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.
Links to all of 1904's posts can be found here.
When the Bijou, Majestic, and Lee Avenue Theatres put their
toes in the waters of the new season on August 21, the seashore shows presented
by the Manhattan Beach Theatre, Bostock’s Animal Arena, Luna Park, Dreamland,
Pain’s Fireworks, the Casino, and Brighton Beach Music Hall, as well as the
Boer War spectacle at Brighton Beach Park, were all still packing them in. They
wouldn’t close shop until late September, so, for a couple of weeks—even after the
official opening on Labor Day—theatregoers could find a robust assortment of
theatrical entertainment—mostly lightweight—in the borough’s north and south.
The first big combination to open, on August 22, was at the Majestic,
a musical called Buster Brown, about the boy whose story would inspire a
chain of children’s shoe stores. If you’re old enough, you may remember the
slogan, “I’m Buster Brown. I live in a shoe. Arf, arf. That’s my dog Tige. He
lives in there, too!” By Saturday, August 26, five other legitimate theatres
had opened, as well as five variety/burlesque houses, one of them called the
Alcazar, but previously known since its inception as the Columbia, once an
elite venue, but now doing burlesque. The Eagle of September 3 made this
helpful distinction between genres:
The difference between a
contemporary burlesque and an old-fashioned variety show is that the burlesque
has an introduction and commonly an after piece, which employs a chorus of
women dressed in tights or short skirts. Between these two is an olio of
vaudeville acts. The audiences are chiefly made up of men, as those of the old
variety shows used to be, and the men smoke [considered a deterrent to women’s/family attendance]. There are two “wheels” of burlesque houses in this country, over
each of which a succession of thirty-five or forty companies plays. The Alcazar
is the Brooklyn representative of the Empire or Western circuit, and the Star
and Gayety represent the Columbia, or Eastern circuit.
The gradual increase in vaudeville and burlesque houses (and "wheels" or circuits) was
concerning although few were sounding alarm bells about its effect on the
legitimate. But the rivalry among these non-legits was making waves. On September
10, for example, the Eagle reported a rumor that the Alcazar was
considering a return to combinations (complete touring productions), which its manager denied, blaming it on a
rival, while the week’s announcement that the license of Watson’s Cozy Corner
was made official got people to wondering if that would extend to its renamed
successor, the Nassau, which wasn’t the case.
Even with the addition of new plays for regular theatre,
like this season’s Montauk, the defection of others to vaudeville and burlesque
programs was beginning to catch attention. The legitimates’ loss last season to
vaudeville, and this season’s defection of the Columbia, was shared now as well
by East New York’s Gotham. The Novelty would not be reopening for a while
because it needed heavy repairs, but owner Percy G. Williams was said to be
planning to use it as yet another vaudeville theatre. Apologists tried to
excuse the shifts by noting how the first-class vaudeville houses usually
included name actors in one-act plays, which were, thought the Standard
Union, “generally quite equal to the average play in a popular-priced house
in all respects save length.”
So, Brooklyn entered the fall season of 1905 with Hyde &
Behman’s, the Unique, the Nassau, the Orpheum, the Star, the Gayety, the Gotham,
Keeney’s Fulton Street, the Alcazar, and, after a contretemps, the Amphion—nine theatres—focusing on vaudeville and burlesque, or some combination of them, and more possibly being considered.
Meanwhile, only eight playhouses, down from 12 a year or two earlier, were
showing legitimate theatre, the Bijou, the Broadway, the Folly, the Grand Opera
House, the Majestic, the “New” Montauk, Payton’s Lee Avenue, and Phillips’s
Lyceum. And only half of those were generally open to combinations, the other
four devoted to stock. (In November, thankfully, the Park would come back from
the dead with a new name, boosting the number to nine.)
Brooklyn seemed to be losing its grip on legitimate theatre.
Perhaps that’s why the Standard Union claimed on September 10 that “Brooklyn
to-day has fewer theatres in proportion to an enormous and growing population
than any other community in the land, and instead of worrying about
competition, the managers are wondering when and where the next houses are to
be built.”
