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| Cecil Spooner, one of the sister-leading ladies of the Spooner Stock Company. |
By
Samuel L. Leiter
For comprehensive background on
Brooklyn’s pre-20th-century 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.
The entries in this blog began
as annual ones, for 1898 and 1899. Because of the large amount of memory used,
which made editing them problematic, subsequent entries were shortened so they
covered only several months at a time, but these too needed to be shortened.
Thus, beginning with 1901: September, all entries cover a single month.
The quickest way to find any of these entries is probably to click on the
following link, where links to everything prior to its date are provided: 1901: DECEMBER
For
April offered a full plate of entertaining,
if not especially memorable, theatre, with a seasoning of a dozen or so first
and second-class stars helping to add some tang. These included Mary Mannering,
Grace George (finishing her two-week engagement at a second theatre), Denman
Thompson (forever performing his The Old Homestead), Julia Marlowe (in When
Knighthood Was in Flower, yet another richly costumed romantic melodrama),
Rose Melville, Agnes Herndon, Johnny and Emma Ray, the Rogers Brothers, and the
Four Cohans, led by George M. Most, like Thompson, were in plays they’d brought
to Brooklyn multiple times, but that still seemed to generate audience
attendance. The season was nearing its end, apparent when the Columbia turned
its stage over to a light opera company to get through May.
An interesting development was the need
for stock companies all around the country to generate new plays, a situation created
by the expansion of the Theatrical Syndicate’s control over theatres and productions.
especially in a town where five of them competed for patrons. The Eagle reported
on April 13, 1902:
The stock
companies are now using plays produced two years ago by the high priced houses
and there are not half enough of these to keep the stock companies supplied. A
stock company must have thirty or forty plays a season to keep it going on the
present system. Brooklyn, which has five, none of which cares to give a play
which any of its rivals has acted, if such repetitions can be avoided, calls
for more new material than is offered on Broadway in three years. Of course if
a stock company produces a new play and the play makes a hit, it can be used
for three or four weeks at different parts of the season and held over for
emergencies in future seasons.
Brooklyn’s leading stock
actor-manager, Corse Payton, introduced a new play the previous season, The Belle
of Richmond, by his then leading man, Sidney Toler (of later Charlie Chan
fame), and this month he premiered Eagle Tavern by his press agent, a New
England comedy by Mrs. Gertrude Andrews. Featuring a minstrel company as part
of its plot, it hit the right notes and gained appreciation from local critics
and audiences.
So effective did the Eagle critic
find Eagle Tavern, despite its obvious flaws, that he continued
his advocacy for new plays to be written for the stock companies before being
submitted to the “high priced” managements. On April 20, he noted how risky new
play production on Broadway was when costs could be as much as $5,000 to $8,000
for a quality production (he pooh-poohed the even higher costs some managers
talked about), while the money needed for a new play by a stock company was so
much less. “The manager paints his own scenery and provides settings for the
plays which he hires on royalty. The new play will demand little if any more outlay,
while the unknown author will accept far less as royalty on the first week than
the manager would have to pay for a play recently acted at “high prices.”
A successful play then allows for
additional profits down the line, including rentals to other companies, he
argued, trying to persuade the stock managers to put their money into new plays,
of which there was such a dearth amid the imports and revivals. “Speed the day,”
he urged, “in the interest of a real American drama.”
Payton, about whom very little has been
written, was fast becoming a Brooklyn legend with the success he’d achieved heading
a stock company in the Eastern District. He was also recognized as a stage
personality with enough charm to deserve his own niche as a star. The Eagle left
this record on April 13, 1902:
He is a comedian
with a simply irrepressible flow of good spirits and with a knack at imitating
all sorts of queer characters in a thoroughly laughable if broadly comic way.
He sings, he dances and he cuts up what one of his admirers called “capers” in
a way which convulses his audiences in shrieks of laughter. It follows that
every play must have a good comic part for Payton. If the part is not “fat”
enough in the manuscript the manager stuffs it with songs and dances until he
is able to give his public what it pays its money for. It may be doubted whether
Mr. Payton has any advanced very advanced ideas about art at 30 and 50 cents,
but his theater is saved from becoming merely a home for farce comedies by the
talent of Etta Reed [Payton’s wife], and the good actors with whom Payton
surrounds her.
Etta Reed was also worthy of the writer’s
prose:
Miss Reed is
a serious actress, with a marked personality and with a style individual and
finished enough to make her a desirable woman for a high priced male star like
[John] Drew or [Nat C.] Goodwin. Her work is extremely quiet and intelligent.
