1907: MAY-JULY

MAY-JUNE 1907

The precise ending of one season and the beginning of the next was always a bit hazy, as one or two theatres lingered into the warm weather while most closed, and one or two opened weeks earlier than others for the fall season. As the lists reveal, the transition from the 1906-1907 season to the 1907-1908 season differed a bit from earlier ones in that the season that was ending stretched even further into early June, with four shows still running; one, though, was part of a “summer season” of mostly light operas at the Orpheum, which, as in previous seasons, temporarily abandoned its vaudeville shows.

As the downtown and uptown theatres closed for the summer, those at Bergen. Brighton, and Manhattan Beaches, as well as Coney Island, picked up speed, observable in the accompanying advertisements. Joining them was the grand new amusement park, Golden City, at the junction of Seaview Avenue and Canarsie Pier, pictured below, which would remain there until demolished in 1939 to allow for the construction of the Belt Parkway.

The Orpheum continued for a couple of weeks with H.M.S. Pinafore and Cavalleria Rusticana (double bill), and Il Trovatore, while the Hal Clarendon Stock Company, which had occupied the Gotham in East New York during the season’s closing weeks—kicking out its vaudeville shows—took over at the Bergen Beach Casino. It offered a season of cheap melodramas: The Parish Priest, Coon Hollow, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The King of the Cowboys, The Bowery Newsgirl, The Ranchman’s Daughter, Who’s Your Wife?, The Moonshiners, For Her Father’s Crime, The Great Well Mystery, and Across the Atlantic. Brooklyn would have occasion to see Mr. Clarendon again.

Technically, the 1907-1908 season began as early as July 22, when Corse Payton reopened his fully refurbished Lee Avenue Theatre, an event incorporated into the August-September entry.

The dwindling number of productions in May and June allow us to consolidate these months, along with July, into this single entry, but there is, nonetheless, a lot of interesting news to report. Among those of a mainly human rather than artistic interest is one about a boy who sparked a panic at the Gotham Theatre, on the corner of Alabama Avenue and Fulton Street, at a June 8 matinee when he shouted “Fire!” in packed house of 1,500 mostly women and children. The shocked audience raced for the emergency exits, “clawing and tearing at each other,” according to the Eagle, until the manager and actors in the Clarendon Stock Company assured them it was a false alarm.

It happened during Act Three of The Silver King, when the stage and house were darkened. The troublemaker was a newsboy who had snuck into the theatre’s gallery via the fire escape stairs outside and was slowly opening the door when an usher spotted him and ran to the door to close it. Seeing this, the boy responded by throwing the door open and yelling, “Fire! Fire!” before dashing back down the escape steps. His shouts and the sudden burst of sunlight into the auditorium immediately began a frightened uproar as people dashed to the exits. “Nails and teeth were used on those who attempted to block the way.”

The manager and treasurer rushed from the box office to stand in the way of the mob, shouting for it to stop, but they were “bowled over like tenpins” in the melee, suffering bruises and torn clothes. The theatre had a room where women could leave their babies with a nurse called Mrs. Smith, so mothers raced to retrieve them only for one mother to grab the wrong one in her fright. Realizing her error on reaching the street, she returned at once to make an exchange.

Clarendon stood on stage before the asbestos curtain, shouting for everyone to calm down; ignored, he ordered the orchestra to play some popular song. Soon the other company members entered to help reassure the audience. A passerby, seeing the crowd pouring into the street, pulled a fire alarm, bringing the engines within a few minutes. Soon, the actors managed to spread the news of false alarm, the panic gradually subsided, and people returned to their seats. Four hundred, however, did not, and 14-year-old Bessie Bernstein of 447 Hopkinson Avenue suffered a broken leg, miraculously the only serious injury sustained.

