1907: DECEMBER

 

Frances Starr in The Rose of the Rancho, The Theatre Magazine, April 1907.

December 1907 offered lots to talk about, so let’s start with what audiences had on display. One exciting possibility was seeing James O’Neill, now around 60 (accounts differ), attempting to break free from his association with the role of Edmund Dantes in Monte Cristo, which he would play over 6,000 times before ending his career. It was still in his repertory, but he was now also offering a revival of the old semiclassical warhorse Virginius, once so popular with the great tragedians, and Julius Caesar, as Marc Antony. Critics admired him as one of the last of the dying breed of old-school tragic actors while lamenting—like his son, Eugene—that his devotion to Monte Cristo had robbed him of fulfilling his promise.

Also regrettable was the decision of E.H. Sothern to go it alone again, separating professionally from his recent artistic partner, Julia Marlowe—for the moment at least—to do a religiously-oriented drama clumsily called There Is No God—It Hath Been Said, an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which was panned; he also presented the romantic drama If I Were King and Hamlet. Hamilton Ormsbee of the Eagle (December 1) sighed, “Sothern in Dostoieffsky [sic] is a great deal better than Anna Held in diaphanous gowns, and in Brooklyn theaters you take not what you would like, but what you can get.”

Presumably, the recent Shakespeare tours of Sothern and Marlowe had worn them out and they needed a less demanding schedule, she also insisting that her strained voice needed to recover. Further, she wanted to continue focusing on the classics, not modern drama.  Moreover, the expense of running their Shakespeare productions had grown so much, they needed time to recoup their earnings. At any rate, their split was for purely practical, not personal reasons. Their onstage partnership resumed a year later and they married in 1911.

Among other high-quality players on Brooklyn stages this month were serious actress Blanche Walsh returning in The Kreutzer Sonata, musical comedy German dialect actor Al H. Wilson in Metz of the Alps, the farcical Rogers Brothers in their first new work in two years, The Rogers Brothers in Panama, and, most memorably, Yiddish dialect actor Sam Bernard in The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer, Hattie Williams in The Little Cherub, former Brooklyn stock actress turned independent star Cecil Spooner, most glowingly, Frances Starr in her great success as Juanita in Belasco’s brilliant mounting of The Rose of the Rancho, and the beloved Maude Adams, flying again in Peter Pan, which she’d been doing for three years. If for nothing else, this month was memorable for a lineup of such distinguished actors in our fair borough.

But, lower down the acting pipeline, things were not so rosy, as witness the fate of the Hal Clarendon Stock Company, yet another attempt to jumpstart the fortunes of the beleaguered former Park Theatre, now Shubert again. As reported in the November entry, the Hal Clarendon Stock Company, was now occupying, its second week offering a play set in Czarist Russia called For Her Sake, which opened on December 2. On Saturday night, December 7, at the end of Act Three, the principals declared they were on strike and Clarendon rang down the curtain, as reported in the Eagle (December 8.)

The complaint, as so commonly, was nonpayment of salaries for the past two weeks. Learning that they’d not be paid again after the show, they took matters into their own hands. Moved by the actor-manager’s dilemma, the audience passed the hat and turned $50 over to him. His experiences during this time were decidedly unpleasant: “Dodging and temporizing with city marshals who were on his trail to attach the box office receipts, being deserted by his original heavy man [player of bad guys] and leading lady and substituting other players in their places and pleading with striking stage hands, are only a few of the incidents which marked Mr. Clarendon’s career at the Shubert. . . .”

The dejected actor-manager admitted that he was “whipped and . . . beaten for the first time in [his] life,” but promised to bounce back with the help of unnamed financial supporters. He said he’d learned of his dilemma a week ago after performing to decent houses in The Love Route, realizing his expenses outweighed his income, leaving nothing for the company. But the players bravely agreed to shoulder on with the promise of payment in the offing.

The first signs of trouble had appeared that week on Wednesday when ingenue Helen Ormsbee (daughter of Eagle drama editor Hamilton Ormsbee) quit the company for lack of payment, went to court, and secured an attachment of the box office take. The city marshal then showed up to get the money. The Eagle wrote that Clarendon, like the hero in a classic melodrama, responded to the “heavy’s” presence, “Ha, ha. . . . You are foiled. Stung! The box office receipts belong to the Shuberts. Touch them at your peril.” Not wishing a confrontation with the powerful Shuberts over the small amount to be attached, the marshal cautiously withdrew.

But news of the conflict reached the other cast members, and company heavy Frank McDonald now demanded “something on account” before he would act again. His demand rejected, McDonald walked out, soon to be followed by leading lady Alma Powell, which prompted another actress, Maquita Dwight, to do the same. Clarendon managed to replace these actors for the Thursday show, but the marshal returned on Friday determined to take away something, if only the costumes. Somehow, Clarendon raised enough cash to get rid of the marshal.

Then, on Saturday night, Clarendon arrived to learn that the stagehands had struck, refusing to work until paid, and preventing the actor-manager from setting the first scene himself. He managed to scrounge enough from the box office to satisfy them so the scene could be set. However, at the end of Act Three, just as the play reached its “grand climax,” the replacement actors announced they would not perform until they received their salaries, refusing all of Clarendon’s threats and blandishments.

