1907: SEPTEMBER

The Brooklyn theatre world of September 1907 provided much fodder for the historical feedbag All the playhouses woke up from their summertime slumbers, religious attacks continued against Sunday performances, Robert Mantell played six leading Shakespeare roles in a single week, a war erupted among vaudeville purveyors, a major theatre bit the bullet, scenic spectacle grew apace, chorus girls began rehearsing in overalls, a fine Italian theatre company opened downtown for business, American’s most versatile leading man, Richard Mansfield, was mourned, and, among other things, the borough’s oldest continuing theatre was about to shift from live performance to movies.

Let’s begin with the passing, on August 30, of Richard Mansfield at only 50, a loss that blindsided the American stage. His career accomplishments are easily accessible online, so I’ll provide only the words of Hamilton Ormsbee, writing in the Eagle (September 15), to memorialize his passing.

The absence of Richard Mansfield is likely to be felt more and more keenly as the years pass. For years no estimate of the season’s best things could be made until it was known what Mr. Mansfield intended to do. Whether he was a really great actor or not is beside the question. He was a great stage manager [i.e., director] and he had a vital and broad minded interest in the drama. When he produced great plays his productions were sure to be adequate, although there was [sic] sometimes questions of his fitness for the parts he elected to play, as Brutus for instance. We should have waited a long time for Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt,” if it had not been for Mr. Mansfield’s restless and spirited ambition. It is doubtful if we should ever have seen “The Misanthrope” adequately done in English but for him. So long as he was with us our stage was sure of intellectual and virile leadership. Now that he is gone there is no one to fill his place and is not likely to be.

Brooklyn was ripe for a vaudeville war; the interest in entertainment of its vast potential audience showed an increasingly greater preference for this form of entertainment than for legitimate theatre, especially serious plays. Even shows called “musical comedies” and farces were likely to include vaudeville specialties that had no relation to dramaturgy and could be changed freely without harming what passed for a plot. Now joining the Gotham, the Orpheum, the Novelty, and Keeney’s as vaudeville houses were the Shubert (as the Shubert Theatre of Varieties), and the Grand Opera House, while Hyde & Behman’s (now identified as the Olympic), the Star, and the Gayety, all planned to concentrate this season on extravaganzas and burlesque.

Ormsbee attempted to explain the popularity of vaudeville in Brooklyn in his Eagle column (September 15). He acknowledged that the shift in local interest to vaudeville from dramatic art was both regrettable but “inevitable,” because of vaudeville’s advantages for such a town. One was its cheapness, another was the freshness of its shows, made possible by the movement of performers from city to city every week so that the best new acts could be seen right away, before the bloom has faded.

Hit plays, on the other hand, had to wait until their New York runs had ended before coming to Brooklyn, and the biggest hits might take a season or two before doing so. Even the second or third touring companies wouldn’t play locally while the original run was still going. Thus, the long wait, for example, before Brooklyn got to see The Lion and the Mouse, which already had been shown around the country. To see it sooner, Brooklynites had to travel to Manhattan.

Vaudeville was much more flexible; even a hit vaudeville program in Manhattan ran for only three or four weeks; when it came to Brooklyn right after, it was still au courant. Ormsbee notes that many Brooklynites journeyed to Manhattan to see plays while they were new, claiming the time and effort were worth it because of the “greater brilliancy of the Broadway audiences and the greater finish of the performances.” Regardless of the veracity of such a prejudice, it wouldn’t hold for vaudeville, as Brooklyn’s bills were as first-rate as those anywhere you could name. Fans of particular performers on Broadway need only have waited a few weeks before said artist was standing on a Brooklyn stage.

Thus, Ormsbee felt safe in predicting that the current craze for vaudeville would only grow in the coming years. He believed that one possible way of countering this trend was to create excellent stock companies; the recent departure of the Spooners, Brooklyn’s most respected, was a powerful blow to such ideals, since only two stock companies remained, both in Williamsburg, which, even with the borough’s excellent public transportation system, was inconvenient for thousands of serious theatergoers. Those interested in the better class of plays and productions in the fall of 1907 would have only two high-priced theatres available, across town from each other (the Montauk and the Broadway), as had been true early in the decade, and would have to find other live entertainment at vaudeville (Ormsbee ignores burlesque here).