The Alcazar/Columbia transformation was only the beginning
of a very busy season regarding theatre policies and politics, including the
birth of new theatres, the deaths of old ones, and the shifts from legitimate
to vaudeville/burlesque. As we’ve seen, it was a time when Brooklyn’s place in
the national competition between the monopolistic Theatrical Syndicate and the
laissez faire independents really heated up. This history of Brooklyn’s
theatres is obligated to record such developments, of course, so let’s start
with Brooklyn’s oldest theatre, the beloved Park, which opened in 1863, and
whose potential closing was announced in August.
News of trouble reached the public when its scheduled August
20 opening, with Lost In a Big City, was postponed because, as the papers
reported, renovations costing $10,000 undertaken after the Board of Health
ordered major safety fixes were not yet complete, and another week would be
needed. Both the Felix Campbell estate, which owned the place, and the lessees,
Hyde & Behman, famed local vaudeville managers, refused to pay for the redo.
So Hyde & Behman agreed to abandon the lease, which they’d held for several
years, and cancelled the combinations already booked, made through other local
managers, Stair and Havlin, proprietors of the Majestic and controllers of a
number of touring shows.
This, though, seems to have been a holding tactic; in fact, the
theatre’s very existence was threatened because it stood on real estate that
had become unusually valuable. Profit-seeking eyes could see it being far more
financially viable if it were turned to more conventional business uses. The
thought of losing this Brooklyn institution—continuously operating for 42
years—to office space led to eulogies about its fascinating history, one
covered extensively in my book Brooklyn
Takes the Stage.
However, speculation about its possible retention, and who
might take it over, kept floating about. Sure enough, it was snapped up by the
increasingly wide reach of the Shuberts, Lee and Jacob, whose brother, Sam, was
killed in a train crash only months before. In reality, the Shuberts, although
seen then as independent rivals of the syndicate, were on their own, similarly tight-gripped,
monopolistic pathway. Beginning in September, they made a $50,000 investment to
bring the old-fashioned Park up to modern standards and, as we shall see, would
eventually open the place with their name attached, in November. The Standard
Union hoped that, by its presence, “the habit of running over to the White
Light district of Manhattan for theatrical diversions may be checked.” Fat
chance.
Big news awaited as well with the hoopla over the arrival of
the New Montauk, the struggle to reopen of Keeney’s Fulton Street Theatre, and the
complex circumstances surrounding plans for Corse Payton’s Lee Avenue Theatre.
And then there were those damned legitimate dropouts that decided Brooklyn
needed even more vaudeville. The “New” Montauk was called “new” only to
differentiate it from the still-standing but now closed “old” Montauk, the elite,
high-priced theatre, built only 10 years earlier by Col. William E. Sinn, Brooklyn’s
most successful 19th-century manager, which was run by his daughter,
Mrs. Isabel-Hecht Sinn, after his death in 1899.
Let’s commence with actor-manager Corse Payton’s travails.
The difficulty of bringing syndicate-managed combinations to Brooklyn because
of the paucity of non-syndicate-controlled theatres was looking brighter in
mid-August because of arrangements Payton had made in mid-August with the independents,
namely David Belasco, Harrison Grey Fiske, and the Shuberts, who would get a
total of 15 weeks at the Lee Avenue. Payton’s Stock Company would play there on
alternate weeks, and move to a neighboring city’s—even Manhattan—Shubert house
when not in Brooklyn. That, at least, was the plan.
No advance schedule
was possible because the independent shows would play at their Manhattan homes
as long as audiences kept coming. A looming problem was whether Lee Avenue
theatregoers, used to Payton’s popular prices, would be comfortable coughing up
the extra money to see even the biggest stars. Hopefully, audiences would not
mind the ever-changing prices. Further, the presence of the big stars would
stimulate the trust to ship over its finest actors and shows to meet the
competition, assuring Brooklyn, dreamed the Eagle of September 3, “of
the best there is in the theatricals of the entire continent.”