Clarendon, declaring that he would “face the mob,” raised the curtain and addressed the audience, explaining why the play could not continue, breaking down in tears as he did so. “I am broke, . . . but it is not my fault!” The response was entirely sympathetic, with cheers and applause, the hat was passed, as already noted, $50 was raised, and Clarendon said he’d use it to pay his company. Peace reigned throughout the house and he “left the theater without a murmur.” Nothing, however, was printed about whether the “grand climax” was performed, and the next week at the Shubert was devoted to a visit by David Belasco’s production of The Rose of the Rancho, with nothing at all offered at the venue during the last week of the month.

The fate of the Clarendon Stock Company in Brooklyn contrasted sharply with that of the Spooner Stock Company, which had prospered during six years at the Bijou Theatre before moving across the river to successfully occupy the Fifth Avenue Theatre. There, Edna May Spooner continued to make a name for herself. Although still relatively young, her stock company activity had seen her play nearly 1,000 different roles, averaging forty a season. She also had a record of playing sixty-six consecutive weeks without a break. When she gave her 250th performance at the Fifth Avenue, its celebration drew numerous Brooklyn fans, each lady visitor receiving a souvenir. Meanwhile, her sister, Cecil, now an independent star, played locally this month as well.

The high price of seats and the reasons behind them were persistent themes for theatre reporters, just as they are today. In the early twentieth century, we must remember, a dollar went remarkably further than it does today, the equivalent of $1 being over $33. Still, even that number pales in comparison to the hundreds charged for orchestra seats to today’s Broadway hits. Anyway, a two-dollar price was considered too pricey in 1907 (even pricier when a fifty-cent fee was added to seats bought from booking offices), when most first-class theatres charged $1.50, and you could attend “popular-price” venues for anywhere from 10 to 50 cents/

Brooklyn Life tackled the price issue, noting on December 24 that—apart from New York’s two opera houses—there were no shows that couldn’t make a profit at the $1.50 price. The chief reason for the bloated price, said the magazine, was the exorbitant sums demanded by the stars, which were disproportionate to their talents. (Extend this to professional athletes and the case is even more egregious.) Too many actors who would have been second- or third-tier rank in the top stock companies of the eighties and nineties, had been artificially inflated to star status, “To foreigners the spectacle of this nation paying more each year to stage folk, who are not of the first rank, than it does to its president must be amusing to say the least. . . . And so it goes, and will go on until the public wakes up to the truth—that it, and not the managers, is to blame.”

One theatre that refused to raise prices even for the most in-demand shows was Williamsburg’s Broadway. Owner Leo Teller’s policy for attractions was “Come in at a dollar and a half for the best seats or stay out altogether.” Thus Peter Pan refused to come in for two years, demanding a two dollar top, but this year it caved and accepted the lower price. The Montauk also held fast to the dollar and a half rate, except when “it could not avoid being overruled by the management of visiting attractions” (Brooklyn Life, December 21).

The never-ending battle between the spheres of piety and entertainment for control over how people spent their Sundays raged on, finally finding a stopgap concession in mid-December. Earlier in the month, however, as the Eagle (December 7) reported in detail, Police Commissioner Bingham put the hammer down on all Sunday shows, citywide, including professional sports events, be they football, baseball, bicycle racing, or whatever. Seventeen commissioners were present when Bingham read a 2,000-word order from Judge O’Gorman of the Manhattan Supreme Court regarding the restrictions. The only music allowed was in hotels and restaurants, and only with stringed instruments. Bingham’s order left little leeway: “Everything in the way of a Sunday theater is to close,” and violators were to be arrested. With few exceptions, where “horse sense” was applicable, the police were not to “exercise any discretion at all.”

After repeating “All performances of any character in a place of amusement,” Bingham listed various examples, from Carnegie Hall to benefits at the Hippodrome to roller skating to movies. The press fulminated against these draconian measures, as when the Standard Union (December 8) wrote,

It is to be feared that the effect will be disastrous to thousands of well-behaved working people, and not only will it entail suffering upon them, but inconvenience upon the people by whom they are employed. Certainly, after working hard all the week, they cannot be expected to remain in the house all day Sunday and read books, or pass the time in meditation and prayer.

Since the saloons would remain open, it was predicted that many would congregate there and fill one cup too many, ending up in the clink or in the gutter.

However, not long after, on December 17, some relief emerged when, to the chagrin of Canon Rev. William Sheafe Chase and his angrily vociferous clerical supporters, the so-called Alderman Doull ordinance was passed by the city’s Board of Aldermen and would soon be signed by the mayor. According to the Eagle (December 18), it lifted the pall over Sunday activities by allowing theatrical entertainments, so long as no costumes or scenery were employed. Vocal and instrumental music were permitted, as were recitations, lectures, and illustrated songs, but dancing was out, as were acrobatic acts, animal acts, rope dancing, boxing matches, equestrian performance, and such theatrical events as tragedies, comedies, minstrelsy, opera, ballet, and farce. Violations could get you fined up to $500. 

