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.
It wasn’t long into May 1905 before Brooklyn theatres began
to shut down in the face of the oncoming summer, when the borough’s shorefront amusements—to
which I’ll return—would draw audiences away from the stuffy playhouse interiors.
The attractions of Coney Island—referring not only to itself but loosely to Brooklyn’s
three major beach resorts of nearby Brighton, Bergen, and Manhattan Beach—opened
officially on May 13, although many attractions, including Steeplechase (sometimes spelled Steeple Chase), had
been open for some time. It was a lousy day weather-wise, and business dragged, but not for long.
The regular theatres of the Western and Eastern Districts, as
well as the indoor ones in Manhattan (which also had several rooftop venues), knew
the amount of time left before their patrons left for sea-breeze amusements would
soon be gone. (While all mainstream Brooklyn theatres closed for the summer, a small
number of popular shows remained open on Broadway.) After all, people not only
from Brooklyn but from far and near would be flocking to a massive recreation
of the Boer War, produced by William Brady, in the huge Brighton Beach Park; to
the pyrotechnical shows of Pain’s Fireworks in Manhattan Beach, which simulated
the Battle of Port Arthur during the recent Russo-Japanese War; to high-class
vaudeville and comic opera, at large theatres like the Bergen Beach Casino, the
Brighton Beach Music Hall, and the Manhattan Beach Theatre, and to countless other
visual and aural attractions, mechanical and scenic, not to mention musical and
comedic.
On second thought, perhaps one more might be squeezed in,
Bostock’s Arena, a popular wild animal show in Coney Island. There, on June 22,
a pretty, 16-year-old girl from the Bath Beach neighborhood named Bertine Farnworth,
who dreamed of going on the stage, had convinced the Bostock management to let her
dance among the lions. Her parents, chancing to learn of her debut, rushed to
the arena with an officer in tow and forced the defiant girl to leave, the
management meanwhile explaining that the girl, whose persistence had overcome
their objections, had lied about her age and claimed she had no parents. During
two weeks of rehearsals, she had shown sufficient talent to be hired, being
billed as Mlle. Bertine. We don’t know what punishment she suffered from her
parents, but, given how frantic they were at Bostock’s, she may have been safer
among the lions.
Topping all off were the three grand amusement centers of Steeplechase,
Luna Park, and Dreamland (which included a spectacular recreation of the 1900
Galveston flood), remarkable tourist destinations that make today’s Coney Island,
for all its attractions, look depressingly scrawny by comparison. The crowds
kept growing even though Nathan’s Famous would not open its hotdog emporium for
another 11 years. Feltman’s filled the hotdog bill until then. And it wouldn’t be
until 1923 that the great Riegelmann Boardwalk would be installed.
A big problem, though, was the relative inferiority of pre-subway
transportation to carry there the hundreds of thousands seeking fun and sun on
the surf and sand but with limited resources for getting them. Excursion boats were
one major form of transportation, although electric streetcars (trolley cars), and both
surface and elevated steam railroads did their best to transport the masses. Some
resorts included the fare in the price of admission. Since getting there was
said to be half the fun, here’s how a Brooklyn family would have gotten to Luna
Park from downtown in 1905:
Step 1: Getting to the Line
The family would leave Borough Hall and walk a few blocks to
catch the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) elevated at Sands Street or another
nearby terminal. They would buy their tickets—maybe 5 cents a ride, though some lines
charged more for the longer trip to Coney Island.
Step 2: The Train Ride
They board the West End Line (or, alternatively, the
Brighton Line). The train is a steam railroad converted to elevated
service—wooden cars, open platforms, and plenty of soot and cinders. The ride
takes 30–40 minutes, rattling through neighborhoods, then across stretches of
flat, sandy, half-rural Brooklyn. On summer Saturdays, trains are crowded—men
in straw hats and linen suits, women in summer dresses, children craning to see
the approaching ocean.
Step 3: Arrival at Coney Island
The train pulls into one of the Coney Island
stations—depending on the line, it could be West End Terminal, Brighton Beach
Station, or Culver Depot. These stations are large, noisy, thronged with
barkers, excursionists, and the smell of roasting peanuts and sea air.
Step 4: Walk to Luna Park
The family steps off into the crush of the crowd. They pass
signs pointing to Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, and Luna Park. They thread
their way down Surf Avenue, packed with beer halls, shooting galleries, fortune
tellers, and food vendors. After 5–10 minutes, they reach the glittering
entrance towers of Luna Park, glowing even in the afternoon sun, with promises
of a magical spectacle once night falls and the electric lights blaze.
Step 5: First Treats and Amusements
Perhaps they stop for a nickel hot dog. The children beg for
a ride on the miniature railway or the shoot-the-chutes water slide, while the
parents marvel at the towers of Luna Park, waiting for dusk when the whole
fantasy city will be lit by hundreds of thousands of bulbs.
