1906: MAY-JUNE

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Nance O'Neill in the title role of Magda.

May would not be quite the end of the regular 1905-1906 theatre season in Brooklyn. When the listings below concluded, the stock company at Payton’s Lee Avenue Theatre leached two weeks into June, and both the Orpheum and Star remained open for a time, the former abandoning vaudeville for four weeks of comic opera provided by the Aborn Summer Opera Circuit, and the latter continuing its specialty of burlesque.

Technically, if not in practice, the season should have ended on May 15, when the licenses for all local theatres expired, but some stayed open a while longer regardless. And a number of theatres in Manhattan, those with strong attractions, continued even while Brooklyn’s houses were shuttered. The Standard Union, however, noted on May 13 that “this thing of seasons is getting to be rather confusing, since there is so much overlapping, or underlaying, of the beginnings and endings.”

The borough’s entertainment pendulum now swung to the theatrical emporia of Brighton, Bergen, and Manhattan Beaches, not to mention the summer delights—including vaudeville—at Coney Island, where Luna Park, Dreamland, Steeplechase, Pain’s Fireworks Amphitheatre, Henderson’s Music Hall, Bostock’s Arena, and other summertime delights awaited the millions who had started arriving in mid-May. The south shore of Brooklyn was a veritable carnival of musical, theatrical, comical, and even wild animal fun, but we can do little more than mention it here, as our attentions are on more traditional forms of theatrical entertainment during the three other seasons.

Unfortunately, the deluge of fun- and sun-seekers, some days exceeding 250,000, could have been doubled, noted the press, if there were more convenient means of transportation for getting there. Obviously, the trains and trolleys were still insufficient to serve the needs of the pleasure seeking masses.

Back downtown and uptown, in the theatrical haunts of the Western and Eastern Districts, May 1906 was a boom month for visits from leading actresses. Brooklyn audiences were graced during the month by the borough’s own native girl, Grace George, in The Marriage of William Ashe, Margaret Anglin in Zira, Julia Marlowe, costarring with E.H. Sothern in four plays from their Shakespeare repertory, and, most enlighteningly, Nance O’Neil in two plays each by Herman Sudermann, Magda and The Fires of St. John, and even more notably, Ibsen, Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm, the last named making its local debut.

O’Neil had been a rising star in the 1890s, and had appeared in Brooklyn back then, but had subsequently chosen to build her career on tour, spending much time in Australia, where she became a favorite. Her Broadway presence over the years was limited although over the past year and a half she had made a strong impression for having matured into a compelling presence, albeit “somewhat marred by unevenness,” said Brooklyn Life. The Standard Union, though, was very excited about her visit, calling her America’s greatest tragedienne, which would have been a surprise to fans of Minnie Maddern Fiske. “There is no instance in the history of the American stage,” gushed the paper (or the actress’s press rep), “where an actress has received such remarkable success, and over a remarkable range of the world’s territory, as has Nance O’Neil.” The writer describes her world travels, including her tours to every state in the union, and her outstanding success everywhere she played, bringing audiences her “marvelous tragic force, magnetic power, superb physical beauty and wondrous mental temperament.” The Far East is mentioned as her next destination with a repertory of classical dramas.

As it turned out, such promises of thespian wonders never did materialize. O’Neil was found strongest in the emotional scenes of Magda, but her Hedda Gabler was no match for that of Mrs. Fiske, the quintessential American Hedda, nor was her supporting company up to the task. Still, she

succeeded in compelling admiration in the face of the most searching comparison. In personality she is pleasing; she resorts to trickery of byplay that is not strictly legitimate, and she has a clear conception of the character. With a better support she would be even stronger. In Hedda’s acknowledgment to Assessor Brack and Eilert Lovborg that she has no love for her husband Miss O’Neil fails to portray the delicacy shown by Mrs. Fiske borders on coarse frankness. She is at her best in the final act, where Hedda urges Lovborg to suicide and gives him a pistol, with the admonition to do the deed “beautifully.”

Also of interest was the week that the Shubert Theatre devoted its program not to any plays but entirely to “moving pictures” of the San Francisco earthquake, the first time a Brooklyn theatre show was solely devoted to movies. Until now all such films, mainly of the documentary type, and lately advertised as kinetographs, were part of the local vaudeville shows, as seen in the ads printed in this blog. “The films are the work of Miles Brothers, manufacturers of moving picture films, who had a branch in the Golden Gate City and who had three machines in operation during the conflagration,” said the Standard Union on May 13. Not to be outdone, the Grand Opera House showed both the horseracing drama, Fighting Fate, as well as “moving pictures of the San Francisco disaster.”

It’s easy to overlook when researching Brooklyn’s theatre in the fully-packed old newspapers the occasional item of theatrical interest, especially when it’s of something seemingly minor. For example, some sort of public auditorium appears to have offered occasional performances at the corner of Watkins Street and Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville. But it apparently produced Yiddish theatre now and then—an April 28 squib in the Standard Union mentions The Sea King—and we read on June 24 in the same paper of an angry crowd storming the box office there at “the Metropolitan Music Hall,” whatever that was, when the promised performers never showed up for a Friday night performance. It took until almost midnight before the police managed to stifle the demonstration.

April 30-May 5, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) At Old Fort Lookout

Broadway: The Marriage of William Ashe, with Grace George

Folly: Why Girls Leave Home

Grand Opera House: Across the Pacific, with Johnny Hoey

Majestic: Under Southern Skies

New Montauk: Magda, Fires of St. John, Hedda Gabler, Rosmersholm, with Nance O’Neil

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) We-Uns of Tennessee, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Toilers 

Shubert: Money Talks, with W.H. Thompson

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Amphion (closes for season),  Imperial (closes for season), Novelty, Family (closes)

May 7-12, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Passing Regiment

Broadway:  The Squaw Man, with William Faversham, W.S. Hart

Folly: Abyssinia, with Williams and Walker

Grand Opera House: Old Isaacs from the Bowery

Majestic: Buster Brown, with Master Gabriel

New Montauk: The Virginian, with Dustin Farnum

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Because She Loved Him, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Girl of the Streets

Shubert: Zira, with Margaret Anglin

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s (closes for season), Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Alcazar, Novelty

May 14-19, 1906

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) Closes for season

Broadway: His Honor the Mayor

Folly: Queen of the Convicts, with Selma Herman

Grand Opera House: Fighting Fate

Majestic: The Triumph of an Empress, with Mildred Holland

New Montauk:  Closes for season

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Graustark, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Showman’s Daughter

Shubert: Moving pictures of the San Francisco earthquake

Vaudeville and burlesque: Unique, Gotham, Gayety, Keeney’s (closes for season), Star, Alcazar, Novelty 

May 21-26, 1906

Broadway: Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, with E.H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe

Folly: Edmund Burke, with Chauncey Olcott

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Lost Paradise, with Etta Reed Payton

Phillips’s Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) East Lynne

Vaudeville and burlesque: Unique, Orpheum. Star, Gayety, Alcazar (others closed for season)

May 28-June 2, 1906

All theatres closed but the following:

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Over the Hills to the Poorhouse, with Corse Payton

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Bowery After Dark

Shubert: Adrea, with Mrs. Leslie Carter

Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Star, Orpheum, Alcazar

June 4-June 9, 1906

Orpheum: Robin Hood

Payton’s: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Pearl of Savoy)

Burlesque: Star

June 11-16, 1906

Orpheum: Fra Diavolo

Payton’s (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Little Minister

June 18-23, 1906

Orpheum: Cavalleria Rusticana, H.M.S. Pinafore

June 25-30, 1906

Orpheum: Dolly Varden