by
Samuel L. Leiter
The Empire Theatre, originally the Bedford Avenue or simply Bedford
Theatre, had to come down when the Williamsburg Bridge was built, as noted in
the previous entry.
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.
1901: SEPTEMBER
1901: DECEMBER
We begin this survey of September with
the last week in August, when the first actual plays of the new season opened
at the Park (stock) and Bijou, still a combination house. For the lighter kinds
of entertainment, the Star, that “temple of tights,” would open its doors as
well. Summer still being present, the beach theatres remained open, but were getting
ready to shut up shop for the cooler days ahead. Lots of changes were visible
in the Brooklyn theatrical landscape. Only two theatres, the Montauk in the Western
District and the Amphion in the Eastern, would continue charging high prices for
first-class offerings, while the remaining theatres, beginning with the Bijou, were
offering popular prices, particularly the six stock companies now present. (See
the ads for prices.)
The formerly grand Columbia was now housed
the Greenwall Stock Company, a.k.a Columbia Theatre Stock Company, under the
auspices of the Greenwall Theatrical Circuit Company, whose head, Herman
Greenwall, owned the American Theatre in Manhattan. The theatre had been
thoroughly renovated and made patron-friendly (a telephone was available for public
use, and the day’s newspapers were there as well), the company was of a higher
class than usual for stock, with well-known actress Valerie Bergere, its
leading lady. Unlike the other local stock companies, this one meant to
emphasize large-scale melodramas requiring extensive outlays for sets and
costumes. Matinees were given daily, except Mondays.
East New York’ Brooklyn Music Hall,
near Broadway Junction, was replaced in the same, vastly redecorated, venue by
the Gotham Theatre, its stock company making it the borough’s sixth. The stage had
been made much larger by tearing down the rear wall, adding 25 feet to its
depth. Percy G. Williams, one of Brooklyn’s leading theatrical entrepreneurs
(he owned the Orpheum), was the proprietor. Williams also ran the Eastern
District’s Novelty, which underwent an extremely extensive overhaul, and would
be back with vaudeville when it opened.
The Theatre Unique (previously the
Unique Theatre), another vaudeville/burlesque house now joins the scene,
although it was not new. I was long aware of it but could find barely any
information to justify mentioning it other than occasional notices of boxing or
wrestling matches held there. May had seen the place on the verge of closing
because, having been ordered by the Building Department to remove a boiler from
under its stage and place it in a masonry vault under the sidewalk, it had not
done so; only when the law stepped in did the manager get the boiler removed. In
late September, 1901, it finally began to advertise. It will be listed with other
such venues so long as its presence is apparent from its ads, which continued
through the year. Most other Brooklyn theatres opened on Labor Day but the Amphion
was late, not opening until October.
More mysterious is the story of Phillips’ Lyceum, at the
corner of Montrose and Leonard in Williamsburg, where a theatre of that and
other names had come and gone over the years. Records of its productions are
extremely difficult to track down, as it sometimes went for long stretches without
advertising or being reviewed in the leading papers. At the end of September,
however, its presence was announced in small ads for a production of A Ward
of France in the Williamsburg press, but with no news articles that I could
find explaining its sudden presence. It got cursory reviews over the following months,
but was definitely back, with its own Lyceum Stock Company. It will be
chronicled here whenever notice of its work can be found.
Among interesting incidents of the
month, was one related to race. At the time, Black roles were typically played
by whites in blackface, but that practice was not sacrosanct in Brooklyn. In Pudd’nhead
Wilson, for example, a play with “several negroes” done by the Baker Stock
Company, manager Frank Baker “installed negroes to portray the characters, to conserve
the realistic character of the piece.” None of the stock companies, however,
had Black actors on their acting staffs.
If one thing could be said to encapsulate
theatrical concerns in September, it was the increasing number of stock
companies, which the press discussed at length. The concept was, by and large,
approved, because it served to create a homey, family atmosphere where regular
patrons became familiar with the actors as they moved from role to role, and
were appreciated like old friends. The theatre thus became for audiences, not
something distant and exotic, but part of their everyday life and thinking.
