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| William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. |
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
December
1902 was surely the most exciting theatre month of the year in Brooklyn, with
more standout activity than can be summed up briefly here. In addition to the
usual melodramas, farces, and revivals to which Brooklyn audiences were accustomed,
including two revivals of such overdone perennials as Uncle Tom’s Cabin
and one of East Lynne, there were visits from historically important
actors. Most important were Mrs. Leslie Carter in her overstuffed period costume
drama, Du Barry, Henrietta Crosman in hers, The Sword of the King,
Mrs. Patrick Campbell in Pinero’s problem drama, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,
Francis Wilson in his musical comedy The Toreador, and, most widely popular
of all, William Gillette in his enormously successful adaptation of a play
about Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective, Sherlock Holmes.
On
top of that there was the play at the Amphion in which, Cecil Spooner, one of
the two sisters admired as leading ladies of Brooklyn’s Spooner Stock Company, had—at
the urging of her manager mother, Mrs. Molly Spooner—decided to launch her
career as a touring star. Based by Frances Aymar Mathews on her own novel of the same name, it was called Lady
Peggy Goes to Town; so much faith had been put in it that Mrs. Spooner
decided to abandon her plans to open a second Brooklyn stock theatre—at the
Eastern District’s Amphion—to balance her company at the Western District’s
Bijou, and put all her chips behind this venture.
Unfortunately, although possessed of entertaining
qualities, it was found by H.D.F. of the Citizen (December 7) to be undramatic,
implausible, thematically unoriginal, and filled with old hat situations. It presented
the “adventures of Lady Peggy when, disguised in the habiliments of a man, she visits
London, fights a duel with her lover, and gets into all sorts of scrapes.” Cecil
Spooner, “the winsome little star,” as the Citizen dubbed her,
apparently scored as Lady Peggy, and her coming tour remained intact. Clay Meeker
Hamilton of the Eagle, who often wrote about managers’ disinterest in
new plays, and preference for those with European origins, or by authors with a
name to new scripts. was particularly perturbed.
In his December 7 column, he couldn’t understand a
situation in which an experienced novelist, with two previous Spooner-produced plays
to her name—the Spooners being highly knowledgeable about what works on stage—could
provide a work whose technical problems were so obviously overlooked before it
opened. Instead, they allowed it to run two hours longer than expected, both
because of excessive dialogue and unnecessarily burdensome scene shifting. The critic
insisted that it was a convention that no play should run longer than two and a
half to two and three-quarter hours, with half an hour figured in for scene
shifting, leaving two to two hours and 15 minutes for action.
Hamilton’s
dismantling of the production is too long to recount here in full. He posited the
following unanswerable conundrum, which applies, of course, to countless other
shows as well. “Why could not the professionals in charge have seen these
things as clearly in manuscript as in performance?”
A week later, on December
14, Hamilton noted how upset the author’s friends were by his “unjust” critique,
especially of its length, which they claimed was not Mathews’s fault but “was the
result of revision conducted by or under the order of the Spooners. That may
account,” Hamilton said, “for the obvious reluctance of Miss Mathews to bow her
acknowledgments to the applause . . . on the opening night, which must have impressed
everybody in the theater.” Pressed on why Mathews and her publisher stood by
and allowed such damage to be done, a friend answered that she felt it best to
let those making the mistake learn by making it and reaping the results, even
though she would be the one everyone blamed.
However, after
returning to her home on Montague Street on opening night, she began making arrangements
to pay respected “stage manager” (i.e., director) Eugene W. Presbrey “the small
sum of $500” to overhaul the play and production, putting under Presbrey’s “very
firm thumb,” “the addenda furnished by Miss Spooner’s friends, the little actress
herself, the company, scenery, costumes and properties.” Hamilton certifies this
would make the work a success and justify Cecil Spooner’s future as a star. By
July 1903, in fact, Cecil Spooner had done well enough with the play to be
signed to a contract with syndicate powers Klaw and Erlanger.
Hamilton’s other concerns
on December 7, more general than Brooklyn-related, were the need for conflict
in drama; the debt that writers of the recent flood of rustic dramas owe to the
late James A. Herne, author of Sag Harbor, for the authenticity of his
writing; and the “pessimism and moral miasma” that taint so much of the new
European drama, as limned in a surprisingly erudite essay on Ibsen’s baneful
influence on lesser European dramatists by the great American actress, Minnie
Maddern Fiske.
