1907: NOVEMBER

Virginia Harned

November 1907 stood out for several reasons in our chronicle of Brooklyn’s theatre. It saw the Park Theatre stumble back to life with a hopeful new lease on life as a vaudeville and movie house; it was announced that the original Montauk—most recently a vaudeville theatre called the Imperial—would revert to the legitimate once its historic move across Flatbush Extension was completed; it was believed that a new theatre finally would be built in the borough’s theatrically impoverished Greenpoint; and a neighborhood Italian theatre’s existence was disclosed.

But we should first observe that Brooklyn’s offerings were not notably exciting this month, the most interesting being the following: a return visit of A Millionaire’s Revenge, one of several plays quick to dramatize the Harry K. Thaw-Evelyn Nesbit-Stanford White murder scandal; a baseball farce with music called The Umpire; the visit of highly regarded “emotional” actress Blanche Walsh as a hooker named Houston Street Moll in Clyde Fitch’s melodramatic The Straight Road; and the return visit of Blanche Bates in David Belasco’s huge hit, The Girl of the Golden West, which she’d been playing continuously in New York and on the road for two years.

Also appealing were Virginia Harned in Anna Karenina, based on Leo Tolstoy’s great romantic novel; future Western movie star Dustin Farnum—famed for his portrayal of The Virginian—in his latest Western melodrama, The Ranger, by Augustus Thomas, in which he played a heroic Mexican border patrol officer; Edwin Booth’s nephew, Creston Clarke, in a new play called The Power that Governs; Minnie Dupree in The Road to Yesterday; Anna Held, again, in The Parisian Model; and, among others, Francis Wilson in When Knights Were Bold, mingling comedy with songs in a story reminiscent of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Anna Karenina deserves a few words for Harned’s performance in this sumptuously produced, highly dramatic, if technically flawed, adaptation by Thomas Broadhurst of a French version of a play about a beautiful, high-class married woman who falls for another man.

According to the Eagle (November 13),

Virginia Harned has a trying role, one in which she is called upon to portray almost every feminine emotion, and which requires physical and vocal strength. From the gracious, fresh and unselfish young wife who vents all her heart yearnings and love upon her boy, to the woman gradually awakening to the depths of an all-absorbing and overpowering love, a love that her husband could not grasp because of his selfish cold nature, she is called upon to run the gamut of deep passion, despair and desolation and the realization of utter ruin. It is a powerful delineation a woman’s soul, one that pulses with feeling, surges and sweeps with emotion and that reaches a commanding height in the climaxes.

And, of a male star, the Eagle reported (November 19),

Mr. Farnum is virile, always manly and gives the impression of restrained and hidden power. But it would be better for him to seek a different role if he wants his art to grow and to expand, for to the keen observer there is noticeable in his work a little mannerism in his efforts to give more color and a deeper touch to his role of a typical plainsman of the heroic type. He is too good a player to be spoiled by becoming a one-part actor.

Antonio Majori’s Royal Italian Theatre stock company was active but no longer getting the attention it drew a month earlier, when it was new; it advertised only four performances of Macbeth over a two-week stretch but nothing else was noted in the English-language press. Interestingly, another Italian theatre also was doing plays in Brooklyn at the time, but we learn this only because of something newsworthy that happened there.

It was reported in the Citizen (November 19) that a man was killed and another had an eye shot out in front of the Marietto Theatre at 102 Union Street, an area where we know of earlier Italian theatres operating about a decade earlier. The crime was described as the work of the Black Hand Society in retribution for the victims’ not paying the extortion money they owed the gangsters. At least twenty shots were fired, the audience panicked, the street right outside the doors was stained with blood, and it was thought there were other wounded spectators who fled before the cops arrived.

Regarding the business side of Brooklyn theatre, the big story was the taking over of the Park Theatre for use as a vaudeville house. Recently called by such names as the Shubert-Park and simply the Shubert, it was Brooklyn’s oldest extant theatre, built across the street from what was now Borough Hall, one of the town’s most trafficked areas. But, after three failing weeks of vaudeville in September, presented by the Shuberts, who also used it to present Blanche Bates in The Girl of the Golden West for a week, it was leased to Siegmund Lubin, who offered a policy of “continuous performance,” and changed the name to Lubin’s Theatre, although it was also called Lubin’s Park Theatre.

Lubin, a Jewish immigrant from Prussia, who became an optometrist, contributed to the development of early movie camera lenses; he is now known as one of the most important and prolific early movie producers and distributors. He charged a dime for all afternoon seats until 6:30 p.m. and raised this to 20 and 30 cents for after that. The shows, running from noon to 10 p.m., provided moving pictures supplemented by songs, and cheap vaudeville acts. Movies were its main attraction, as they were at Lubin theatres located in other cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, and Baltimore. 