The more conservative ministers nevertheless vowed to fight even these petty allowances, first by going to the mayor for a public hearing, and then, if need be, to the courts. Some aldermen received threats of being consigned to the regions of fire and brimstone or that their political careers would be ruined if they backed the ordinance.

It was clear, as predicted, that from the first two Sundays after passage, when the law was strictly enforced, that (according to the Standard Union, December 5), “the saloons were more generally patronized, there were more arrests for violation of the excise law, and more arrests for intoxication than before.”

To all of which, some anonymous jingle writer responded (Daily Times, December 18):

The clergymen and the Aldermen

Both of a different school,

One led by the Rev. Canon Chase, the other Reggie Doull,

Have different views of Sunday and its proper reverence,

As seen by all the hue and cry raised o’er an ordinance.

 

One favors a blue Sabbath, ruled by a good commission,

While the other shouts of liberty without the least contrition.

Between them both the public may get just what it needs’

To regulate its manners, its habits and its deeds.

Of course, Brooklynites who wanted true theatrical excitement from Monday through Saturday always had a choice of theatres specializing in melodrama and were only too happy to lay the action on thick. This month, in fact, wrote the Daily Times (December 28), you could see Lem B. Parker’s Shadowed by Three at the Columbia, with its “thirty-three people, an automobile, a sleigh, a stage coach, horses and a full size engine shown bucking the snowdrifts in Wyoming. A 60-horse power automobile containing three people is driven through a conservatory window overturning tables, chairs, palms, etc, in its passage.”

And then there was always the excitement stirred by the all-too real possibility of a theatre fire, something that, as we've seen before, Brooklyn theatergoers were especially sensitive about. Panic was only a heartbeat away when you attended a Brooklyn playhouse. According to the Times Union (December 29), this happened the previous night when the second floor of a four-story apartment house at 46 Graham Avenue was engulfed in flames. It was directly across from Williamsburg’s Folly Theatre, from which the audience was leaving just as the clang of fire engines was heard approaching and smoke began filling the auditorium. With hundreds of exiting people stopping to watch the firemen, those inside the Folly were struggling to get out, thinking the theatre itself was on fire, causing many women to be trampled on by frightened men. Reserves from other nearby stations had to be summoned to calm the crowds and clear the street. Happily, no spectators were seriously hurt, and the theatre remained unharmed, but the trauma many experienced probably lasted a long tine. 

December 2-7, 1907

Bijou: His Terrible Secret

Blaney’s Amphion: The Spoilers

Broadway: The Right of Way, with Guy Standing, Theodore Roberts

Columbia: The Original Cohen

Folly: The Old Homestead

Majestic: Virginius, Monte Cristo, Julius Caesar, with James O’Neill

Montauk: The Fool Hath Said—There Is No God, If I Were King, Hamlet, with E.H. Sothern

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Oliver Twist

Phillips’ Lyceum: The King of the Cowboys

Royal Italian: (Majori Stock Company) ?

Shubert: (Clarendon Stock Company) For Her Sake

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

December 9-14, 1907

Bijou: The Burglar and the Lady, with James J. Corbett

Blaney’s Amphion: It’s Never Too Late to Mend

Broadway: The Kreutzer Sonata, with Blanche Walsh

Columbia: The Rocky Mountain Express

Folly: Buster Brown

Majestic: Metz of the Alps, with Al H. Wilson

Montauk: The Rogers Brothers in Panama, with the Rogers Brothers

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Tennessee’s Partner

Phillips’ Lyceum: The Burglar’s Daughter

Royal Italian: (Majori Stock Company) ?

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

December 16-21, 1907

Bijou: Chinatown Charlie, the Opium Fiend

Blaney’s Amphion: The Life of an Actress, with Leila Dell Lennon

Broadway: Peter Pan, with Maude Adams

Columbia: Wall Street Mystery; or, King of Wire Tappers

Folly: The Little Organ Grinder, with Marion Ballou

Majestic: The Dancer and the King, The Girl Raffles, with Cecil Spooner

Montauk: Brewster’s Millions, with Edward S. Abeles

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

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) Camille

Royal Italian: (Majori Stock Company) ?

Shubert: The Rose of the Rancho, with Frances Starr 

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

December 23-28, 1907

Bijou: Since Nellie Went Away

Blaney’s Amphion: Bunco in Arizona, with Lillian Mortimer

Broadway: The Rich Mr. Hoggenheimer, with Sam Bernard

Columbia: The Candy Kid

Folly: Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model

Grand Opera House: Robin Hood, with the Aborn Opera Company

Majestic: The Dancer and the King, The Girl Raffles, with Cecil Spooner

Montauk: The Little Cherub, with Hattie Williams

Payton’s Lee Avenue: (Payton Lee Avenue Stock Company) Sky Farm

Phillips’ Lyceum: (Lyceum Stock Company) The Counterfeiters

Royal Italian: (Majori Stock Company) ?

Vaudeville and burlesque: Keeney’s, Olympic, Novelty, Orpheum, Star, Gayety, Grand Opera House, Gotham, Park (changed from Shubert)

The week of December 30, 1907, to January 4, 1908, is covered in the January 1908 entry for this blog.