November
1907 stood out for several reasons in our chronicle of Brooklyn’s theatre. It
saw the Park Theatre stumble back to life with a hopeful new lease on life as a
vaudeville and movie house; it was announced that the original Montauk—most
recently a vaudeville theatre called the Imperial—would revert to the
legitimate once its historic move across Flatbush Extension was completed; it
was believed that a new theatre finally would be built in the borough’s
theatrically impoverished Greenpoint; and a neighborhood Italian theatre’s
existence was disclosed.
But
we should first observe that Brooklyn’s offerings were not notably exciting
this month, the most interesting being the following: a return visit of A
Millionaire’s Revenge, one of several plays quick to dramatize the Harry K.
Thaw-Evelyn Nesbit-Stanford White murder scandal; a baseball farce with music
called The Umpire; the visit of highly regarded “emotional” actress
Blanche Walsh as a hooker named Houston Street Moll in Clyde Fitch’s
melodramatic The Straight Road; and the return visit of Blanche
Bates in David Belasco’s huge hit, The Girl of the Golden West,
which she’d been playing continuously in New York and on the road for two
years.
Also
appealing were Virginia Harned in Anna Karenina, based on Leo
Tolstoy’s great romantic novel; future Western movie star Dustin Farnum—famed
for his portrayal of The Virginian—in his latest Western
melodrama, The Ranger, by Augustus Thomas, in which he played a
heroic Mexican border patrol officer; Edwin Booth’s nephew, Creston Clarke, in
a new play called The Power that Governs; Minnie Dupree in The
Road to Yesterday; Anna Held, again, in The Parisian Model;
and, among others, Francis Wilson in When Knights Were Bold,
mingling comedy with songs in a story reminiscent of A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Anna Karenina deserves a few words for Harned’s performance in this sumptuously
produced, highly dramatic, if technically flawed, adaptation by Thomas
Broadhurst of a French version of a play about a beautiful, high-class married
woman who falls for another man.
According
to the Eagle (November 13),
Virginia Harned has a trying role, one in which she is called upon
to portray almost every feminine emotion, and which requires physical and vocal
strength. From the gracious, fresh and unselfish young wife who vents all her
heart yearnings and love upon her boy, to the woman gradually awakening to the
depths of an all-absorbing and overpowering love, a love that her husband could
not grasp because of his selfish cold nature, she is called upon to run the
gamut of deep passion, despair and desolation and the realization of utter ruin.
It is a powerful delineation a woman’s soul, one that pulses with feeling,
surges and sweeps with emotion and that reaches a commanding height in the
climaxes.
And,
of a male star, the Eagle reported (November 19),
Mr. Farnum is virile, always manly and gives the impression of
restrained and hidden power. But it would be better for him to seek a different
role if he wants his art to grow and to expand, for to the keen observer there
is noticeable in his work a little mannerism in his efforts to give more color
and a deeper touch to his role of a typical plainsman of the heroic type. He is
too good a player to be spoiled by becoming a one-part actor.
Antonio
Majori’s Royal Italian Theatre stock company was active but no longer getting
the attention it drew a month earlier, when it was new; it advertised only four
performances of Macbeth over a two-week stretch but nothing
else was noted in the English-language press. Interestingly, another Italian
theatre also was doing plays in Brooklyn at the time, but we learn this only
because of something newsworthy that happened there.
It
was reported in the Citizen (November 19) that a man was
killed and another had an eye shot out in front of the Marietto Theatre at 102
Union Street, an area where we know of earlier Italian theatres operating about
a decade earlier. The crime was described as the work of the Black Hand Society
in retribution for the victims’ not paying the extortion money they owed the
gangsters. At least twenty shots were fired, the audience panicked, the street
right outside the doors was stained with blood, and it was thought there were
other wounded spectators who fled before the cops arrived.
Regarding
the business side of Brooklyn theatre, the big story was the taking over of the
Park Theatre for use as a vaudeville house. Recently called by such names as
the Shubert-Park and simply the Shubert, it was Brooklyn’s oldest extant theatre,
built across the street from what was now Borough Hall, one of the town’s most
trafficked areas. But, after three failing weeks of vaudeville in September,
presented by the Shuberts, who also used it to present Blanche Bates in The
Girl of the Golden West for a week, it was leased to Siegmund Lubin,
who offered a policy of “continuous performance,” and changed the name to
Lubin’s Theatre, although it was also called Lubin’s Park Theatre.
Lubin,
a Jewish immigrant from Prussia, who became an optometrist, contributed to the
development of early movie camera lenses; he is now known as one of the most
important and prolific early movie producers and distributors. He charged a
dime for all afternoon seats until 6:30 p.m. and raised this to 20 and 30 cents
for after that. The shows, running from noon to 10 p.m., provided moving
pictures supplemented by songs, and cheap vaudeville acts. Movies were its main
attraction, as they were at Lubin theatres located in other cities, including
Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, and Baltimore.