There is a little thrill in her voice in moments of quiet feeling which might
convince an auditor with his eyes closed that he was listening to Mrs. [Minnie
Maddern] Fiske.
The writer notes that when a play didn’t
have a suitable comic part for him, Payton rested—although undertaking “straight”
roles in a clutch—while Kirk Brown assumed the role of Reed’s leading man.
Just as Payton and Reed were the flame
around which their company fluttered, sisters Edna May and Cecil Spooner were
the attraction at the Park Theatre’s Spooner Stock Company, Payton’s top rival
for quality stock, albeit across town in the Western District. Unfortunately, the
Eagle’s description of them is too faded to read, so we will wait for
something more accessible before recording something of what they were like,
apart from specific reviews.
On the other hand, breaking news forced
all hopes about the future plans for the Spooners to open a second stock
company at Williamsburg’s Amphion, as reported in last month’s entry, went out
the window when it was announced in late April that Cecil Spooner, would,
rather than be leading lady at her own Brooklyn company, go on the road in
December as the star of a new, four-act, romantic comedy, My Lady Peggy Goes
to Town, adapted by Frances Aymar Matthews from her own story. The force
behind this decision was clearly her ambitious actress-manager mother, who got a
release from the contracts she’d signed with Hyde and Behman for the Amphion;
her new season would be restricted to the Bijou, where she was finishing out
the present season.
The Eagle noted with enthusiasm
on April 27, 1902, that “Women are coming more and more to the front in
theatrical management,” a natural result given their “intelligence and their ready
artistic sympathies,” which leads to confidence that they will be open to
experiment more than their male counterparts. Among women noted for their
managerial skill (including their detailed stage direction), both in the recent
past and present, are not only Mrs. Spooner and her daughter Edna May (who
directed all the Spooner shows), but the late Fanny Davenport, Mary Shaw, about
to run a theatre in Baltimore, and Mrs. Fiske, the foremost actress of the age.
1.
March 31—April 5, 1902
Amphion: Janice Meredith, with Mary Mannering
Bijou: The Penitent
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) Master and
Man
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Under Two Flags
Folly: Kellar, magician, humorist, mind reader, hypnotist
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Black Flag
Grand Opera House: Yon Yonson, with Knute Erickson
Montauk: Florodora
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) A Young Wife
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Northern Lights
Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Down on the
Farm
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum
2.
April 7-12, 1902
Amphion: Under Southern Skies, with Grace George
Bijou: Happy Hooligan
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The Hunchback
of Notre Dame, with Sidney Toler
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Under Two Flags
Folly: Yon Yonson, with Knute Erickson
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The New Magdalen
Grand Opera House: The Old Homestead, with Denman
Thompson
Montauk: Maid Marian, with the Bostonians
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) Because She Loved Him So
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Men and Women
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company)
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum
3.
April 14-19, 1902
Amphion: New York in Wort und Bild (My New York),
with Adolf Phillip Company
Bijou: Man’s Enemy; or, the Wedding Bells, with Agnes
Herndon
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The
Electrician
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) The Sporting Duchess
Folly: Sis Hopkins, with Rose Melville
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) In Peril
Grand Opera House: When We Were 21, with William
Morris
Montauk: When Knighthood Was in Flower, with Julia
Marlowe
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) The Maid of the Mill
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Eagle Tavern
Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company)
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum
4.
April 21-26, 1902
Amphion: Ein New Yorker Brauer, Der Corner Grocer (both
in German), with Adolf Philipp Company
Bijou: The Convict’s Daughter
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The Royal Box
and the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) A Celebrated Case
Folly: Dangers of Paris
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Pearl of Savoy
Grand Opera House: A Hot Old Time, with Johnny and
Emma Ray
Montauk: The Rogers Brothers in Washington, with the
Rogers Brothers
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) Alabama
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Ingomar
Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Romany Rye
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum
5.
April 28-May 3, 1901
Amphion: The Rogers Brothers in Washington, with the
Rogers Brothers
Bijou: When London Sleeps
Blaney’s: (Blaney All-Star Stock Company) The Silent
Witness
Brooklyn Academy of Music: Burlesque
Columbia: Closed for regular season; opens for brief opera
season, Pirates of Penzance, Cavalleria Rusticana, with
Murray-Lane Company
Folly: The Convict’s Daughter
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) Passion’s Slave
Grand Opera House: The Governor’s Son, with the Four
Cohans
Montauk: The Way of the World, with Elsie De Wolf,
John Mason, Sarah Cowell Lemoyne
Park: (Spooner Stock Company) The Amazons
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Lend Me Five Shillings,
The Daughter of the Reservoir
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company)
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum
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