A week later, Hamilton
focused on the Brooklyn stock company revival as exemplified by what was
happening at the Columbia, where that venue’s company was being combined with traveling
stock stars, which is how early stock companies operated. Actors used to learn
their trade in such companies when master actors came to play engagements with
them, playing without outside help between such visits. Of the few traveling
stars to appreciate the old system, there were such examples as Melbourne
McDowell and Elita Proctor Ellis. McDowell, widower of the late star Fanny
Davenport, had inherited her scenery and Sardou-heavy repertory (Tosca, Cleopatra,
Gismonda, Fedora), which allowed him to bring them with him when
playing with the Columbia and other troupes, who couldn’t otherwise afford them,
for stays of four to five weeks.
On December 21,
Hamilton wrote about the fad for theatre that exploited actual sensational
crimes, three examples having recently played on Brooklyn’s stages. One, The
Great Poison Mystery, was about “the Molineux case,” a miserable flop;
another, A Desperate Chance, about “the sensational delivery of the
Biddle brothers at Pittsburg,” more effective; and the third not a play but the
appearance on the vaudeville stage of 19-year-old Florence Burns, “the woman arrested
for the Brooks murder.” Her only stage qualification was her “remarkable beauty,”
but her presence was so pitiful you had to feel sorry for her. With such
content on the stage, Hamilton wondered, is it any wonder so many still looked
with distaste on the stage?
On December 21,
Hamilton discussed the difficulty of American comic actors in sticking to their
characters in farces instead of depending on their reputations for being funny
and thereby going for laughs regardless of their relation to the play. English
comics, he claimed, remained truer to their material.
1.
December 1-6. 1902
Amphion: My Lady Peggy Goes to Town, with Cecil
Spooner
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Madame Sans Gene
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The
Fugitive
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Secret Service
Folly: The Governor’s Son, with the Four Cohans
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) Blow for Blow
Grand Opera House: Are You a Mason?, with John
C. Rice, Thomas A. Wise
Montauk: Du Barry, with Mrs. Leslie Carter
Park: Not Guilty
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) The Shaughraun
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Face
in the Moonlight
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Orpheum, Gayety, Unique
1. December
8-13, 1902
Amphion: Quincy Adams Sawyer, with Charles
Dixon
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Still Alarm
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The
Great Poison Mystery
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Carmen
Folly: Are You a Mason?, with John C. Rice and
Thomas A. Wise
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Red Barn
Grand Opera House: Alphonse and Gaston
Montauk: Du Barry, with Mrs. Leslie Carter
Park: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Aristocracy
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Man
Without a Country
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Orpheum,
Gayety, Unique
2. December
15-20, 1902
Amphion: The Defender
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) East Lynne
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) In the
Heart of the Storm
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) My Friend from
India
Folly: Alphonse and Gaston
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Turn of the Tide
Grand Opera House: A Desperate Chance
Montauk: The Night of the Party
Park: At Cripple Creek
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) A Midnight Folly
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Her One
Great Sin
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Orpheum, Gayety, Unique
3. December
22-27, 1902
Amphion: Robert Emmet, with Brandon Tynan
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) A Lady of Quality
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The
Power of the Cross
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) As You Like It
Folly: A Fight for Millions
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The Slaves of Russia
Grand Opera House: A Prince of Tatters
Montauk: Sherlock Holmes, with William Gillette
Park: The Little Mother
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) Michael Strogoff
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Uncle
Tom’s Cabin
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Orpheum, Gayety, Unique
4. December
29-January 3, 1902
Amphion: The Toreador, with Francis Wilson
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Little Lord
Fauntleroy
Blaney’s: (Blaney’s All-Star Stock Company) The
Strange Adventures of Miss Brown
Brooklyn Academy of Music: The Sword of the King,
with Henrietta Crosman
Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Antony and
Cleopatra, with Melbourne McDowell, Florence Stone
Folly: A Desperate Chance
Gotham: (Gotham Stock Company) The City of New York
Grand Opera House: Spotless Town
Montauk: The Joy of Living, The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Park: Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers
Payton’s: (Payton Theatre Company) A Milk White
Flag
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Queen
of Chinatown
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Orpheum, Gayety, Unique
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