1903: MAY-AUGUST

 

For comprehensive background on Brooklyn’s pre-20^th-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 20^th 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 months in 1902 click here.

JANUARY 1903

FEBRUARY 1903

MARCH 1903

APRIL 1903

Perusing old Brooklyn newspapers for news about theatre often turns up fascinating curios of peripheral information. See, for example, the two brief articles pasted in above to lead off this discussion of the borough’s theatrical doings in the closing months of the 1902-1903 season. In the first, we read of Ralph Cummings, a young actor and stage manager for the Gotham Theatre’s stock company, being arrested for not paying his boarding house bill. He had a happy ending when, after to promising to pay, he was released. The other squib reveals how important Italian immigrant workers were at the time, when a large, newly unionized group of them went on strike while excavating the space where the new Broadway Theatre was to be erected in the Eastern District. They had been earning $1.50 a day for nine hours of labor, and insisted on a raise to $2 for eight hours. Can’t blame them, can you?

As for more conventional theatre news, there’s much to report for April and May, those months when the weather was growing warm enough to make un-airconditioned playgoing annoying. Since I mentioned a new theatre going up, that should be our first item, since it turns out even more were going up than previously noted in this blog. In fact, if all were realized, there’d be FIVE new theatres being built during the mania for theatre construction going on in Brooklyn and other large cities (including, of course, Manhattan). The latter would soon have 50, while Brooklyn could end up in the next year with 21 or 22 by the time both construction of the new and destruction of the old was finished.

One of the new theatres, intended for vaudeville and burlesque, and founded by William.B. Watson, was to be called Watson’s Theatre, a.k.a., the Cosey Corner, at Pearl and Willoughby in downtown Brooklyn, then nearing completion, and set to open with an extravaganza in August. Percy G. Williams’s Greenpoint Theatre was also being built, in Greenpoint at Greenpoint Avenue and Calyer Street. Weber and Fields were contemplating a theatre in Williamsburg, as was the Mr. Watson of the theatre mentioned above. We also learn that the fate of the Montauk was still in doubt, although it stood directly in the finally decided path of the Flatbush Avenue Extension to the Manhattan Bridge. No one seems to have known it at the time, but, for all the talk of demolition and rebuilding, it would instead by lifted off its foundations and moved to its new location in a remarkable act of engineering genius. At the time, the idea of replacing it with two high-priced theatres was in the air, leaving the total number of new venues up in the air. Thus, it was theoretically possible that Brooklyn could have as many as 22 theatres sometime during the coming season. And among the entrepreneurs considering control of several were the upstart Shubert brothers, Sam, Jake, and Lee.

Finally, we come to the season’s close, both here and across the river, and the opening of theatres offering musicals and vaudeville at Bergen, Brighton, and Manhattan Beaches, not to mention Coney Island’s ambitious new Luna Park, where a spectacular show called A Trip to the Moon was being launched. As early as May 3, when the weather was not yet steamy, Clay Meeker Hamilton in the Eagle described the contemporary custom. (We must remember that in those days, people, especially women, wore so much clothing, that even a mildly warm day might have felt tropical.)

The hot days which each spring sound the knell for the traveling companies came last week. With the first hot night, indoor audiences drop, the circuses begin to boom, the patrons of vaudeville and the cheaper theaters long for Coney Island, and managers prepare to put up the shutters. . . . Of course, there may come a cold will which will carry the season along for some weeks and make the managers who closed early regret their haste, but there is no certainty in theatricals after May.

So not only theatres were closing, so were the traveling combinations that occupied them, leaving the stock companies to linger for several weeks after the combination houses were shut, as seen in the listings below. The Bijou held on, in fact, into mid-June, weeks after its rivals had scattered.

One of the shows in Manhattan that would stay open until the weather made it impossible was Lady Peggy Goes to Town, the one chosen by Cecil Spooner of Brooklyn’s Spooner Stock Company to launch her career as a star. After opening at the once fashionable Daly’s, it didn’t quite light up the Great White Way but it got decent enough responses to make it nothing to be ashamed of. (Its author, Grace Ayer Mathews, it should be noted, was a Brooklyn girl.) Before it opened on May 4, the Eagle said Miss Spooner was “the best soubrette of the Lotta [Crabtree] type now before the public. She has been a co-star with her sister [Edna May Spooner] of their stock company for years. When she has the chief part she holds the center of the stage as absolutely as if her name were printed three feet high.”

