1906: APRIL

 

All of Brooklyn’s 21 theatres (nine of them legit) remained open through April 1906, but closings would follow apace in May as the weather heated up and pleasure seekers headed for the multitude of beachfront entertainments, including the lighter realms of theatre. Scanning the month’s offerings for novelties that stand out from the conventional ones, including return visits of familiar road shows and unexciting familiars at the stocks (unless you consider yet another version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin exciting), we aver that the month’s most memorable production was The Clansman, at the Broadway Theatre.

This was Thomas Dixon’s racially charged melodrama based on his best-selling novels, The Clansman and The Leopards’ Spots, about the Ku Klux Klan. The drama was widely considered among the most controversial works of the day. Its importance lies not in its qualities as theatrical art but in its political subtext regarding racial issues during the Reconstruction era. The story, by a former Baptist clergyman of New York City, raised in South Carolina, was intrinsically sensational enough for it to be the basis of D.W. Griffith’s epic 1916 movie, Birth of a Nation, considered one of the most important, pathbreaking silent films of its era.

Only one other April presentation worthy of comparison was the visit of Mrs. Fiske to the Shubert in the title role (one of her greatest) of Becky Sharp, based on Thackery’s classic 1848 novel, Vanity Fair. Both plays will be more fully described below.

As regards the Brooklyn theatre scene, Corse Payton’s Lee Avenue Theatre Stock Company was celebrating the beginning of its sixth consecutive year since arriving in 1900, its production—opening on April 9—being the once controversial, now old-hat, Sapho, which had made British-born star Olga Nethersole a household name. This would be the company’s 3,411^th performance, a record unmatched by any other American stock company at the time. In addition to dressing up the playhouse inside and out, the week would also include famous dancer Le Domino Rouge and her Shetland ballet of eight women doing their famous mirror dance; several vaudeville acts were also set to appear.

The theatre’s success was a pleasant surprise; skeptics back in 1900 thought a weekly stock company charging only 10, 20, and 30 cents in the Eastern District’s antiquated Lee Avenue Theatre would soon go bust, especially under such a young manager as Corse Payton. But his own abilities, especially in light comic parts, and that of his wife, Etta Reed Payton, a versatile leading lady, who offered her female patrons well-attended afternoon “pink” teas on the stage itself, kept the ship afloat, even when the Paytons' failed at running a second stock company, headed by Mrs. Payton, on Fulton Street in the Western District. In actuality, Payton was not a particularly notable actor, but his hard work and geniality led the neighborhood to call him “the Richard Mansfield of Williamsburg.”

Another borough theatre in the news was just a dream, but at least the idea of it made for good press when William T. Grover of the Imperial (the old Montauk) announced his plans to build a new theatre, the Coliseum, when the Imperial was demolished--as planned--to make room for Flatbush Avenue Extension. As I’ve noted before, the Imperial would be moved across the street in 1907 in a major engineering feat, but, beginning its new life as the Crescent Theatre, not taken down for decades.

The political earthquake represented by The Clansman, which had stirred fiery passions in the South, was familiar to Brooklyn readers from the book’s having been serialized in the Eagle. The Standard Union claimed that it was “The most widely discussed, the most strongly attacked and warmly defended play ever produced in this country, with the single exception of 'Uncle Tom’s Cabin.'”

I typically don’t provide detailed plot summaries but The Clansman’s social and historical premises are such that some readers may appreciate one:

The Clansman is set in the American South during and after the Civil War, focusing on Reconstruction. The plot centers around the Stoneman family, particularly Elsie Stoneman, daughter of Austin Stoneman, a congressional leader who pursues harsh policies to control the South through black enfranchisement and Radical Republican power. Elsie falls in love with Ben Cameron, who is part of a southern aristocratic family and becomes a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.

The story portrays the South suffering under Reconstruction governments led by freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags, showing the Camerons’ diminished social status and wealth. Key tragic events include the offstage suicide of Flora Cameron due to her unwanted advances by Gus, a former slave. The Ku Klux Klan, depicted as heroic defenders of white Southern society, enacts vigilante justice by hunting and lynching Gus.

