1905: NOVEMBER

November 1905 experienced several historically memorable events aside from the reelection to the presidency of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. Iconic theatrical moments of the month would include the Broadway premiere of Scottish playwright James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, which became a perennial favorite and continues to be performed worldwide on stage and in various media transformations. Its first American star was Maude Adams (Nina Boucicault originated the title role in London a year before), who played it on the road or in Broadway revivals until 1916, making her connection with it as indelible as that of Joseph Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle. She would not, however, bring it to Brooklyn until December 1907, so we’ll have to wait until then, dear reader, for accounts of her reception.

Another Broadway sensation of the month (it opened at the Garrick on October 30) was the commercially less successful but enormously controversial Mrs. Warren's Profession, by George Bernard Shaw. Its heroine’s former profession as a prostitute was considered so scandalous the play was shut down by the police and its cast and producer arrested a day after the opening, on October 31, for “offending public decency.” It was an example of what some called Comstockery, after Anthony Comstock, self-appointed censor and head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. 

The ensuing court case in the spring of 1906 found the defendants innocent of the charges, but the run was not resumed until 1907, when the play, like Peter Pan, but half a year earlier, also came to Brooklyn, as we will see. In November of 1905, however, talk of it filled the borough’s newspaper columns and social discourse. That talk is fascinating to read now for what it reveals of even the most liberal minds during the conservate late Victorian era. It would, however, pull us too far from our main interest here in Brooklyn’s theatre if we went down that path.

I can’t resist adding, though, that Hamilton Ormsbee of the Eagle, not only castigated Shaw for unnecessarily spoiling Mrs. Warren’s Profession by including indecencies purely to raise eyebrows, a widely shared opinion. He also prognosticated that Shaw was destined to be “merely a passing sensation across the face of the drama, while Ibsen . . . remains a permanent force in the theater and one of the half dozen greatest dramatists.”

On November 3, for example, Ormsbee, argued that a decade earlier the general opinion was that theatre existed for amusement, not education or enlightenment; only two Shaw plays had been seen in Brooklyn to oppose that view. Now, though, when a group of men were canvassed about the play's closing, those over 50 were against it those younger for it.

The idea of theatre as an art had been on the rise recently, largely because of the influence of Germany, where theatre was treated seriously and Ibsen plays still not seen in the USA were familiar parts of the repertory. Paris, too, where plays about sex predominated, was becoming increasingly serious about the theatre of ideas, even if such thoughtful work was not making anyone much money. And, like the dramatic readings and lectures of the Brooklyn Institute, they inspired far more discussion than the farces and romantic dramas that formed so much of the contemporary repertoire. Abroad, such educational and literary works were staged; in America, they were read.

Another current Manhattan play cited for its potentially scandalous content (the heroine appears, at his order, before a man clad only in her cloak), although approved for its literary and intellectual heft, was Belgian Maurice Maeterlinck’s Monna Vanna. Because of its decorous treatment of free love, it didn’t kick up the censor’s dust and came to Brooklyn with no fuss in March 1906.

This was the first full month of the newly renovated and renamed Shubert-Park Theatre (although the press often simply used its old name of the Park), which opened on Saturday night, November 4, with Miss Kitty Bellairs, a recent but far from new period comedy. For all the promise of the Shuberts’ independence there was nothing particularly challenging about the shows it was bringing to their new Brooklyn venue. Commercialism reigned over art.

The once elite old Montauk, now leased from New York City by William T. Grover, who also operated the Amphion and Brighton Beach Music Hall, was renamed the Imperial Theatre. It had its moth balls removed to open on Saturday night, November 25, with a popular-priced policy of sandwiching a stock play between an opening and a closing vaudeville show, a policy followed by the Proctor theatre chain in New York. It was a plan designed to differentiate it from the theatres that specialized in either vaudeville, stock, or combinations, by creating a show with much more variety than its rivals. The Shuberts were deterred from leasing it—despite its being twice as large as the Shubert-Park—because a clause in the lease allowed the city to vacate the lease with 90 days’ notice, making it unwise to spend much money on renovations.

Disregarding the clause, Grover took over at what was thought a bargain, redecorated it, and sought to have his visible staff of ushers and pages look as alike as possible by advertising for applicants who “were exclusively dark-haired, no blondes or redheads being desired,” according to the Standard Union of November 5. His stock company included Edward Arden, Catherine Countiss, Julie Herne, Louise Rial, and others.