But the promise of leading independent stars coming across
the river, like Mrs. Leslie Carter, Blanche Bates, Mrs. Fiske, Henrietta
Crosman, and even Sarah Bernhardt on her farewell tour, was irresistible. If all went well, Brooklynites would not have to travel into Manhattan to see these luminaries,
which had become increasingly necessary of late, after the burning down of the independent
Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1903.
Also, major visitations to the Academy had been risky, as
they added yet another competitor to the local shows available, and at a place
not on the list of the ordinary theatregoer, who often learned of a major
production there when it was midway through its brief run. Moreover, the Academy was too
large for dramatic performances, and ordinary-size audiences looked lost in it.
The inception of the current idea was in 1904 when Belasco successfully brought
Blanche Bates in The Darling of the Gods to the Lee Avenue, a procedure
many hoped would become more common.
The ascension of the Shuberts, with their burgeoning list of
theatres, now made it possible to house Payton’s actors when his theatre was
otherwise occupied. By early October, it would begin to look like the promise of
having the first-rate independents play at Corse Payton’s theatre may have had
some cracks, when it was revealed that the Shuberts, now controlling the Park,
would use that venue for the visit of, at the very least, Sarah Bernhardt, who clearly
would be a huge draw. (She never did.) We shall see who did come to Lee Avenue when we get to
it.
All was moving along swimmingly when trouble struck and the
authorities suddenly closed the Lee Avenue, just before a matinee, sending away
the audience, a decision that disturbed Payton for weeks. As officials from the
Health Department pored over every inch of his theatre, looking for
irregularities, he sat on a seat, a big, black cigar shoved into his mouth, watching
with a cynical smile. Overhead, a workman was installing a fanlight, and, wrote
the Daily Times that night, Payton was warned to move unless he wanted
to risk a cold chisel falling on his head.
Hearing him complain, an official asked why he hadn’t made
the repairs before, to which the flabbergasted actor-manager could only say,
What do you say? . . . Make the
repairs before? Why I have been doing nothing else but making repairs. What do
you think I have been camping out here ever since June 3 for? Do you think I
was rehearsing for Little Eva or Lord Fauntleroy? I haven’t done anything but
watch them make repairs. Repairs, nothing but repairs! And when I thought
everything was all right you come here and keep the people out. I ought to have
gone to the seaside and stayed there.
When a friend
suggested that might not be a bad idea, Payton replied that he was right,
adding, “I ought to go to some free country, like Russia, for instance.” As the
inspectors continued their busy work, he went outside to where several hundred
women and girls dressed in white were waiting patiently to find out what was
going on. Many were boosting the income of the store next door by buying ice cream.
Begged to explain the situation, he answered,
Well, you see, ladies, . . . there is a little skylight way up there . . . and the good gentlemen inside don’t think it is exactly what it ought to be. For that reason they have closed the theatre and deprived you of what I am sure would be a very enjoyable afternoon.
After Payton promised the ladies they’d all be refunded, the theatre opened that night, and the show went on. The reporter wondered, though, at all the fuss for something that was deemed safe at night but not in the afternoon. “It is a queer world.” Some days later, on September 3, Payton expanded amusingly in the Standard Union on the behavior of the officials, but I'm already running too long.
In case
you’re wondering if Payton's recent troubles might have had the syndicate behind
them, he, too, had that thought, but dismissed it: “It isn’t their way of doing
business. . . . It was just ignorance.” After saying which he turned to a child
actress to show her how to fire a pistol to kill the villain in a coming
production.
The Amphion's manager, William T. Grover, had a not dissimilar experience when the Health Department prevented his theatre from opening on September 11, claiming there was a problem with the transoms. The idea of covering the openings with a tarpaulin was disallowed but, even though it was raining, the performance would have been allowed to go on if Grover were willing to let it rain in on his audience and performers. Grover preferred to refund his audience or exchange their tickets. The affair meant a one-night delay in the season's opening.