About a week later, on June 14, more mischief was apparent at the Gotham during a production of The Octoroon, in which Clarendon was playing a Native American. A15-year-old named Leo Carr, of 11 Gunther Place, had sneaked in and was discovered by a five-foot-tall usher who advised him “to hide himself away somewhere.” In response, Carr cursed the usher and, on hearing the onstage Indian deliver a war-cry whoop, responded in kind. This so infuriated the actor he stepped out of character to challenge the pesky boy in English (which his character did not speak), thus getting the audience worked up and almost repeating the recent furor at the same venue; a police officer arrested young Carr, who had to choose between paying a dollar fine or spending a day in the clink. He paid the dollar.

Those seeking more significant mischief can find it in the formation of the powerful United States Amusement Company, incorporated at the tail end of April, and joining together, among others, such principals of the Theatrical Syndicate as A.L. Erlanger, Marc Klaw, and Al Hayman, with Lee Shubert of the increasingly massive Shubert Organization. This immediately saw the new company acquiring Shubert theatres in 14 cities, including Brooklyn, and Klaw and Erlanger venues in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn, the latter being the Grand Opera House. Its primary power was to be exercised in the vaudeville arena. This merger was intended to reduce the number of theatres devoted to “high-class” attractions, which appealed to a minority, while audiences for “popular-price” vaudeville were much greater.

It was not clear yet how this new alignment would affect the overall theatrical scene, but changes were in store for Brooklyn’s Shubert Theatre, Grand Opera House, and Bijou, as well as Hyde & Behman’s and the old Montauk (then called the Imperial). There was at the time a vaudeville war between the Klaw and Erlanger forces and the Keith and Procter circuits, which was said to make the acquisition by the new company of the Shubert and Grand Opera House particularly pertinent.

The Orpheum and Hyde & Behman’s were booked by the Keith and Proctor interests, which is why Klaw and Erlanger acquired the Grand Opera House, planning to convert it to a competing vaudeville house. Their acquisition of Brooklyn’s Shubert, along with all the other Shubert houses alluded to above, which were losing money because of a lack of available attractions, was intended to rectify that situation. It was hoped that the Shuberts would now have access to additional attractions, while Klaw and Erlanger extended their vaudeville earnings.

As hinted at in last month’s entry, the plan was to shift the Grand Opera House’s melodrama policy to the Bijou, long home to the Spooner Stock Company, forcing Mrs. Spooner to move to Manhattan, with the hope of one day building her own Brooklyn theatre. And this too came to pass, with the Spooner Stock Company, after six years of faithful service, giving its historic final (for the moment) Brooklyn performance on Saturday night, May 11, inspiring headlines like this in the Eagle (May 12), “TEARS FOR SPOONER CO. AS IT QUITS BROOKLYN.” The final play was The Duchess of Devonshire, and the preshow reception offered a remarkable outpouring of affection and respect for Mrs. Mary Gibbs Spooner. Truckloads of presents drove up and the flowers were enough for multiple weddings. Every member of the company was gifted with something of value (or size).

The speeches commenced after the third act, when the manageress, in a broken voice, told of the company’s history, from its origins in the Midwest, before arriving at Brooklyn’s Park Theatre before moving to the Bijou, where its prolonged success led to every American actor’s dream, Broadway, the next move. Each actor spoke a few words, as did the company’s chief staff members, from music director to press rep. When the play resumed, the audience continually broke into applause, “but at the close one might have imagined the scene in the Metropolitan Opera House on the last night of the opera season, for men and women stood on chairs and cheered and shouted, some of them with lumps in their throats. . . . It was Sunday morning before the theater was cleared” following an extended go-round of handshaking between company and audience. Cecil Spooner, playing in Williamsburg at Blaney’s, hustled across town to take part in the final moments. 

When she gave a speech mentioning her intention to return at the head of her own theatre, the house went wild. Still, the uncertainty of the future hovered as the company prepared to open on Monday at the Fifth Avenue with Edna May Spooner in Zaza, the company name changed to the Fifth Avenue Theater Company, managed by F.F. Proctor, Jr. Hundreds of Brooklynites were already on the subscription list.  The Spooners would return, in 1908, but only to face an insurmountable catastrophe in November.

