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| Mrs. Leslie Carter in David Belasco's Du Barry. |
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 months in 1902 click here.
October 1903 had its share of important theatrical
developments, but little on Brooklyn’s stages that month was of particularly
earthshaking dramatic significance. The same tired touring plays seemed never
to give up, among them The Auctioneer, with David Warfield, M’liss with
Nellie McHenry, and Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers, while a small
number of recent ones made their Brooklyn bows. Most were little more than
formulaic time-passers, mainly melodramatic or musical, while the talk of the town
across the river of was of adventurous projects serious Brooklyn theatregoers
would likely see in Manhattan before these works ever made it to their side of
the bridge.
While Brooklyn still had not seen the great Mrs. Minnie
Maddern Fiske in her religious triumph of the previous season, Mary of
Magdala, they now contemplated seeing her brilliant enactment
of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, being given limited performances in Manhattan. Ibsen was still being appreciated only for his genius, not his box office power. The
other major art theatre work on people’s tongues was Stephen Phillips’s poetic tragedy Ulysses,
which opened in Manhattan in September and closed in November. In fact, the big Brooklyn
stage event was a four-week engagement of Henry W. Savage’s Grand Opera Company
in a rich repertory of opera in English (including Verdi’s Otello and Puccini’s
La Tosca) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Opera, unless part of a
legit theatre’s season, not being this blog’s bailiwick, I have not listed the
repertory below.
Of the touring companies, the one selling the most seats was
the latest visit from Mrs. Leslie Carter in her hit production of Belasco’s Du
Barry, which would play a week each in each of the borough’s two districts.
It promised to contain “all of the immense and magnificent eq1uipment of scenic
and lighting effects, the vast quantity of valuable bric-a-brac, collected . .
. in France, the historical costumes and the same organization” that had
sustained the show through its 352 performances at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre.
The $64 question was whether Ibsen could ever be popularized for local
audiences, regardless of which side of the river they lived on.
For all its fecundity, Brooklyn’s theatres still
showed serious cracks, as we’ve seen in earlier entries. This month, the brand-new
Wells-Dunne-Harlan Musical Comedy Company at the Columbia, which had replaced
legitimate stock with musical stock in September, tanked. It moved briefly to the
West End Theatre in Manhattan and then went back on the road. Despite the
company’s bold attempt to provide fully produced musicals every week, it failed
to draw sufficient crowds, losing $20,000. Its policy was replaced by traveling
combinations from October 24.
A stealthy newcomer to the ranks of Brooklyn’s vaudeville
houses was the Bushwick Music Hall, which opened in the Bushwick neighborhood
at the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Highland Boulevard on October 5, receiving
a modicum of press interest for its preview bill. But its presence afterward in
the papers quickly diminished to the occasional listing, sans details, and its
only mentions in the 1904 press would be about the legal troubles it was in.
Talking of legal problems, let’s close this survey of
Brooklyn theatricals in October 1903 with a note about local actor Harry De
Vere. He had played the leading role in Only a Shop Girl at the Gotham
the last week of September before being served at the theatre with a warrant
for his arrest. His wife, Marie, of 568 Atlantic Avenue, had charged him with
abandonment, and needed him to provide funds for her and their two children’s
subsistence. The judge allowed Harry to return to work so he could earn his $35
weekly salary and pay $10 of it to his wife. Hopefully, the De Veres would have
a happy ending. Harry, who died in 1923, did well enough for himself, becoming
a prolific silent-screen actor, although much of his work is now lost.
1.
October 5-10, 1903
Amphion: The Little Princess, with Millie James
Bijou: (Spooner’s Stock Company) My Lord, the Butler
Columbia: (Wells-Dunne-Harlan Musical Comedy Company) The
Night of the Fourth
Folly: The Heart of Maryland
Gotham: M’liss, with Nellie McHenry
Grand Opera House: Running for Office, with the Four
Cohans
Montauk: The Auctioneer, with David Warfield, Marie Bates
Novelty: Across the Rockies
Park: Through Fire and Water
Payton’s Fulton Street: (Payton Fulton Street Stock Company)
Christopher, Jr., with Corse Payton
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Pudd’nhead
Wilson, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Caught in the
Web
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum, Watson’s
2.
October 12-17, 1903
Amphion: Du Barry, with Mrs. Leslie Carter
Bijou: (Spooner’s Stock Company) The Banker’s Daughter
Columbia: (Wells-Dunne-Harlan Musical Comedy Company) The
White Flag
Folly: Running for Office, with the Four Cohans
Gotham: Why Women Sin
Grand Opera House: Mrs. Delaney of Newport, with the
Elinore Sisters
Montauk: Vivian’s Papas, with Elizabeth Tyree
Novelty: Kidnapped in New York, with Barney Gilmore
Park: A Great Temptation; or, Down Where the Mississippi
Flows
Payton’s Fulton Street: (Payton Fulton Street Stock Company)
The Charity Ball, with Corse Payton
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Robert
Emmet, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Toll Gate Inn
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Orpheum,
Unique, Gayety, Watson’s, Bushwick Music Hall (newly opened)
3.
October 19-24, 1903
Amphion: Vivian’s Papas, with Elizabeth Tyree
Bijou: (Spooner’s Stock Company) A Little Detective
Columbia: (Wells-Dunne-Harlan Musical Comedy Company) The
Knickerbocker Girl
Folly: Mrs. Delaney of Newport, with the Elinore
Sisters
Gotham: Wealth and Poverty
Grand Opera House: Jim Bludso
Montauk: The Silver Slipper
Novelty: The Limited Mail
Park: The Child Wife
Payton’s Fulton Street: (Payton Fulton Street Stock Company)
Quo Vadis, with Corse Payton
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Duchess
Du Barry, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) A Break for
Liberty
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum, Watson’s, Brooklyn Music Hall
4.
October 27-31, 1903
c
Amphion: The Frisky Mrs. Johnson, with Amelia Bingham
and company
Bijou: (Spooner’s Stock Company) The Idler
Columbia: (Wells-Dunne-Harlan Musical Comedy Company) The
Mocking Bird
Folly: Eight Bells, with the Brothers Byrne
Gotham: Shadows of a Great City, with Annie Ward
Tiffany
Grand Opera House: Rachel Goldstein; or, The Struggles of
a Poor Girl in New York
Montauk: The Sultan of Sulu, with Frank Moulan
Novelty: The Searchlights of a Great City
Park: A Fight for Millions
Payton’s Fulton Street: (Payton Fulton Street Stock Company)
A Gilded Fool
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Hearts
Aflame, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Red River
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum, Watson’s, Brooklyn Music Hall
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