Keeney’s Fulton Street Theatre debacle also involved the Health Department’s interference, when, as reported in the Eagle on September 19, a commissioner named Darlington waited until both the matinee and evening shows were sold out before closing the theatre. As with Payton, the required alterations allegedly were not finished. When manager Frank Keeney asked why he wasn’t informed earlier, he was told, “Oh, we put the notice on your door.” A disappointed crowd, hoping to witness the vaudeville debut of singer Blanche Chesebrough Scott, a society lady divorced from a prominent Brooklyn chemist named Roland B. Molineaux, had no choice but to disperse.
Keeney was fit to be tied. “It was an outrage. I don’t know why Commissioner Darlington is so set against Brooklyn. He hasn’t demonstrated any such zeal against theatres in Manhattan, where they have false exits.” Just as upset was his amateur star, who sang anyway, if only to the vacant house, continuing for half an hour as the all-female orchestra played away. Lyrics about picnics, daisies, and love fell on empty seats, apart from those taken by her second husband, Wallace D. Scott, serving as her manager, and a few others. A day later, the show finally opened.
Interest in the singer’s debut was stirred by her involvement in a sensational scandal at the turn of the century when Molineaux, a chemist resident in Brooklyn, living only a few blocks from Keeney’s, was found guilty of having poisoned two other people in 1898, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He was later acquitted, in 1902, on technical grounds, after a retrial. After her divorce, Blanche, branded a “temptress,” married her divorce attorney, the above-mentioned Scott. Following the Brooklyn attempt, she left the stage and lived out her life in South Dakota. The story has inspired multiple books and articles, and was also described in “Brownstoner,” the online Brooklyn site. But no one seems ever to have discussed her vaudeville experience.
The Eagle reporter present at all this notes that it would be her notoriety, not her voice, that might sustain her planned vaudeville tour (which seems not to have come off). “She sings better than many professional vaudeville folk, but you can hear better voices any Sunday in almost any church in Brooklyn. . . . She sang . . . with a marked weakness of voice, as if she were hoarse with cold. She is not so handsome as she was [during the trials]. She looks older now. [She was 32.]”
There is an addendum to this story. According to the Eagle on September 24, a Sunday, a press agent with time on his hands wrote up a story sent to all the newspapers that on Friday night, a bushy-bearded man had forced his way backstage to confront Mrs. Scott with legal papers declaring that she would be sued unless she removed from all posters and ads the name of her former husband, to which she readily agreed, which would require that everything be reprinted. Shown the story by an Eagle reporter, her husband was furious, shouting “It’s a ____ lie!” despite it having come from Keeney’s itself. He said it wasn’t necessary to check the story with his wife, as she’d never used Molineux’s name in this context, “so it’s fool tommyrot to say that anyone would try to stop her.”
Keeney was called for and, recognizing the handiwork of his press agent, tried to calm Scott down. “If my wife goes on in this singing business, she’s going to do it on her merits, and not on any notoriety she gets from her previous marriage.” Just then, they managed to snare the press agent, a Mr. Wensley, who fumbled through an explanation, denying that any papers were served, but stating that the bushy-bearded fellow told him, Wensley, “to stop using Molineaux’s name, or he would bring suit.” Discovering that the man had heard Mrs. Scott sing, he asked that that fact be mentioned, “by way of a compromise,” after which Keeney proceeded “to initiate [Mr. Scott] into some of the mysteries of theatrical publicity.”
We come at last to the most publicized item of the month, the opening of the “New” Montauk, at Hanover and Livingston. The “New” in quotes because it was not, nor would it ever be, officially part of the name, which was simply Montauk, even while the original theatre of that name, while closed, still bore it. The latter's fate was still up in the air despite claims that it would “never be reopened” (Eagle, September 3). The theatre was developed by former State Senator William H. Reynolds, a major Brooklyn real estate honcho of the day, whose press agentry claimed that this was “the most handsome playhouse in the United States.” Attention to its beauty and features—at a cost of $2 million—was bringing architects, artists, and managers from all over the country to observe it up close. With its bookings in the hands of the syndicate’s Klaw and Erlanger, it would open with George Edwardes’ London production of the operetta The Duchess of Dantzik following its 14 week-run at Daly’s Theatre in Manhattan the previous season. Evie Green and Holbrook Blinn, the latter as Napoleon, would head the same cast responsible for making it a hit.