Trying to make theatre something remote, “for the cultivated few,” as one
writer put it, was to kill it. America, a reporter thought, was not yet ready
to nurture the seed of theatre to allow it to fructify as a great national art.
For too many, either it was a place of infamy or a place not to be taken seriously.
The stock companies allowed people who
couldn’t afford to see plays when they were at high-priced theatres to enjoy
them at minimal expense. “The next step will be the production of new plays by
the stock companies,” someone, having seen the tentative start of such activity,
wrote with optimism, but not prescience. When that happens the stock companies
will be as au courant, this writer believed, as the daily papers. The stock companies,
it was thought, would be especially valuable in fostering American drama, which
still struggled for a hearing in the face of European and English competition.
Other theatre-related editorial
concerns of the moment involved the longstanding practice of ticket
speculation, which Col. William E. Sinn had long fought in Brooklyn, and which
his daughter, who succeeded him as manager of the Montauk, was still combatting;
the quality of the orchestra music at legitimate theatres; and the ink used on
theatre programs (still spelled programmes then), which came off one one’s
hands and gloves, the worst offenders being the high-priced houses.
1.
August
25-31, 1901
Bijou: The
Cherry Pickers
Columbia:
(opens Saturday matinee, August 31; Greenwall Stock Company) The Great Ruby
Gayety:
(opens Saturday night, August 31) Sporting Life
Park:
(Spooner Stock Company): The Thoroughbred
Vaudeville
and burlesque: Star
2.
September
2 -7, 1901
Bijou: The
White Slave
Columbia:
(Greenwall Stock Company) The Great Ruby
Criterion:
(Baker Stock Company) Sporting Life
Gayety:
Gotham:
(Gotham Stock Company) The Planter’s Wife
Grand
Opera House: One of the Finest, with Charles McCarthy
Montauk: On
the Quiet, with Willie Collier
Park:
(Spooner Stock Company) Blue Jeans
Payton’s:
(Payton Theatre Company) Secret Service
Vaudeville
and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Orpheum, Star
3.
September
9-14, 1901
Bijou: The
Fatal Wedding
Columbia:
(Greenwall Stock Company) Under Two Flags
Criterion:
(Baker Stock Company) Pudd’nhead Wilson
Gayety: Peg
Woffington (formerly Masks and Faces), with Rose Coghlan
Grand
Opera House: The Telephone Girl
Montauk: The
Strollers, with Francis Wilson
Park:
(Spooner Stock Company) One of Our Girls
Payton’s:
(Payton Theatre Company) Sowing the Wind
Vaudeville
and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Orpheum, Novelty, Star
4.
September
16-21, 1901
Bijou: The
Dairy Farm
Columbia:
(Greenwall Stock Company) Shenandoah
Criterion:
(Baker Stock Company) Caprice
Gayety: The
Telephone Girl
Gotham:
(Gotham Stock Company) The Planter’s Wife
Grand
Opera House: Lost River
Montauk: Floradora
Park:
(Spooner Stock Company) The Only Way
Payton’s:
(Payton Theatre Company) Miss Hobbs
Vaudeville
and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Orpheum, Star, Novelty (shifts from
vaudeville to burlesque)
5.
September
23-28, 1901
Bijou: The
Sorrows of Satan
Brooklyn
Academy of Music: Humpty Dumpty and the Black Dwarf
Columbia: (Greenwall
Stock Company) An Enemy to the King
Criterion
(Baker Stock Company) Why Smith Left Home
Gayety: The
White Slave
Gotham:
(Gotham Stock Company) Queena
Grand Opera
House: Peg Woffington (formerly Masks and Faces), with Rose
Coghlan
Montauk: Lover’s
Lane
Park: (Spooner
Stock Company) The Continental Dragoon, Between Two Forts
Payton’s:
(Payton Theatre Company) Under the Red Robe
Phillips's Lyceum: A Ward of France
Vaudeville
and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Orpheum, Star, Novelty, Theatre Unique
No comments:
Post a Comment