The reception of her play at Daly’s was polite, as in this snippet from Brooklyn Life (May 9, 1903): “As a whole it offers a diverting entertainment which bids fair to please Broadway at a time of the year when it is easily pleased. The lady Peggy Burgoyne of Cecil Spooner remains best when she is in male attire. [Many critics were impressed by her convincing boyishness. She plays the part with abundant spirit and as fencer shows considerable skill.” The company included Etienne Girardot, who first played the lead in Charley’s Aunt on Broadway. By June, the show had closed for the summer and Cecil was back acting

Developments in Manhattan forced some to worry that popular-priced stock companies, like the Bijou, might have reached their zenith and were now set to decline. Hamilton believed that was unlikely, as it would require the competition between the high-priced syndicate and independent houses to raise the bar on the quality of their productions so consistently that it would draw audiences away from the stocks. He pointed to the steady support of five Brooklyn stock houses by large audiences happy to pay $.50 for a show, rather than the $1.50 at the high-priced theatres, and saw no signs of a decrease in numbers. And he considered the growing trend of well-known actors starring with the stock companies a sign of their growing strength. Little did he know that when the new season arrived at summer’s end, only three Brooklyn theatres would still be doing stock.

Few stars who showed up in Brooklyn during these waning weeks were of the household-name variety, the foremost two examples being with combinations, not stock productions. One was comic actor De Wolf Hopper (in Mr. Pickwick), now mainly remembered for his rendition of “Casey at the Bat,” the other Lily Langtry (in Mademoiselle Mars), still an icon of gilded age glamor.

There’s more, of course, but this should hold you for the time being. See you in late August of 1903, when Brooklyn’s curtains begin to rise again.

1.      May 4-9, 1903

Amphion:  closed for season

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) An American Citizen

Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Lovers’ Lane, with Roselle Knott

Folly: Sis Hopkins, with Rose Melville

Gotham: (Gotham Elite Stock Company) Shenandoah

Grand Opera House: The Old Cross Roads

Montauk: Mademoiselle Mars, with Lily Langtry

Novelty: Defending Her Honor

Park: Boliva’s Busy Day, with Billy B. Van, Nellie O’Neil

Payton’s Fulton Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Rip Van Winkle, with Corse Payton, Etta Reed Payton

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Sorrows of Satan

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Under Two Flags

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety, Unique, Orpheum

2.      May 11-16, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Arrah-Na-Pogue

Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Alvin Joslin, with Charles Willard

Folly: At the Old Cross Roads

Gotham: (Gotham Elite Stock Company) One of the Bravest, with Charles McCarthy

Grand Opera House: The Old Homestead, with Archie Boyd

Montauk: Mr. Pickwick, with DeWolf Hopper

Novelty: Shenandoah

Park: Pickings from Puck

Payton’s Fulton Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Francesca Da Rimini, with Etta Reed Payton

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) My Partner

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Burglar

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety, Unique, Orpheum

3.      May 18-23, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) A Toy Soldier

Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) Under Two Flags, with Valerie Bergere

Folly: A Boy of the Streets

Gotham: (Gotham Elite Stock Company) closed for the season

Grand Opera House: closed for the season

Montauk: closed for the season

Novelty: closed for the season

Park: A Romance of Coon Hollow

Payton’s Fulton Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) closed for the season

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Moth and the Flame, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Sapho

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety, Unique, Orpheum (begins several weeks of comic opera, first being The Serenade)

4.      May 25-30, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) On the Wabash

Columbia: (Greenwall Stock Company) closed for the season

Folly: closed for the season

Park: Black Patti Troubadours

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) A Blue-Grass Cavalier (new play premiere), with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Orphans of New York, with N.S. Wood

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s (closed), Star, Gayety, Unique, Orpheum (comic opera)

5.      June 1-6, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) An Unequal Match, That Girl from Texas

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Edna Reed Payton

Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Out in the Streets, with N.S. Wood

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s (closed), Star, Gayety, Unique, Orpheum (comic opera)

6.      June 8-13, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Don Caesar de Bazan

7.      June 15-20, 1903

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Matilda

 

 

From this point, with the summer theatres in full bloom at Brooklyn’s Bergen, Brighton, and Manhattan Beaches, and theatrical spectacle also on view at Coney Island’s spanking new Luna Park, we can ourselves take a vacation until the fall season of 1903-1904 brings us back to our seats at the borough’s mainstream venues.