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| Gayety Theatre, at the intersection of Broadway and Throop Avenue. |
By
Samuel L. Leiter
For further background on Brooklyn’s
theatre history please see my book, Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater in
the City of Churches (McFarland: 2024) and my blog, “Annals of the Brooklyn Stage.” The
latter is a week by week description of theatre activity in Brooklyn;
obviously, it will expand rather slowly because so much must be described and
the present blog will be occupying my attention until live theatre in Brooklyn
begins to fade over the early decades of the 20th century,
dying out by the 1930s.
1901: DECEMBER
With a few exceptions, Brooklyn’s theatre offerings looked
like time was standing still. The same old warhorses kept being repeated, not
just by the stock companies (two of which did Hazel Kirke in the same
week), but by the combination houses, where rival productions of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, one expensive, one ordinary, also competed in the same week. There
were return visits of the same old, same old chestnuts, sometimes with the
stars who’d been touring in them for years, like The Old Homestead, with
Denman Thompson, and sometimes not, as with Rip Van Winkle, revived by
Corse Payton’s stock company, but without its perennial star, Joseph Jefferson.
A few big names came in more recent historical costume
dramas, like Viola Allen in When Knighthood Was in Flower, William
Faversham in A Royal Rival, and E.H. Sothern in If I Were King, each
play in its Brooklyn bow, but there also was Lewis Morrison, dragging his tired
Faust behind him year in and year out. And how many more times could
farces like A Hot Old Time, with Johnny and Emma Ray, visiting in its
fifth incarnation, continue to draw Brooklyn audiences before profits
disappeared?
Audiences never seemed to tire of East Lynne, as the
results of a questionnaire filled out by Spooner Stock Company audiences revealed;
this play was number one of their choices for revival, largely, it was thought,
because they loved the performance of Edna May Spooner as Lady Isabel and Mme.
Vine. A week later, this perpetual weepy was at Payton’s, with the company’s
leading lady, Etta Reed, jerking tears in the double role. The current interest
in the play, it appears, came from a recent production by Mrs. Minnie Maddern
Fiske, the era’s leading actress, of The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch. which
many in the press deemed a flimsy adaptation by Mrs. Burton Harrison of the novel by Mrs. Henry Woods.
It was a claim Mrs. Harrison denied, saying her inspiration was Sardou’s Seraphine.
Even that old melodramatic standby, Under the Gaslight was
resuscitated so good old, one-armed Snorkey could be tied to the railroad
tracks as the train came barreling toward him.
Shakespeare in Brooklyn had been rare of late, so it was a pleasure to see a visit from As You Like It, starring Henrietta Crosman, now a recognized star but only a few years previously leading lady of the soon-to-be defunct Park Theatre stock company (preceding the Spooners at that venerable establishment).
Various promotional ideas had been tried to attract
audiences over the years. This month saw a puzzle contest in which patrons of
Payton’s Theatre were challenged to name all 15 plays shown on a puzzle, each
having been seen over the troupe’s past two seasons in Brooklyn. The first
gentleman and lady to solve the puzzle would win a 10-dollar gold piece each,
while the second-prize winner would get a five-dollar gold piece. At the Criterion,
audiences took part in a drawing, the results to be announced on Saturday.
It was common practice for boxing champions--like James J. Corbett, James J. Jeffries, and Bob Fitzsimmons--to turn to the
stage after a career in the ring, provided they weren’t punch-drunk. Some
were able to get by for several years based on their manly presence and respect
for their boxing achievements. Terry McGovern, called by his managers “the
bantam, feather and lightweight champion of the world,” was one. A popular Brooklyn boy, he often appeared in Brooklyn, including this month, when he
acted in The Road to Ruin at the Bijou.
Brooklyn theatre managers remained a restless breed, this
month’s big shift in policy represented by that old Williamsburg standby, the
Novelty (following many other names), now renamed Blaney’s Theatre, after
Charles E. Blaney, who became producing manager, booking shows but leaving the
theatre’s operations to a resident manager. Proprietor Percy Williams’s vaudeville
bills, having struggled to climb into the black in the Eastern District, would be
replaced by “heavy melodrama,” beginning with The Country Circus, into
whose plot all the trappings of a circus performance were squeezed. Cheap seats
at 10, 20, and 30 cents remained the order of the day, and the performers would
raise the number of Brooklyn stock companies back to its previous high of six. The
leading man was Sidney Toler, later famous as one of Hollywood’s Charlie Chans.