To my knowledge, the six-year saga of the Spooners at the Bijou has never been told in the years since although, like their relatives, the Paytons, they were theatrical pillars during the borough’s first decade. (Some of what follows is from the Citizen [May 10, 1908], written when the Spooners left Brooklyn,) Mrs. Spooner had begun her Brooklyn career in 1901 by leasing the dormant Park Theatre, her two daughters, Edna May and Cecil, sharing leading lady assignments, each to one day become independent stars, quite capable, versatile, and relatively successful artists, but not in the highest tier. Mrs. Spooner occasionally played a character role, but she mainly ran the company, being a shrewd businesswoman. When a bigger theatre became necessary, they moved to the Bijou on May 5 1902, with Trelawney of the Wells, and everything clicked.

The policy saw the troupe often playing the somewhat shopworn but generally high-grade plays first produced by Charles Frohman, costing playgoers only ten, twenty, or thirty cents, as was the case with the Paytons across town. Royalties for plays like Blue Jeans and Little Lord Fauntleroy were expensive but the payoffs were worth it. A large number of Spooner fans were adolescent girls who loved the plays and actors, especially the Spooner sisters. “Spooneritis” spread through the borough like manna from heaven. Two-thirds of the seats were reserved for the same people, who occupied them week in and week out, all season long. Each player had his or her fan support. Nine of ten audience members were women. Well-off teenage girls playing hooky could be spotted in the balcony, munching their chocolates and almost falling over the railing when swooning over the least important male performer singing some sentimental ballad in a cracked voice that, in their ears, made Caruso sound like a barrel organ.

At the Park, the management replaced the first few rows with divans suitable for snuggling by male-female couples. “The love-making that went on in these divans was as open and unabashed as that which took place on the stage. Rumor . . . has it that many an engagement was inaugurated in these divans.” Souvenirs were distributed every Thursday; regular Thursday attendance allowed fans to accumulate dinner sets or photo collections of the Spooner women in their various roles, “Pink teas” were Friday occasions when post-play gatherings on stage allowed fans to meet and greet the players. Annual anniversaries celebrated the arrival in Brooklyn of the company, with flowers and presents in abundance. When May 11, 1907, “a black day for Brooklyn,” dawned, “Baby carriages stood with motionless wheels, rubber plants wore dark bands around their green leaves and there was no joy in life for Spoonerites.”

After they departed, Hyde & Behman turned the Bijou again toward combination companies doing melodrama, and the coffers continued to fill.

Although not clear at the time, it turned out that even the Shubert, formerly the Park, would turn to vaudeville in the coming season, changing its name for the purpose. Much of the managerial thinking revolved around the proximity of one vaudeville theatre to another because of the danger of oversaturating any one part of town. The political complexities involved are examined in an Eagle article of May 5, although parts of the text are now barely legible.

Whatever the complexities, though, the arrangements did not impinge on the independent legitimate productions not aligned with the syndicate or even the Shuberts. These were the productions that advanced the cause of dramatic art of both intellectual and artistic quality that had been gaining ground the past two years, leading to competition between the independent producers and stars and the syndicate. “Any [business] combination which tended to lessen this activity would be a serious loss to the theater,” wrote Hamilton Ormsbee in the Eagle.

Still, the expansion of vaudeville venues meant that the number of available acts was nearing exhaustion, with scouts scouring all parts of Europe for suitable performers, many of whom were excusable only on grounds of novelty. Klaw and Erlanger even hired a special booking agent to supply supporting actors for the stars doing one-acts on vaudeville bills. But there remained a desire for more legitimate theatres and it was hoped that once the Imperial (the old Montauk) was moved to its new spot directly on Flatbush Avenue Extension it would book those plays presently going to the New Montauk; its purpose, however, had not yet been settled on.