The Saturday night opening, however, was almost ruined by the officious behavior of Health Commissioner Darlington, who seemed to have an animus toward the well-being of Brooklyn theatres, as was seen in previous entries for the fall season. Once again the officials arrived prepared to close the theatre down for alleged infractions, but Grover, anticipating trouble, had secured all the necessary documents from the authorities to prevent any such interference. A detailed article in the Eagle of November 26 explains the conflict between the manager and the commissioner, who was complaining that the knee room between seats should be 32”, not 31”, and the manager questioning what that had to do with issues of health. Injunctions and court hearings were arranged, the show went on, and the issues were resolved in court on Monday. At one point, Grover vented:

If there was anything wrong with the theater from the standpoint of public health it might make a difference, but as far as I know there are no germs concealed about the premises, the plumbing is tip-top, the ventilation is simply great and all the sanitary vents are open. . . . The Building Department and the Fire Department have passed on the house, and I have affidavits from these officials stating that there is nothing at all wrong with the Imperial, and that it is easily the safest theater possible. They don’t interfere with the theaters in Manhattan, and some of them are rattle-traps, but they think they can bulldoze the people in Brooklyn. But I guess not.

And, while we're on the subject of theatre openings I must mention the reopening of the Garden Theatre on Manhattan Avenue, adding yet another vaudeville house to the scene. It was short lived.

Finally, Ben Greet’s company finished their five-performance stay at Association Hall, presented by the Brooklyn Institute, stretched out between October and November, which succeeded not only financially but also intellectually and artistically in stimulating a great deal of thought about the benefits and drawbacks of Shakespeare done without scenery. There were things about the staging that the critics admired and things they dismissed, and the acting, with exceptions, was not particularly memorable. John Corbin of the New York Sun summed up his impressions, after seeing Macbeth, as quoted in the Citizen on November 26:

The signal fact with regard to [Greet’s] productions is that they present the text entire, with the scenes played in the order in which they were written to be played, and run off with all desirable rapidity. Of the effect of the performance on the audience there was no question. Applause was frequent and spontaneous, and when the fighting climax approached many affrighted ladies got up and left—a tribute seldom paid to Shakespeare when the narrative is cut, distorted and dragged out to make way for supposedly effective scenery.

  November 6-11, 1905

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Robert Emmet

Broadway: Little Johnny Jones, with George M. Cohan

Folly: Girls Will Be Girls, with Al Leech

Grand Opera House: Edmund Burke, with Chauncey Olcott

Majestic: Checkers, with Hans Robert

New Montauk: Pearl and the Pumpkin

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Village Postmaster

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Her Mad Marriage

Shubert-Park: Sweet Kitty Bellairs, with Bertha Galland (opened Saturday, November 4)

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Gotham, Alcazar, Keeney’s Fulton Street

November 13-18, 1905

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) A Nutmeg Match

Broadway: Rip Van Winkle, with Thomas Jefferson

Folly: Queen of the Highbinders

Grand Opera House: Napoleon the Great, Richeliu, “The Bells,” Othello, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Thomas E. Shea

Majestic: In New York

New Montauk: The College Widow, with Frances Ring

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Price of Honor

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Worst Woman in London

Shubert-Park: The Genius and the Model

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Gotham, Alcazar, Keeney’s Fulton Street

November 20-25, 1905.

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

Broadway: David Garrick, The Brighter Side, The Middleman, The Fool’s Revenge, The Professor’s Love Story, Tom Pinch, with E.S. Willard

Folly: Napoleon the Great, Richelieu, “The Bells,” Othello, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Thomas E. Shea

Grand Opera House: Me, Him and I

Imperial: (former "old" Montauk, with stock company) Lord and Lady Algy

Majestic: The Belle of the West, with Florence Bindley

New Montauk: Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) More Than Queen, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Girl Engineer

Shubert-Park: Mrs. Temple’s Telegram, with William Morris

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Gotham, Alcazar, Keeney’s Fulton Street, Garden

November27-December 2, 1905

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Wife

Broadway: The Pearl and the Pumpkin

Folly: Me, Him and I

Grand Opera House: Simple Simon Simple

Imperial: (former "old" Montauk; with stock company) Lord and Lady Algy

Majestic: Down the Pike, with Johnny and Emma Ray

“New” Montauk: Miss Dolly Dollars, with Lulu Glaser

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Arrah-na-Pogue, with Corse Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Why Girls Go Wrong

Shubert-Park: The Winning Girl

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Amphion, Unique, Nassau, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Gotham, Alcazar, Keeney’s Fulton Street