It was also reported on December 7 that the Spooner Stock
Company would depart from the Park Theatre and move into the Bijou in the fall
of 1902, after their lease ran out on August 31. Further, although this blog
does not discriminate between vaudeville and burlesque houses, such venues did
stress one or the other form of nonlegit entertainment; thus, it can be
announced that the Eastern District’s failure to support vaudeville (also still
called variety) would mean that the Gayety, owned by Hyde & Behman, would
shift from vaudeville to burlesque.
Then, noticing that the Criterion had nothing booked for New
Year’s week (December 30-January 4), I discovered from a December 28 article that
Corse Payton, whose Williamsburg stock company was a moneymaker, had purchased it
and planned to open it with yet another stock company in February, calling it Payton’s
Fulton Street Theatre, where it would continue his low-priced admissions of
10-20-30. A day later, another article denied the actual purchase, saying
Payton was in deliberations regarding taking over the lease. A spokesman for
Payton declared, “We certainly believe that Brooklyn, a city of a million and a
half inhabitants, will support two Payton stock companies, especially in
playhouses so far removed from each other as the Criterion and Payton’s.” I
look forward to learning the outcome, don’t you?
Finally, I’ve avoided mentioning in earlier posts that
several stock companies supplemented their earnings by scheduling Sunday evening
concerts, sometimes called “sacred concerts” to evade the blue laws that
forbade Sunday theatrical entertainments. This kind of thing had been going on
for several years, even though the “concerts” were little more than vaudeville
acts. In December, however, a small but determined group of pious patrons at
Payton’s announced that, if such affairs were not terminated, their attendance
at the regular performances would be. Consequently, actor-manager Corse Payton
agreed to drop the practice. New York’s blue laws would not be abandoned until
1940.
1.
December 2-7, 1901
Amphion: The Old Homestead, with Denman Thompson
Bijou: A Ragged Hero
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Hazel Kirke
Criterion: Two Irish Hearts, with Kitty Coleman
Folly: The County Fair, with Neil Burgess
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) Hazel Kirke
Grand Opera House: Faust, with Lewis Morrison
Montauk: In the Palace of the King, with Viola Allen
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) The Deacon’s Daughter
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) The Wife
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Kit, the
Arkansas Traveler
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Novelty, Paula’s Musee, Orpheum, Gayety, Unique
2.
December 9-14, 1901
Amphion: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with Edward Harrigan and
William A. Brady’s company
Bijou: The Secret Dispatch
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Cumberland ‘61
Criterion: The Flip Mr. Flop
Folly: Faust, with Lewis Morrison
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) Under the Gaslight
Grand Opera House: The Old Homestead, with Denman
Thompson
Montauk: A Royal Rival, with William Faversham
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) East Lynne
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Rip Van Winkle
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Theatre Company) The Wheel of
Fortune
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde &
Behman’s, Star, Novelty, Unique, Gayety, Paula’s Musee, Orpheum
3.
December 16-21, 1901
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Amphion: Closed temporarily
Bijou: The Road to Ruin, with Terry McGovern
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Cleopatra
Criterion: Down on the Farm
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) An Old Colony Girl
Grand Opera House: The Girl from Paris
Montauk: If I Were King, with E.H. Sothern
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) Too Much Johnson
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) East Lynne
Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Old Money Bags
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Novelty (closed in preparation of changing from vaudeville to melodrama), Unique, Gayety, Paula’s Musee, Orpheum
4.
December 23-28, 1901
Amphion: Lovers’ Lane
Bijou: Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers
Blaney’s: (previously, the Novelty, now shifting from
vaudeville to “heavy melodrama”)
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Aristocracy
Criterion: The House That Jack Built
Folly: Tom Moore, with Andrew Mack
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Battle for Life; or,
In Prison Bars
Grand Opera House: The County Fair, with Neil Burgess
Montauk: The Second in Command, with John Drew
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) The Girl from Texas
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) A Midnight Bell
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Unique,
Gayety, Paula’s Musee, Orpheum
5.
December 30-January 4, 1901
Amphion: The Burgomaster
Bijou: At Cripple
Creek
Brooklyn Academy of Music: As You Like It, Mistress
Nell, with Henrietta Crosman
Blaney’s: Only a Shop Girl
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Around the World in Eighty
Days
Criterion:
Folly: Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) Russian Serfs
Grand Opera House: Tom Moore, with Andrew Mack
Montauk: Liberty Belles
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) Little Lord Fauntleroy
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) The Charity Ball
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Queen of
Chinatown
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Unique,
Gayety, Paula’s Musee, Orpheum
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