Meanwhile, the old issue of church leaders pressing for the performance of Sunday concerts, which were actually vaudeville shows, was now extended to the proprietors of the numerous moving picture shows popping up like weeds throughout the borough. An article in the Standard Union of May 1 reported the victory of a clergyman in getting the Court of Special Sessions to shut down three such places. One was at 2792 Atlantic Avenue, in East New York, where moving pictures accompanied by singing and music were performed one sabbath day in April. The complainant testified that the show “seriously interrupted his repose, as well as that of the community,” as well as being harmful to the health and morality of the children attending, when they should have been in Sunday school, where their parents believed them to be. The defendant chose to pay a $100 fine instead of going to jail for thirty days. This was a harsh punishment when $100 was worth nearly $3,500 in 2025 terms.

The second defendant presented movies a short distance away at 2650 Atlantic Avenue. He too coughed up $100, suggesting that his profits were considerable. The third defendant’s place of business was 1703 Pitkin Avenue, Brownsville, and he was fined $50 for allowing underage children in without accompanying adults. 

These shows were given in storefront theatres or arcades that charged a nickel for admission and came to be called nickelodeons. Their arrival in 1905 created a plague of them, with 482 accounted for in Greater New York by this month, 70 in Brooklyn. Many lined the borough's major downtown thoroughfares, like Fulton Street, and others could be found along Broadway in the Eastern District. But the majority were scattered throughout the neighborhoods (as would be the movie theatres that followed), the Italian communities in South Brooklyn being especially fond of them, their tastes inclining to those filled with blood and thunder. Some were in Brownsville as well.

The clergy came out in force to combat the plague, citing its corrupting influence on youngsters (who often resorted to cheating to get the money for admission) and its predilection for the penny machines showing moving images by flip cards manipulated by an arm attached to one side. A casual attitude toward the fire laws was another reason the authorities cracked down on these places by rescinding their licenses. 

As a harbinger of the popularity of the more sophisticated narrative movies soon to come, it augured ill for the living theatre, so we will now and then have occasion to mention important news regarding the phenomenon as it evolved. Here, based on a report in the Standard Union of June 2, is what a spectator would have encountered at one of these emporia, whose seating did not exceed 299, since 300 would classify them as "theatres" and thus cost them a $500 annual license fee; 299 seats or less classified them as "common shows," licensed at only $25 per annum, which also allowed them more laxity regarding the fire laws.

First, their attention would be drawn by the blandishments of a barker outside, touting the day's offerings in stentorian tones. One explained to a reporter that while the public pays about a penny a minute for entertainment at a live playhouse, here they paid one third of a cent a minute for the 15 minutes the show lasts. Even if you were disappointed, you wasted only a quarter of an hour, not three hours.

If you coughed up a shekel for admission, you would then encounter a peanut vendor, someone also present at the living theatre, where you paid a mighty dollar for a seat and just as much for refreshments. Then, a young boy was likely to step on your toes as he shouted, "Chocolate, assorted candies, and chewing gum!" 

To set up one of these profitable establishments didn't require much of an investment. The standard requirements: a storeroom large enough to hold 100 to 299 persons; a piano (usually an automatic, electric one set to play at twice the normal speed), a barker, a manager, a kinescope and operator; a canvas for pictures; a phonograph, with a large horn; a young woman cashier; an electric sign. All the proprietor need do was open the door, start the phonograph, and carry his earnings to the bank.

When the show was ready to start, the piano was turned off, a well-coiffed young tenor warbled a sentimental tune, the song's name flashed on the screen, and images depicting the lyrics were projected in color. Visitors with coins to spare also had access to the aforesaid penny machines, including those showing pictures of dubious morality. 