Tensions intensify when black political power causes conflicts, including an incident where two black men impose themselves on Margaret Cameron, leading to a violent confrontation defended by Ben and Philip Cameron. Ben is wrongfully imprisoned and nearly executed, but the Klan intervenes to save him. The play culminates in a dramatic rescue of Elsie by the Klan when she is held captive by Silas Lynch, a mulatto South Carolina lieutenant governor who desires her. The Klan's actions restore control to the white Southern community, and the play ends with a victorious and orderly white South reclaiming its power.

The characters symbolize larger political and racial conflicts of the Reconstruction era, with Austin Stoneman representing the Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, and the Ku Klux Klan portrayed as noble saviors fighting black rule and miscegenation. The play is highly controversial for its white supremacist themes and its romanticization of the Ku Klux Klan. It explores several main themes centered around racial and political conflict during Reconstruction after the Civil War. The key themes is white supremacy and racial control: the depiction of the Ku Klux Klan is depicted as heroic defenders of white Southern society against perceived threats from black political power, Radical Republicans, carpetbaggers, and scalawags. The play promotes the idea that white dominance and racial segregation are natural and necessary for social order.

In its preopening explanation, the Standard Union (April 15) wrote:

The hero . . ,. Is a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Opposed to him are an ambitious mulatto and a Northern abolitionist whose daughter the young white man seeks in marriage. In a climax of terrific power the Ku Klux Klan vote the death of a black man who has frightened a white child into leaping over a precipice. The last act shows the mulatto confronting the abolitionist, his counselor and protector, with a demand for the hand of the latter’s daughter. The effect is electrical. The old man spurns the presumptuous suitor and says that four thousand years of Caucasian development have fitted his own family for something better than to end in a brood of mulatto brats. This rouses the mulatto to fury, but the timely arrival of the Ku Klux, headed by the girl’s white lover, saves the mistaken fanatic and rescues his daughter from a compulsory and degrading misalliance. Mr. Dixon has offered to forfeit one thousand dollars and withdraw “The Clansman” from the boards if any one can prove that the picture of the historical conditions in South Carolina in 1867 is not strictly accurate. Genuine black-face comedy of the mirth-provoking sort is interspersed with lively action, sentiment and pathos.

Brooklyn Life (April 14) further explained that:

Some of the material is excellent, especially as to the political tyranny of the South Carolina negroes over the whites at the time of, and immediately following, the election of 1867. This tyranny, the aid which it received from northern fanaticism and the pecuniary straights [sic] to which fine southern families were reduced at this time would alone have given Mr. Dixon the means to make a strong play but he has added the more startling features of the Ku Klux Klan and a negro outrage of the bases sort, sparing few details.

Finally, the Eagle review (April 17) had this to say:

It deals with the negro problem—that is, one side of it—as viewed by the author and not as publicists, educators and philanthropists of less radical and sectional ideas are working toward a solution. The expediency of agitating the race issue is brought into question for there are many people who do not agree with Mr. Dixon that unless we adopt the plan of the colonization of the negro we will face within fifty years a civil-racial war, “the most horrible and cruel that ever blackened the annals of the world.” He endeavors to teach the truth of Abraham Lincoln’s words that there is a difference between the white and black races that will forever forbid them living together on terms of political and social equality, and he seeks a national unity through knowledge of the truth. The negro is shown at his worst, with no glamor of his traditional faithfulness.

The period deals with the Reconstruction days when the newly freed slaves were bewildered by the new order of things and their childishness, ignorance and helplessness were preyed upon by unscrupulous persons, and the worst in them were given free rein by the disorder. So much for the story, a review of which has no place in this column, except so far as it affects the form of the versatile Southerner’s work. After a study of stage technique of two years, and several months in condensing the dialogue he produced a melodrama, turgid in spots, halting in others and with an evident and continual straining after situations and scenes. It has a dramatic force of a fundamental order and strong and virile scenes, but its real power as a play is produced  by the creation  of a racial sympathy, coupled with tense moments and some moving lines and sentiment and picturesque views.