The rapidly advancing popularity of moving pictures seems not yet to have set off alarm bells about their potential to weaken the existence not only of dramatic theatre, but all other forms of living performance. In 1907, when, as reported in August's entry, nickelodeons were multiplying like rabbits, movies were also—as they had been for years—items presented like any other act on vaudeville programs. Numerous ads show their ubiquity. Now, though, they were beginning to occupy entire programs, typically as the principal feature of the Sunday concerts that were being assailed by certain churchmen. The Majestic, for instance, announced a regular season of two moving picture programs every Sunday, one at two p.m., the other at five p.m. During the previous season,1906-1907, it had provided only one Sunday show, A reporter attending both shows on September 14 wrote the next day that latecomers had to pay for standing room, every seat being occupied. “The views that were shown were all foreign, and they kept the audience in constant laughter. During the change of reels Johnny Nestor, the tenor, rendered some up-to-date selections, illustrated by pictures. . . .” Blaney’s Amphion in the Eastern District, aware of the Majestic’s success, began doing the same a week later. The films were booked through the Liberty Moving Picture Company, whose offices were in Brooklyn itself.

The visit of an actor like Robert Mantell with a Shakespearean repertory was a rare occasion for more intellectually inclined audiences to be exposed to serious drama. His Brooklyn engagement would see him play Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Shylock, Brutus, and Iago (the latter never seen before in Brooklyn). Brooklyn Life declared, “Mr. Mantell now stands alone on the American stage in his effort to build up and maintain a repertoire of great tragic roles,” a practice once associated with a series of famous actors, like Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, and John McCullough. His wife, Marie Booth Russell, played the female leads in each play.

However, there were few classic plays aside from Shakespeare that even got a chance to compete with him. What was often considered a classic revival was more likely a hoary 19th-century period drama like Virginius or Ingomar, and these were now so outmoded that even a great actor like James O’Neill, who currently was starring across the river in the former, was not enough of a Victor Frankenstein to bring it back to life.

While Brooklyn was crazy about vaudeville (and burlesque), however, we shouldn’t forget that vaudeville was sweeping the world wherever commercial theatre existed; England and Continental Europe were witnessing vaudeville-mania. At any rate, Brooklyn’s legitimate theatre, despite the nine venues presenting it in September, was largely uninspired, a microcosm of what was happening on a larger scale in Manhattan and elsewhere. As was true of the preceding decade, stage-worthy new plays were lacking, especially when it came to good ones. Many playwrights seeking to earn money were writing one-acts for vaudeville, which was very receptive. As Ormsbee, lamenting the absence of “new plays with possibilities,” said in the Eagle (September 1),

The only hope of financial reward for many a playwright will be the conversion of his three-act farce, four-act comedy or five-act tragedy into tabloid drama. One-act playlets that will hold the stage no more than twenty or thirty minutes and will excite liberal applause, will find purchasers among the vaudeville producers.

We will test the waters regarding these issues as we sail, week by week, month by month through the coming season.

Of the recent lighter-than-air shows, one of the more effective opened at the Montauk on a Saturday night, August 31, preceding its Manhattan premiere, a rare Brooklyn occurrence for a major production. It was The Spring Chicken (sometimes given as A Spring Chicken), starring Richard Carle, who adapted it from its hit London version at the Gaiety Theatre. An oddity about the production was that Carle, who also directed and choreographed, had his chorus girls rehearse in overalls, as pictured below. “It is the oddest sight Brooklyn has seen since the great bridge was put up,” wrote the Eagle (September 1), in an article describing a rehearsal, wondering why no one had ever done it before. When a dancer tripped and fell, Carle said, “It’s a good thing you’ve got on those overalls,” which revealed their purpose: to “save their clothes.” Commonsensical as this now appears, the notion of protecting the performer’s streetwear from wear and tear was an innovation in 1907.