Interest in its opening was marked by an auction of Brooklyn’s elite, where a box went for as much as $165 ($6,057 in 2025 terms!). The official opening was on September 25, delayed at the last minute from a week before. It was replacing a theatre widely considered among the “extraordinary playhouses of the world” (Citizen, September 24) but was lauded for even going beyond its predecessor in the perfection of its appearance and facilities, making Brooklyn “a unique place in the theatrical affairs of this country.”
Its stage was 45 feet deep and 90 wide; the proscenium arch was 38 feet wide and 39 high. These proportions allowed for the largest scale productions to fit comfortably. While its exterior was not particularly noteworthy, critics said, its interior was worthy of Brooklyn’s pride, with the floors raked downstairs and up to provide a perfect view of the stage from every seat. As usual, the reportage described much of the theatre in detail, too much, in fact, to be repeated here, aside from a few things, like the lavish, yet not gaudy, use of gold leaf, and the general coloring in brilliant tones of red and gold. The most modern mechanical contrivances were installed behind the curtain, the dressing rooms were expansive and numerous, 20 in all. Fire precautions were extensive, and there were parlors, restrooms, smoking, and “retiring” rooms. Elegance was everywhere. The architects were Kirby, Petit, and Green, and the décor was designed by Arnold and Locke.
Now, on with
the season!
1. August (19) 22-26
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Schoolmistress
Folly: The Ninety Nine (from Saturday, August 26)
Grand Opera House: My Tom Boy (from Saturday, August 26), with Lottie Williams
Majestic: Buster Brown (from Saturday, August 19)
Park: Lost in a Big City
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Liars, with Etta Reed Payton
Vaudeville and burlesque: Unique, Nassau, Gayety, Star, Alcazar (formerly the Columbia)
1.
August 28-September 2, 1905
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Prodigal Daughter
Broadway: The Virginian (from Saturday, September 1)
Folly: The Ninety and Nine (opened August 26)
Grand Opera House: My Tom Boy Girl, with Lottie
Williams (opened August 26)
Majestic: Buster Brown
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) For Her
Children’s Sake, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Fatal
Wedding
Vaudeville and burlesque: Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum,
Star, Gayety, Keeney’s Fulton Street, Alcazar, Novelty, Gotham
1.
September 4-9, 1905
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Matilda
Broadway: The Virginian, with Dustin Farnum
Folly: Buster Brown
Gotham: switches to vaudeville
Grand Opera House: David Harum, with William H.
Turner
Majestic: Babes in Toyland
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Belle
of Richmond, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Wedded, But No
Wife
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Amphion, Unique,
Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Keeney’s Fulton Street, Gotham
1.
September 11-16, 1905
.jpg)
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Men and Women
Broadway: Woodland
Folly: Fast Life in New York
Grand Opera House: Bankers and Brokers
Majestic: The Wizard of Oz, with Montgomery and Stone
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Man
from Mexico
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Nobody’s Darling
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Alcazar,
Gotham, Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety
.jpg)
.jpg)
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Pique
Broadway: The County Chairman, with Maclyn Arbuckle
Folly: My Tom Boy Girl, with Lottie Williams
Grand Opera House: Hearts of Gold, with Maurice
Freeman
Majestic: The Errand Boy, with Billy B. Van
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Eagle Tavern,
with Corse Payton, Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Down Our Way
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Nassau,
Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Alcazar, Gotham, Keeney's Fulton Street
1.
September 26-October 2, 1905
.jpg)
.jpg)
 |
Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) His Majesty and the Maid
Broadway: Love’s Lottery, with Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Folly: Bankers and Brokers
Grand Opera House: The Great Jewel Mystery, with the
Russell Brothers
Majestic: The Sambo Girl, with Eva Tanguay
New Montauk: The Duchess of Dantzik, with Evie Green,
Holbrook Blinn
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company)
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Sign of the
Four
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Nassau,
Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Gotham, Alcazar, Keeney’s Fulton Street
No comments:
Post a Comment