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| Brooklyn-born star Robert Edeson in Ranson's Folly. 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:
Links to all of 1902’s posts can be found here.
Links to all of 1903’s posts can be found here.
1 As the 1903-1904 season crawled to an end, Hamilton Ormsbee began his weekly theatre editorial in the Eagle on May 1 with the following standard farewell while welcoming the imminent amusements of summer:
The theatrical season is almost
ended. We have been to the circus, which is the first evidence of spring, and
in a few weeks we shall be crowding down to Coney Island to see the new wonders
of the shows which give you a veritable midway for 10 cents. Then we shall have
Brighton and Manhattan beaches and all thought of serious drama will be driven
away. A good many managers will not be sorry to see the shutters go up.
He then looks back on the season just past to lament its many
failures and praise its few successes, looking chiefly at Manhattan, which had
a rough time of it, while Brooklyn maintained decent business. The cause of the
downturn was blamed on different things, not least Chicago’s horrendous Iroquois
Theatre fire, but the sudden success of a succession of high-priced operas
proved the problem was not Wall Street or some such factor but the lack of good
shows.
Various expedients were tried to remedy the situation,
including Shakespeare revivals, typically avoided in the commercial hurly-burly,
and some—like the Ada Rehan-Otis Skinner repertory that came to Brooklyn—hit
the mark, as did a small number of literary dramas. Johnston Forbes-Robertson acted
a splendid Hamlet in Manhattan, but Brooklyn never saw it, but Viola
Allen hit the spot here in Twelfth Night.
Regarding, Ibsen, belatedly receiving first-class stagings—Mary
Shaw in Ghosts, Mrs. Fiske in Hedda Gabler, and Arnold Daly and Dorothy
Donnelly in Candida—all Brooklyn got was a single benefit performance of
the last. Shaw was also on critical minds, but he too was still a risky
proposition and needed time to be more widely accepted by American audiences, although
You Never Can Tell would be a 1905 hit across the river.
Another recent approach was the New York revival of three “modern
masterpieces,” as Ormsbee dubiously calls them, in expensively mounted,
star-studded productions, but Brooklyn—apart from its homegrown or touring versions—was
graced by neither Camille, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, nor The Two Orphans.
One interesting theatrical experience Brooklyn had this
month, however, was provided by the same English company directed by Ben Greet
that recently had shown Brooklyn the morality play of Everyman in medieval
style. Here, calling themselves Ben Greet’s Woodland Players, they offered woodsy,
outdoor productions of As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
on the grounds of the Midwood Club, on the afternoon and evening of May 24. The
company was renowned for its knowledge and recreation of Elizabethan stage
conventions, and Greet was called “one of the great stage managers [directors]
now living” by the Brooklyn Citizen. Greet had been doing Shakespeare in
sylvan settings for 15 years in England, but open air theatre was still rare in
the USA, aside from special showings of works like H.M.S. Pinafore and Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.
In Ormsbee's view, the public taste had begun to shift
toward more intelligent material, and he sensed that the managers (producers) could
sense the change as well. Despite the predominance of musical comedies and
comic operas, the public seemed to be tiring of tuneless shows whose best
features were their scenery or “cohorts of girly girls in swirling skirts.”
Summer, he hoped, would allow the more ambitious managers
time to up their game for the 1903-1904 season.
Meanwhile, the threat to Brooklyn’s theatrical future was
hinted at in an Ormsbee essay on May 8, when he responded to a suggestion about
redefining the policies of the Majestic and Bijou Theatres as high-priced
venues, which could work only if the residents of
Brooklyn would develop a pride in
their own town and would be content to wait for new plays here instead of rushing
over the river to Manhattan. The theaters are not the only Brooklyn interests
that suffer from the multiplying of bridges and tunnels in the larger borough. The
loss of the Brooklyn spirit is one of the most demoralizing influences at work
in the community, and it shows itself in many ways.
He notes how many Brooklynites, having become wealthy, moved
to Manhattan but kept their roots—including their friends—in Brooklyn, their
only connection to their new borough being the houses they owned or the rent they
paid. Their Manhattan weddings were filled with Brooklyn occupants who had crossed the bridge to get there. But when such new Manhattanites went to the theatre,
they did so there, and when their Brooklyn pals wanted to be seen at a play, they,
too, visited Manhattan, going to Brooklyn playhouses only when too lazy to dress
up or when they needed to save on their expenses. They recognized that the Broadway
productions were just as good when seen in Brooklyn, “but they insist that the audiences
in Manhattan are more interesting.”
So multiple high-priced Brooklyn theatres would be bad
business, Ormsbee insists, and only when Brooklyn’s population, spurred by the
progress of transit facilities, reached 3 million might there be enough of a
residual theatregoing base—even while others were going to Manhattan—to sustain
a few theatres doing high quality plays. These ruminations lead him to a robust
discussion of how a so-called National Arts Theatre, as described in a newly
issued manual, could help resolve the problem of presenting outstanding
productions of the best new and old plays in a not-for-profit environment, but
it is too detailed to spend more time on here. (The publication to which Ormsbee refers is National Art Society of New York, ed., Manual of the National
Art Theatre Society of New York, and is available online and in a reprint
from Palala Press, 2016.) Of course, the discussion has not ceased over the
past century and a quarter, during which the difficulties of realizing the dream
have been demonstrated again and again.
As for May 1904’s Brooklyn highlights, its stars included manly
stage hero and local product Robert Edeson, singer-actress Grace Studdiford,
and Black Patti. The Novelty Theatre continued its roller-coaster history by turning from touring combinations to vaudeville before the
season ended.
May 2-7, 1904
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Lady from Laramie
Broadway: The Sign of the Cross
Columbia: Sapho, East Lynne, Camille with
Richard Buhler
Folly: Wedded but No Wife
Gotham: Queen of the Highway
Grand Opera House: The Peddler, with Joe Welch
Montauk: Ranson’s Folly, with Robert Edeson, Laura
Hope Crews
Novelty: see below, vaudeville and burlesque
Park: A Hidden Crime
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Payton’s
Traveling Company
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Theatre) Little Lord
Fauntleroy
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Watson’s, Unique, Gayety, Feeney’s Fulton Street
2.
May 9-14, 1904
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Adrienne Lecouvreur
Broadway: The Show Girl
Columbia: King of Detectives
Folly: Out of the Fold, with Sylvia Bidwell
Gotham: Closed for the season
Grand Opera House: Kellar, the magician
Montauk: Red Feather, with Grace von Studdiford
Novelty: Closed for the season
Park: The Signal Lights of Port Arthur
Payton’s Lee Avenue: Closed for the season
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Theatre) The Crimes of
New York
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Watson’s, Unique, Gayety, Feeney’s Fulton Street
3.
May 16-21, 1904
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) A Bachelor’s Romance
Broadway: The Governor’s Son, with the Four Cohans
Columbia: Black Patti Troubadours
Folly: Shadows of a Great City
Grand Opera House: Closed for season
Montauk: Closed for
season
Park: The Little Mother
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Theatre) Camille
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Star,
Watson’s, Unique, Gayety, Feeney’s Fulton Street
4.
May 23-28, 1904
All legitimate theatres, and several vaudeville/burlesque
houses, closed for season
Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Unique, Star, Watson’s,
Orpheum
The remaining theatres would close up by the end of June,
while theatrical entertainment of the operetta, farce, and vaudeville genres
would occupy the cooler venues at Bergen, Manhattan, and Brighton Beach, many
featuring leading Broadway performers of the day. This is not to mention Coney
Island where Steeplechase and Luna Park were now joined by Dreamland, which
opened this month at a cost of $3,500,000.
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