Of the plays closing out the current season, the most interesting was the revival of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Shaw’s once so controversial play about prostitution. Not long ago it was difficult enough to get a full week’s performance in Brooklyn; now it played one week at the New Montauk and a second at the Broadway, across town. After receiving a single performance in its local debut, many locals were glad to get rid of “Shaw and his sociological drama,” said Ormsbee in the Eagle on May 11. Its successful revival now led to as many as three companies touring with it. Its eponymous heroine in Brooklyn was played by Mary Shaw, the first to play it in America. She was an ambitious actress known for her progressive theatre work, her great performances including Mrs. Alving in Ibsen’s Ghosts. According to Brooklyn Life,

 

“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” is a play intended to be taken seriously, but Miss Shaw goes even further than Shaw intended in that tragical last act, her experience of the memorable first night in New Haven being that a lighter touch was likely to draw laughter . . . on the part of playgoers who could not see the underlying pathos of the situation unless it was accented.

Shaw almost didn’t get to play the role in America, as it had been promised to British actress Fanny Brough by the playwright, if it were ever revived over here. When Mary Shaw wrote to ask for permission to do it, he told her of this promise, but Brough chose not to come over, allowing Mary Shaw another feather in her artistic cap.

Also noteworthy as a season closer was The Three of Us by the rising female dramatist Rachel Crothers, although it was not at all a “problem play,” but a play of human nature, being a play that “moves and breathes in life, and . . . is full of sweetness and homely family love.” Also of interest was the visit of leading male star James K. Hackett in The Walls of Jericho, while the recent full houses at The Lion and the Mouse were likely to be repeated when its promised return visit in June was accomplished.

Its success, and that of last month’s Madama Butterfly, the opera, proved, said Ormsbee, that Brooklyn’s recent reputation for not being a good theatre town was mistaken, as the borough’s citizens were all too ready to support a play and prices that were right. “Brooklyn is as fine a city to play in as there is anywhere,” he insisted, going on to trumpet the following:

[Brooklyn] is too close to Manhattan to accept the things which pass current in cities farther away. Its people can reach Manhattan theaters almost as easily as their own, and where the prices are the same they have formed a habit of going to Broadway and seeing plays when they are new and talked about. The full possibilities of Brooklyn for theatrical money making will not be realized until there is a theater down town large enough to be profitable with only a few of its seats at the $1.50 schedule. A theater here conducted on the model of the Grand Opera House or Academy of Music of Manhattan will be a gold mine. The next step in theatrical inspirations here should include the erection of such a house down town. Then the scramble to get into Brooklyn will be so great, as, sometimes, with an advanced schedule of prices, it has been to escape playing here. Over the years, a fair number of new plays had had either their first production ever in Brooklyn, or at least their first before being done in Manhattan, which was always considered a feather in the city/borough’s cap. The vast majority were not heard from again. His Terrible Secret; or, The Man Monkey, a rare one that did, was by prolific melodramatist Charles H. Blaney, proprietor of Blaney’s Amphion, written for W.H. Turner, noted for acting unusual characters. After its Brooklyn premiere, on May 19, it reappeared at Broadway’s Metropolis Theatre in August. Its subject is typical of Blaney’s output, but the movies would also be guilty of the same bizarre tendencies.

In brief, Prof. Sinclair is a scientist sojourning with others in Africa. A huge gorilla kills his American friend before his shocked pregnant wife, who gives birth to a baby with gorilla-like features. Sinclair adopts the child, named Melmoth, and places it with his family in Cairo. When he reaches 30, Melmoth travels with Sinclair and his daughter, Lucy, whom Melmoth loves, to the African jungle. Young American engineer Harry Warren also loves Lucy, and she him, forcing Melmoth to suffer from unrequited love. An English villain and his Egyptian accomplice, aware that Melmoth is heir to a fabulous gold mine, plots to steal the deeds to it from the stuffed body of an ape in the professor’s collection. Discovering the bad guys in the act, Sinclair is killed by them, Melmoth being accused of the crime, and the villains seek to abscond with Lucy. Melmoth goes after them with a war club and rescues the damsel in distress, with whom he hides in the hollow of two trees. Lightning splits the tree, shocking Lucy into unconsciousness. Believing his beloved dead, Melmoth finds himself assuming apelike behavior, but, after being captures, he gets away and takes vengeance on the Englishman and Egyptian. 