Melodramas were the stand-ins for more intellectually-oriented plays. A chief way audiences were lured to them—just as it is to modern movies—was the use of spectacular effects, which were growing ever more elaborate. In September’s calendar, for example, was The Blackmailers of New York in which two authentic trolley cars were employed in a scene set at New York’s notorious “Five Points.” Another melodrama, The Great Express Robbery, had a scene in which a team of horses carried the hero and heroine over a scene showing a steep cliff and then plunging into a tank of water. It also had a thrilling train robbery. And then there was Edna, the Pretty Typewriter, which the Eagle’s description (September 1), makes sound like something out of a James Bond film:

In one scene the heroine jumps from the roof of a building to the top of a moving elevated train. In another there is an exciting race between real automobiles. The cars on a Long Island road move at full speed, while the scenery, an immense panorama, moves in the opposite direction, giving the impression of a forty-mile-an-hour race. The heroine is abducted in one car and the hero is trying to rescue her in another. As the machines are side by side the heroine jumps from one into the other. The hero does not know the capacity of his car; in trying to recover lost ground he puts on too much power and the auto blows up. In another scene she is forced into a large vault and the time lock is set, with the expectation that she will be suffocated. Nitro glycerin is used to force open the door.

Theatres continued to rise and fall, their numbers sometimes dropping back a notch or two, and sometimes forging forward. The latter happened in September with the conversion of what used to be called Watson’s Cozy Corner (and then the Nassau Theatre) at Pearl and Willoughby into a full-fledged Italian-language stock company. It was deemed by the Eagle (September 7) “the first permanent Italian theater in America,” its troupe—the Royal Italian Dramatic Company (Royal Teatro Italiano)—composed of Italian artists from Rome, Milan, and Naples. When no appropriate venue could be found in Manhattan, the producers were able to convince Marcus Loewe, the future Hollywood mogul who owned the empty Brooklyn theatre, to lease it to them, hoping the 400,000 Italians in New York would support it.

This was a time when Italians, mainly immigrants, were still dubbed “dagos,” so the theatre’s opening was an “epochal” cultural event. The press celebrated how far the Italians in America had come since the first wave of immigrants, many having attained high places in multiple fields of endeavor. A Judge Palmieri, who spoke on opening night, thought each borough should have an Italian theatre, as should everywhere in the nation with a sizable Italian population.

The Royal’s artistic leader was tragedian Antonio Maiori, and its opening bill was The Iron Master by Georges Ohnet. Maiori already had headed several Manhattan Italian companies and also had toured the nation several times under the sponsorship of a patron named Mrs. Havemeyer. Maiori and his wife, Signora Maiori, played the leading roles. It was devoutly to be wished that enough cultured fellow countrymen would flock to the Royal Theatre to sustain it. Ormsbee strongly urged Maiori to learn English because he had the talent to become a big star, like other immigrant actors, Alla Nazimova and Helena Modjeska among them. The company received laudatory reviews for its first month’s programs, which included a split week in which they showed the old Brooklyn favorite of The Two Orphans.

Interestingly, the press reports on the new Italian theatre neglected to mention that back in 1899, the Eagle had written a detailed essay of two Brooklyn Italian companies, neither of which, however, received any other such attention; they also didn’t advertise in the English press. The essay said these resorts were called the “dago theatres” of South Brooklyn’s Italian quarter. One was Charlie Pulvidente’s marionette theatre in a former stable and barnyard, which he called the Star Theatre (not to be confused with Brooklyn’s burlesque theatre of that name), at 101 Union Street. 

Close by, at 57 Union Street, was an establishment providing Italian comic vaudeville, also at five cents a seat, but the local workers preferred the shows at the Star. 

The campaign against the well-attended Sunday concerts continued, largely because of the efforts of the determined Rev. Canon William Sheafe Case, rector of Grace Episcopal Church on Bedford Avenue, opposite Morton Street. Many poohpoohed his efforts because the managers he was going after were all known as reputable citizens who were believed to be in their rights. The large body of their attendees were non-churchgoers while others went to services on Sunday mornings. But the Standard Union insisted that regardless of such attendance, the shows—now increasingly of moving pictures and the singing of songs—were within the law. Nonetheless, Case had managed over the course of the year to shut these performances down at 10 of 16 theatres, and just the past week had taken out a warrant for Lew Parker, manager of the newly renamed Shubert Theatre of Varieties, when he heard it was planning to resume Sunday shows. Soon after, the Shubert chose to close its new vaudeville policy entirely, only three weeks after it had begun.

Some managements, like those in two theatres owned by Percy G. Williams, said they would continue to give shows, live or films, others were willing to stop such performances, and the battle continued to rage. Klaw and Erlanger, owners of the Shubert, appear to have admitted that such shows were illegal, which only fueled Rev. Case’s mission against the six still reluctant theatres, some saying they would close only when all the others did. Should all the theatres close, said Case, he would request dismissal of his case.