A
complete show lasted about an hour and a half before being repeated, and you
could stay in your seat from show to show, entering whenever you wished. (Such
would become standard for neighborhood movie theatres once they began to
proliferate.) Its first show included two films, one act of illustrated songs,
and four vaudeville specialties, including a “musical comedian,” a pair of
“eccentric comedians,” a couple of “grotesque comedians,” and, simply, a
“comedian.”
The
second week advertised a spectacle called “Doomsday,” similar to other such
events seen in Brooklyn during recent summers, like “The Johnstown Flood.” It
was promised, said the Eagle (November 10), that the
performances will be “polite and refined,” with “nothing . . . presented that
will offend the most fastidious. It is a place for women, children and
men.”
By November 25, Lubin was no longer around and the Park was again the Shubert in a game of musical names. The occupant was the Hal Clarendon Stock Company, which had been at the Gotham in May and the Bergen Beach Casino in the summer. They opened with The Love Route but two weeks later were routed after an incident described in next month's entry.
Another
once popular Brooklyn venue whose fate had been rocky the past few years, the “old”
Montauk, so called when the “new” Montauk opened nearby, and which was
presently called the Imperial, had been in limbo until it was decided to move
it across the newly constructed Flatbush Extension leading to the Manhattan
Bridge, still being built.
Now,
local theatre entrepreneur Percy G. Williams announced in the Eagle (November 3) that it had been
acquired by the United Booking Office, controllers of thirty theatres in as
many cities, which would use it for touring legitimate shows, although their
main attractions were in vaudeville. Leading syndicate foe David Belasco was
willing to allow his shows to be handled by United Booking, so other
independents were also expected to follow suit. The theatre, as mentioned in
the previous entry, would open in September 1908 as the Crescent.
Finally,
Greenpoint, contiguous with Williamsburg, had made several unsuccessful stabs
at maintaining a theatre, all of them rapid flops, but something more permanent
now seemed in the offing as per a piece in the Daily Times (November
23) that even offered architectural renderings and detailed descriptions. The
site—the same as that mentioned in earlier entries—was the southwest corner of
Manhattan Avenue and Calyer Street, the proprietor was Percy G. Williams, and
its programming would be “refined vaudeville.” Its name would be the Greenpoint
Theatre, W.H. McElfatrick, leading theatrical architect, designed it, and it
would seat 2,000.
November 4-9. 1907
Bijou: The Ninety and Nine, with Bayone Whipple
Blaney’s Amphion: The Rocky Mountain Express
Broadway: The Spring Chicken, with Richard Carle
Columbia: A Millionaire’s Revenge
Folly: At Yale, with Leila Dell Lennon
Majestic: The Umpire, with Joseph Whitehead
Montauk: The Straight Road, with Blanche Walsh
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Sag Harbor
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Ruled Off the Turf
Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) ?
Shubert: The Girl of the Golden West, with Blanche Bates
Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham
November 11-16, 1907
Bijou: The Gambler of the West
Blaney’s Amphion: The Cowboy and the Squaw
Broadway: Mary’s Lamb, with Harry Conor
Columbia: The Four Corners of the Earth
Folly: The Ninety and Nine, with Bayone Whipple
Majestic: King Casey, with Johnny and Emma Ray
Montauk: Anna Karenina, with Virginia Harned
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Siberia
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock
Company) A Woman’s Struggle
Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) Macbeth (November 15, 16)
Shubert: temporarily closed
Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty,
Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham, Lubin's Park
November 18-23. 1907
Bijou: Around the Clock
Blaney’s Amphion: Custer’s Last Fight
Broadway: The Ranger, with Dustin Farnum, Mary Boland
Columbia: A Midnight Escape
Folly: Patsy in Politics, with Billy B. Van
Majestic: The Power that Governs, with Creston Clarke
Montauk: The Road to Yesterday, with Minnie Dupree
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) The
Prodigal Son
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) By Right of Sword
Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) Macbeth (November 19, 20)
Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty,
Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham, Lubin’s Park
November 25-30, 1907
Bijou: Convict 999
Blaney’s Amphion: Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers
Broadway: The Parisian Model, with Anna Held
Columbia: The Life of an Actress, with Leila Dell
Lennon
Folly: King Casey, with Johnny and Emma Ray
Majestic: The Old Homestead
Montauk: When Knights Were Bold, with Francis Wilson
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Mistress
Nell
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) At the World’s Mercy
Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) ?
Shubert Theatre: (Clarendon Stock Company) The Love Route
Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty,
Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham. Lubin's Park
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