invests in the communities where he lives in Kansas and Arkansas and then eventually Del Rio, Texas. A lot of it is about how people can believe in this bogus cure? How do they believe in him? And they just want to believe.”
The man leading the crusade against Brinkley and his bogus claims was Dr. Morris Fishbein, played in Man of the People by Chuck Winkler. “If Brinkley is the man of the people, I am the man for the people,” Winkler says of his character. “I am working my best to keep everyone safe and to follow science and, follow your thoughts and intellect. I am a doctor, an actual doctor, and I started the [Journal of the] American Medical Association… and work day and night to stop what Brinkley is doing.”
“And he wasn't just a con man,” Chamberlain says of Brinkley. “He did things that made people think he really did care about them. In the 1918 pandemic, the flu pandemic, he was the only practitioner in Milford [Kansas] that would sit with patients and nurse them back to health. So he got a lot of credit for being brave enough to go in there and possibly get the disease himself and bring these people back to health. He also built the sewage system for Milford. He put in sidewalks. He really was a pillar of the community. So he's an interesting mixed bag, right? A typical American character, good and bad and avarice and he really is a man of the people. So, very interesting guy.”
'Man of the People' runs January 9 - 24 at Trinity Street Playhouse'