The production had a notable initial performance in Brooklyn. The audience was so great that the orchestra was ousted to the lobby to make room for additional chairs. . . . Mr. Dixon was called out to make a speech and between the acts discussed politics with prominent politicians who occupied the boxes.

On a lighter note, Langdon Mitchell’s adaptation of Becky Sharp was the first to be universally approved as a successful dramatization of a novel that cried out to be put on stage. But it was also Mrs. Fiske’s performance that helped audiences make it a popular favorite. I will simply quote the Eagle to demonstrate the admiration she evoked:

This actress was simply born for this part. She has the                intellectual subtlety and audacity without which Becky would be impossible. Her performance last night was what it long has been—buoyant, brilliant, resolute and flashing—and played at a speed to take your breath away. If Mrs. Fiske were an ordinary actress her Becky when thrown off by Rawlon [John Mason] would have gone to pieces in a pitiable appeal for sympathy. No doubt such a scene would be extremely effective, but it would not have been Becky, who was destined to fight so long as the breath of life was left to her. Mrs. Fiske is the real fighting Becky Thackeray drew, without one gleam of moral sense in her composition, and for that reason she will be able to delight auditors so long as she chooses to play this comedy.

Other theatrical thoughts of the month, as expressed in the newspapers, pointed to the current trend for plays about the pioneer West, especially when “Indians” were involved, or for plays set on college campuses. Robert Edeson’s current hit, Strongheart, about an Indian college athlete (several years before Jim Thorpe appeared on the scene), was returning to town so audiences could get both subjects in a single play. Also trending were straight “dramatic farces,” funny light comedies that didn’t rely on musical specialties and pretty girls, like Mrs. Temple’s Telegram and The Man on the Box, both to be seen this month on Brooklyn stages.

April 2-7, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Banker’s Daughter

Broadway: It Happened in Nordlund, Lew Fields and company

Folly: Young Buffalo, King of the Wild West

Grand Opera House: The Boy Behind the Gun

Majestic: York State Folks

New Montauk: The Ham Tree, with McIntyre and Heath.

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) When London Sleeps, with Corse Payton, Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Road to Ruin

Shubert: The Man on the Box, with Henry E. Dixey, Carlotta Nillson

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Amphion, Garden, Imperial, Novelty

April 9-14, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Broadway: The Rogers Brothers in Ireland, with the Rogers Brothers

Folly: The Boy Behind the Gun, with Harry Clay Blaney

Grand Opera House: At Piney Ridge

Majestic: The Little Duchess, with Countess Olga von Hatzfeldt

New Montauk: Strongheart, with Robert Edeson

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Sapho

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Romeo and Juliet, with Emma Bell as Romeo

Shubert: Mrs. Temple’s Telegram, with Margaret Drew, Harry Conor

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Amphion, Garden, Imperial, Novelty

April 16-21, 1906

Amphion: The Minister’s Daughters

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Mayor of Cornville

Broadway: The Clansman

Folly: In Old Kentucky

Grand Opera House: Chinatown Charlie

Majestic: The Old Homestead, with William Lawrence

New Montauk: The Duel, with Otis Skinner, Guy Standing, Fay Davis, Eben Plympton

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) On the Wabash

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Tracked Around the World

Shubert: Julie Bonbon, with Clara Lipman, Louis Mann

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Garden, Imperial, Novelty

April 23-28, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Lost River

Broadway: The Galloper, with Raymond Hitchcock

Folly: Chinatown Charley

Grand Opera House: Why Girls Leave Home

Majestic: The Sultan of Sulu

New Montauk: The Embassy Ball, with Lawrance D’Orsay

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Prisoner of Zenda

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Lieutenant Dick

Shubert: Becky Sharp, with Mrs. Fiske, John Mason, George Arliss, and Manhattan Theatre Company

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Amphion, Garden, Imperial, Novelty