A complete show lasted about an hour and a half before being repeated, and you could stay in your seat from show to show, entering whenever you wished. (Such would become standard for neighborhood movie theatres once they began to proliferate.) Its first show included two films, one act of illustrated songs, and four vaudeville specialties, including a “musical comedian,” a pair of “eccentric comedians,” a couple of “grotesque comedians,” and, simply, a “comedian.” 

The second week advertised a spectacle called “Doomsday,” similar to other such events seen in Brooklyn during recent summers, like “The Johnstown Flood.” It was promised, said the Eagle (November 10), that the performances will be “polite and refined,” with “nothing . . . presented that will offend the most fastidious. It is a place for women, children and men.” 

By November 25, Lubin was no longer around and the Park was again the Shubert in a game of musical names. The occupant was the Hal Clarendon Stock Company, which had been at the Gotham in May and the Bergen Beach Casino in the summer. They opened with The Love Route but two weeks later were routed after an incident described in next month's entry. 

Another once popular Brooklyn venue whose fate had been rocky the past few years, the “old” Montauk, so called when the “new” Montauk opened nearby, and which was presently called the Imperial, had been in limbo until it was decided to move it across the newly constructed Flatbush Extension leading to the Manhattan Bridge, still being built. 

Now, local theatre entrepreneur Percy G. Williams announced in the Eagle (November 3) that it had been acquired by the United Booking Office, controllers of thirty theatres in as many cities, which would use it for touring legitimate shows, although their main attractions were in vaudeville. Leading syndicate foe David Belasco was willing to allow his shows to be handled by United Booking, so other independents were also expected to follow suit. The theatre, as mentioned in the previous entry, would open in September 1908 as the Crescent.

Finally, Greenpoint, contiguous with Williamsburg, had made several unsuccessful stabs at maintaining a theatre, all of them rapid flops, but something more permanent now seemed in the offing as per a piece in the Daily Times (November 23) that even offered architectural renderings and detailed descriptions. The site—the same as that mentioned in earlier entries—was the southwest corner of Manhattan Avenue and Calyer Street, the proprietor was Percy G. Williams, and its programming would be “refined vaudeville.” Its name would be the Greenpoint Theatre, W.H. McElfatrick, leading theatrical architect, designed it, and it would seat 2,000.

November 4-9. 1907

Bijou: The Ninety and Nine, with Bayone Whipple

Blaney’s Amphion: The Rocky Mountain Express

Broadway: The Spring Chicken, with Richard Carle

Columbia: A Millionaire’s Revenge

Folly: At Yale, with Leila Dell Lennon

Majestic: The Umpire, with Joseph Whitehead

Montauk: The Straight Road, with Blanche Walsh

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Sag Harbor

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Ruled Off the Turf

Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) ?

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

Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham

November 11-16, 1907

Bijou: The Gambler of the West

Blaney’s Amphion: The Cowboy and the Squaw

Broadway: Mary’s Lamb, with Harry Conor

Columbia: The Four Corners of the Earth

Folly: The Ninety and Nine, with Bayone Whipple

Majestic: King Casey, with Johnny and Emma Ray

Montauk: Anna Karenina, with Virginia Harned

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

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) A Woman’s Struggle

Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) Macbeth (November 15, 16)

Shubert: temporarily closed

Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham, Lubin's Park

November 18-23. 1907

Bijou: Around the Clock

Blaney’s Amphion: Custer’s Last Fight

Broadway: The Ranger, with Dustin Farnum, Mary Boland

Columbia: A Midnight Escape

Folly: Patsy in Politics, with Billy B. Van

Majestic: The Power that Governs, with Creston Clarke

Montauk: The Road to Yesterday, with Minnie Dupree

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Prodigal Son

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) By Right of Sword

Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) Macbeth (November 19, 20)

Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham, Lubin’s Park

November 25-30, 1907

Bijou: Convict 999

Blaney’s Amphion: Eight Bells, with the Byrne Brothers

Broadway: The Parisian Model, with Anna Held

Columbia: The Life of an Actress, with Leila Dell Lennon

Folly: King Casey, with Johnny and Emma Ray

Majestic: The Old Homestead

Montauk: When Knights Were Bold, with Francis Wilson

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Mistress Nell

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) At the World’s Mercy

Royal Italian: (Maiori Stock Company) ?

Shubert Theatre: (Clarendon Stock Company) The Love Route

Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham. Lubin's Park