Coney Island in 1905 was an urban treasure of which the Eagle
said, on May 14:
Here's to Coney, the refresher,
inspirer, and invigorator of the summer millions who so sorely need a place of
refuge from the heat, the rush, the worry of steaming streets and suffocating
flats. May all her Saturdays and Sundays till October be passed in unflecked
sunshine; may all her rains come on Mondays or between midnight and eleven o’clock
in the morning; may her treasuries grow fatter, her frankfurters spicier, and
her popcorn sweeter all through the coming months. Coney, with her salt
breezes, offers that prevention of disease which is better than cure and, with
her sparkle and glitter and gayety, an antidote to worry which is never known
to fail. The town is incomparably better for her nearness, and may her shadow
never grow less.
We now must put away our parasols, walking sticks, and
bathing costumes to return to the more conventional playhouses of downtown and
uptown Brooklyn as the dog days descended. The Bijou, as usual, lasted longest,
not closing until late June, with the Spooner sisters continuing their sibling
rivalry as popular costars, and the Broadway management was bold enough after
closing its regular season of touring combinations to add four weeks with a
stock company run by important actor-director-manager Frank Reicher, including
Sidney Toler. Toler, already known in Brooklyn as a popular leading man with an
earlier stock company, would one day achieve movie fame, especially as one of several
Caucasians to play Charlie Chan, the Chinese American detective.
Closed for other reasons, though, was Greenpoint’s Garden Theatre,
the 300-seat vaudeville house opened by Charles E. Blaney in this out-of-the-way
neighborhood nearly four months earlier after lengthy struggles with the building
authorities reluctant to approve so small a theatre. Blaney, holding a long
lease, decided to use the property to store scenery from his other enterprises
until conditions became more favorable. He could have saved his breath.
A few familiar actors in familiar shows visited the borough,
like Edna May in The School Girl, May Irwin in Mrs. Black Is Back,
and Rose Melville in Sis Hopkins, still going strong after five or six
seasons on the road; she’d keep at it for roughly 26 consecutive seasons, into
the 1920s. Melville, although not as well remembered, was as identified with Sis
as were Joseph Jefferson (who had died just a month earlier) with Rip Van
Winkle, and James O’Neill with the Count of Monte Cristo.
Other name actors included William Morris (not the
contemporaneous agent of that name) in Mrs. Temple’s Telegram, brilliant
Viennese musical comedy soprano Fritzi Scheff in a two-show repertory, comedian
Lew Fields—heading his own company after splitting with longtime partner Joe
Weber—in It Happened in Nordland, and musical star Elsie Janis in The
Little Duchess. This last was part of a four-week, end-of-season series of
comic operas at the Orpheum, temporarily abandoning vaudeville for this purpose.
Finally, the most memorable event from an historical point
of view was the engagement at Teller’s Broadway Theatre in Williamsburg of
Jacob Adler, the great Yiddish actor, playing Shylock, in Yiddish, opposite the
English-speaking stock company playing a month’s engagement there. The Shylock of
the paterfamilias of the Adler acting dynasty—notably Stella and Luther—deserves
our attention. It was his Brooklyn debut, apart from a single benefit performance.
Adler's Brooklyn reviews were all positive, the Eagle, whose
report of June 20 is the most detailed, advising readers of the importance of
their seeing it. The critic said this Shylock was as revolutionary for its time as was
Charles Macklin’s in the 18th-century when he got rid of the traditional
red wig and “Jew-baiting business” to play “the Jew that Shakespeare drew,” a
path followed by leading Shakespeareans afterward. Arguing that these
interpretations removed the play from its “poetic essentially Elizabethan
comedy,” the critic noted that Adler “transforms the play into a prose tragedy
in which Shylock is a highly realistic figure of the [large city] ghetto.”
Oddly, the writer [like his colleague at the Daily Times]
claims Adler was acting in German, but this seems to have been a fairly common
error of the time. Traces of the old Jew-baiting business were apparent early
on, possibly to raise a laugh among an audience quickly able to recognize “the
customs of the ghetto,” thereby adding “greatly to the vividness of the
performance.” I will quote the critic at some length to give a sense of Adler’s
presence, which avoided the kind of “sordid and commonplace” effect such an
approach might have led to with a good but lesser talent.
There is nothing routine about Adler.