They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

May 6-11, 1907

Bijou: (Spooner Stock Company) The Duchess of Devonshire

Blaney’s Amphion: The Dancer and the King, with Cecil Spooner

Broadway: The Walls of Jericho, with James K. Hackett

Columbia: From Broadway to the Bowery

Folly: Billy the Kid, with Joseph Santley

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) The Power of the Cross

Grand Opera House: The Two Orphans

Majestic: Buster Brown

New Montauk: Mrs. Warren’s Profession, with Mary Shaw

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

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Confessions of a Wife

Shubert: The Three of Us

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Imperial, Novelty

May 13-18, 1907

Bijou: Closed for season 

Blaney’s Amphion: The Girl from Texas, with Cecil Spooner

Broadway: Mrs. Warren’s Profession, with Mary Shaw

Columbia: For a Human Life

Folly: The Outlaw’s Christmas

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) Oliver Twist

Grand Opera House: Closed for season

Majestic: Eileen Asthore, with Chauncey Olcott

New Montauk: Closed for season

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) When We Were Twenty-One

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The King of the Desert

Shubert: The Other Girl, with Thomas W. Ross

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Imperial, Novelty

May 20-25, 1907

Blaney’s Amphion: His Terrible Secret; or, the Man-Monkey (premiere), with William H. Turner

Broadway: Temporarily closed

Columbia: Closed for season

Folly: Closed for season

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) A Stranger in a Strange Land

Majestic: Closed for season. “Liberty” moving pictures on Sumdays

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

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) A Little Outcast

Shubert: The White Hen, with Louis Mann, Louise Gunning, Lotta Faust

Vaudeville and burlesque: Hyde & Behman’s, Gayety, Keeney’s, Star, Imperial, Novelty

May 27-June 1, 1907

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) Quo Vadis

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Mills of the Gods

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Lured from Home, or Fallen by the Wayside

Shubert: The Girl of the Golden West, with Blanche Bates

Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Star, Orpheum (comic opera season begins with Wang)

June 3-8, 1907

Broadway: The Lion and the Mouse

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) The Silver King

Payton’s Lee Avenue: East Lynne

Shubert: The Girl of the Golden West, with Blanche Bates

Vaudeville and burlesque: Gayety, Orpheum (Carmen)

June 10-15. 1907

Broadway: About Town, with Lew Fields, Peter F. Dailey, Blanche Ring, Louise Dresser

Gotham: (Hal Clarendon Stock Company) The Octoroon

Orpheum: The Mikado

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Hearts Aflame

June 17-22, 1907

Orpheum: The Chimes of Normandy

Aside from several more light operatic shows at the Orpheum, and, of course, the continuous activity at the summer theatres at Coney Island, and Bergen. Brighton, and Manhattan Beaches, not covered here, the 1906-1907 season in "town" finally came to an end this week. The last Orpheum shows were H.M.S. Pinafore and Cavalleria Rusticana (double bill), and Il Trovatore. The Hal Clarendon Stock Company, ensconced at the Bergan Beach Casino for the summer, presented a season of melodramas: The Parish Priest, Coon Hollow, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The King of the Cowboys, The Bowery Newsgirl, The Ranchman’s Daughter, Who’s Your Wife?, The Moonshiners, For Her Father’s Crime, The Great Well Mystery, and Across the Atlantic.

Technically, the 1907-1909 season began much earlier than usual on July 22, when Corse Payton opened his fully refurbished Lee Avenue Theatre, an event that will be incorporated into the August-September 1907 blog entry.