However, that did not help the Shubert, whose closing began to appear not so much because of Case’s pressure but because the vaudeville policy it had just implemented was not selling enough tickets. The surprising, and historically noteworthy news, was that, after closing for several weeks, the theatre would be leased and reopened by Prussian-born pioneer moving picture producer and inventor Siegmund Lubin (1853-1923). The Shubert, of course, was the old Park Theatre, whose illustrious career began in 1863, making it the oldest extant theatre in town, its up and down history since 1898 having been detailed in previous entries. 

The recent rapprochement between the Shubert organization and Klaw and Erlanger of the Theatrical Syndicate had led to their acquisition of the Shubert, as it had been renamed several years earlier, with the goal of changing it into Brooklyn’s leading popular-priced vaudeville house; its limited seating capacity, however, could not help it earn as much as its competitors, especially as its lower income meant that its b acts were not quite up to the level available elsewhere.

The Park had fallen a long way. But fate had worse news awaiting it a little more than a year later. 

September 2-7, 1907

Bijou: Edna, the Pretty Typewriter

Blaney’s Amphion: Dion O’Dare, with Fiske O’Hara

Broadway: Marrying Mary, with Marie Cahill

Columbia:  The Blackmailers of New York

Folly: Convict 999

Majestic: Red Feather, with Cheridah Simpson

Montauk: The Spring Chicken (opened Saturday, August 31)

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Jim Bludsoe of the Prairie Belle

Phillips’ Lyceum (Lyceum Stock Company) Up-York State

Royal Theatre: (Royal Dramatic Stock Company: Italian) The Ironmaster (opened Saturday, September 7)

Vaudeville and burlesque: Shubert Theatre of Varieties (opened Saturday, August 31), [Hyde & Behman’s] Olympic, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Star

September 9-14, 1907

Bijou: The Street Singer, with Florence Bindley

Blaney’s Amphion: A Millionaire’s Revenge

Broadway: The Virginian, with W.S. Hart

Columbia:  Custer’s Last Fight

Folly: The Shoo-Fly Regiment, with Bob Cole, J. Rosamond Johnson

Majestic: Patsey in Politics, with Billy B. Van

Montauk: The Lion and the Mouse, with Gertrude Coghlan, Edmund Breese

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

Phillips’ Lyceum (Lyceum Stock Company) When Women Love

Royal Theatre: (Royal Dramatic Stock Company: Italian) The Ironmaster

Vaudeville and burlesque: Shubert Theatre of Varieties, Olympic, Gayety, Gotham, Grand Opera House, Star

September 16-21, 1907

Bijou: The Great Express Robbery

Blaney’s Amphion: The Way of the Transgressor

Broadway:  The Ham Tree, with McIntyre and Heath

Columbia:  Fighting Bill, the Sherrif of Silver Creek

Folly:  The Street Singer, with Florence Bindley

Majestic: Me, Him and I, with Wrothe, Arlington, and Watson

Montauk: The Belle of Mayfair, with Margaret Rutledge

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) Shadows on the Hearth

Phillips’ Lyceum (Lyceum Stock Company) An Actor’s Romance

Royal Theatre: (Royal Dramatic Stock Company: Italian) Martire

Vaudeville and burlesque: Shubert Theatre of Varieties, Olympic, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Star, Novelty

September 23-28, 1907

Bijou: The Cowboy and the Squaw

Blaney’s Amphion: Wild Nell, A Child of the Regiment, with Vivian Prescott, Walter Wilson

Broadway: The Three of Us, with Carlotta Nillson

Columbia:  Josie, the Little Madcap, with Lottie Williams

Folly:  The Great Express Robbery

Majestic:  Mazuma Man, with George Sidney

Montauk: Macbeth, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Julius Caesar (Brutus), Othello (Iago), with Robert Mantell

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Lee Avenue Stock Company) The Sign of the Cross

Phillips’ Lyceum (Lyceum Stock Company) The Great White Diamond

Royal Theatre: (Royal Dramatic Stock Company: Italian) The Two Orphans, The Suicide

Vaudeville and burlesque: Shubert Theatre of Varieties, Olympic, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Star, Novelty, Keeney’s

For September 30-October 5, 1907 see next blog entry, 1907: October