He is an actor of power and imagination. A single part of his leaves the hearer
in some doubt whether he is a great tragedian, as [Sir Henry] Irving is, but he
is at least a character actor of tremendous force and picturesqueness,
eclipsing in that direction everybody of our time except Irving. By the side of
this Shylock, for example, [Richard] Mansfield’s seems like an impressionist
sketch act over against a portrait by Franz Hals or even by Rembrandt. Perhaps
the thing which contributes most to the sense of solidity and verity in this
Shylock is Adler’s free and masterly use of gesture [,which is much like the
plasticity of hand demonstrated by certain Italian actors of the critic’s
experience]. . . . His voice is large
and resonant, but not remarkable, save in the tragic intensity of one or two
outcries. His reading lacks utterly to English ears the dignity and elevation
which come from the cadences of Shakespearean blank verse, but it atones somewhat
for this loss by certain exaggerations of extreme subtlety in the earlier
scenes where the bargain with Antonio is being struck. Adler’s Shylock is a
type of the Hebrew race, but the actor does not shirk in the least the fact
that the bargain is the device of cruel hatred for Antonio. . . . The final quality
of the actor comes out in the scene with Tubal after the flight of Jessica,
which has never been played with such a wealth of pathos and such convincing
illusion. . . . Some of the detail which
makes the earlier scenes picturesque falls away in the trial scene which gains
in dignity and tragic force by its simplicity. [Some moments are reminiscent of
Irving,] but the climax is his own. Instead of leaving the court a a stripped
and broken old man, the beaten Shylock raises himself by a mighty effort,
gathers his gaberdine proudly about him and stumbles out, tottering, but with
head erect and face half turned to his enemies; the type of a race which though
beaten to earth will yet rise from defeat. . . . Adler is an actor of almost
the highest rank. Men like Salvini and Irving overtop him, but if his other
parts are as strong as his Shylock few other actors do.
The Standard Union said the audience was so gripped
it half rose in its seats at certain moments.
Grotesque in his make-up, awe-inspiring in his Yiddish dialect, Jacob Adler presented a picture at once weird and wonderful. Not once in all his lines did he abandon the sardonic attitude of Shylock toward the Christians, and portrayed the wrath and heaped the imprecations with praiseworthy fidelity. His work in the courtroom scene was wonderful. It has often been said that Jacob Adler had attained the supreme height of his art. But yet with each performance he seems to rise above his previous triumphs, though one may not expect him to do very much better, so nearly perfect was his acting last night.
For the record, Sidney Toler was an eloquent Bassanio, and Meta
Maynard was an emotional Portia, at her best in the trial scene.
1. May 1-6, 1905
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Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Tom Moore
Broadway: The School Girl, with Edna May
Columbia: (American Stock Company)
Folly: Sis Hopkins, with Rose Melville
Gotham: Darkest Russia
Grand Opera House: Arizona
Majestic: The Strollers
Montauk: Fatinitza, Boccacio, with
Fritzi Scheff
Novelty: Closed for the season
Park: Nobody’s Darling
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The
Private Secretary, with Corse Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Tie
That Binds
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde and Behman’s, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum, Watson’s, Star, Keeney’s Fulton Street, Amphion, Garden
(closed)
2.
May 8-13, 1905
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Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Broadway: Mrs. Temple’s Telegram, with William
Morris
Columbia: (American Stock Company) Closed for the season
Folly: Arizona
Gotham: Closed for the season
Grand Opera House: Closed for the season
Majestic: The Silver Slipper
Montauk: Mrs. Black Is Back, with May Irwin
Park: The Peddler
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Ten
Nights in a Barroom
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) A Prisoner
of War
Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde and Behman’s, Gayety,
Unique, Orpheum, Watson’s, Star, Keeney’s Fulton Street, Amphion (closed)
3.
May 15-20, 1905
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Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Polly of the Circus
Broadway: It Happened in Nordland, with Lew Fields
Folly: The Millionaire Detective
Majestic: The Show Girl
Montauk: Closed for the season
Park: The Span of Life
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The
Colleen Bawn
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) An Orphan’s
Prayer
Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Orpheum, Star (others
closed)
4.
May 22-27, 1905
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Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) 7-20-8
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Camille, with Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Little Church
Around the Corner
Vaudeville and burlesque: Orpheum, Gayety, Star
5.
May 29-June 3, 1905
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Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Shaughraun
Broadway: (Broadway Dramatic Company) Barbara Frietchie, with Sidney Toler, Catherine Countiss
Orpheum: The Little Duchess, with Elsie Janis
(begins four-week season of comic opera)
Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The
Three Guardsmen, with Corse Payton, Etta Reed Payton
Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Bounty Jumpers
Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Star
6.
June 5-10, 1905
Bijou: The Austrian Dancer
Broadway: (Broadway Dramatic Company) The Christian
Orpheum: The Chimes of Normandy
Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Star
7. June 12-17, 1905
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Bijou: Love in Harness
Broadway: (Broadway Dramatic Company) Old Heidelberg
Orpheum: The Wedding Day
8.
June 19-24, 1905
Broadway: The Merchant of Venice, with Jacob Adler
Orpheum: The Bohemian Girl
9.
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