2. JANUARY 1898: Weeks 3 and 4

This blog trawls through Brooklyn’s contemporary newspapers to see, microcosmically, what happened to its theatre life after consolidation on January 1, 1898. For the background, see my book, Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater in the City of Churches (McFarland: 2024), which ends on December 31, 1897. The road will be long and bumpy, and how far we’ll get can’t be determined (it’s 2025 and I’m in my mid-80s). As they always say, though, buckle up and come along for what, to theatre lovers, should be a fascinating ride.

(Note: to read these entries in chronological order see the archive list on the right side of the page.)

Week 3: Monday, January 17-Saturday January 22, 1898

The naughtiness attributed to French singer Karina’s costume malfunction in this blog’s previous entry was becoming endemic, it seems. One paper noted that Manhattan was sweating over shows like The Telephone Girl, The Conquerors, The French Maid, and The Ballet Girl, while Brooklyn’s hormones were raging from The Girl from Paris, A Stranger in New York, and the aforesaid, “flatly vulgar,” Karina.

The Girl from Paris, which finished out its second week at the Montauk, received both a slap on the wrist and a pat on the back from the Brooklyn Daily Times. Here, for the fun of it, are some comments on the showgirls on view, written at a time when it was as common for journalists to comment on a woman’s appearances as it was to use words like “coon,” and worse, in racial references: “These girls cannot recite lines, a circumstance thoroughly well proved by their efforts in that direction, nor can they do much else beyond putting themselves on exhibition. There is not a single really unattractive girl in the whole collection, and four or five of them are positively picturesque until they essay to speak, and then the illusion vanishes. The brunette young lady, with soulful eyes, who replies, ‘I think so too’—or words to that effect—makes the remark in much the same manner as does the three-year-old Sunday School pupil, when the latter begins that inspired recitation, ‘You’d scarce expect one of my age, etc.’ The birdish blond with the baby expression speaks her seven words as if they hurt her, which perhaps they do, but later she kicks up her stockings, or what is in them, with an evident enjoyment of the proceeding. Mr. [E.E.] Rice ought to let those girls of his who can talk, talk; those who can kick, kick; those who can sing, sing; and those who can only look pretty confine themselves to doing so.”

Three stars of The Circus Girl.

New to Brooklyn was The Circus Girl, an English musical comedy produced by Charles Frohman, on view for a two-week run (something apparently becoming more common) at the Columbia. The week’s big show, it arrived here after a long run under Augustin Daly’s auspices at Daly’s Theatre in New York last summer before Frohman, after a bitter fight with Daly, acquired its touring rights; Daly settled for the New York rights, which, apparently didn’t include Brooklyn. It was known for its brisk, amusing book, and jinglingly pretty tunes, and came to Brooklyn with sets and costumes modeled after those in the show’s two-year London run at the Gaieties, under the aegis of the distinguished George Edwardes. Set in Paris,  with scenes showing famous landmarks, it was the work of six Londoners and two Berliners, the former group including James T. Tanner and W. Palings (book); Harry Greenhank and Arian Ross (lyrics); Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton (music), with some of the action ascribable to a German comedy by Freund and Mannstadt called Eine Tolle Nacht. Whatever hint of a plot it had was submerged by all the fun and gaiety. The company employed 75 performers, one of the newcomers being Mabel Howe.

The titular heroine, said Brooklyn Life, is “La Favorita, of Drivelli’s Circus, but another girl, Dora Wemyss, gives the plot its main excuse for being. Much to the disgust and despair of her lover, she has a penchant for circus acrobats. The young fellow sees but one way out of his difficulty, and that is to palm himself off as one of the profession. This leads to his joining the aforesaid circus, where the society man is transformed into the ‘Cannon King.’ His adventures and those of his prospective father-in-law, Sir Titus Wemyss, furnish material for the main part of the action.”

The most brilliant scene was at the circus itself. Songs that stood out included “A Simple Piece of String,” “A Wet Day,” and “Not a Proper Way to Treat a Lady.”

John C. Slavin was the American bartender; Joseph C. Fay was Sir Titus; Alfred Hickman was the lover, Samuel Edwards was the circus proprietor, Edwin Hanford was the clown, Amanda Fabris was La Favorita, Mabelle Howe was Dora, and Mary Young was the slackwire walker, the latter having scored highly in the New York version.

The American Theatre (not to be confused with the Manhattan playhouse of the same name) continued doing cheap melodrama with Edward E. Kidder’s Shannon of the Sixth, starring W.H. Powers, and set in India, where the plot takes off after the stealing of a valuable gem, “Light of Heaven,” from a Hindu temple. Romantic complications arise when British Captain Arlington accuses Irishman Lt. Shannon, his rival for the hand of Dora, the general’s daughter, of the theft. Shannon is court-martialed, denounces his allegiance to the queen, and escapes to the Delhi hills. Complications follow until we get to the play’s main attraction, when Dora is captured by native troops and bound to the mouth of a canon just as it is to be fired. “Just in the nick of time, Shannon appears, rushing headlong from rock to rock, and releases her just as the gun belches forth its deadly charge with a mighty roar.” So similar was this to a scene in another recent play, The Cherry Pickers, that the respective authors began to squabble publicly over whose idea the whole thing was.

A French-derived, three-act, knockabout farce called Never Again, adapted by Henry Gray Carleton from the French of Desvallières and Mars, whose original was Le Truc de Seraphia (Seraphin’s Trick), had been seen locally the previous fall, after a long run at Manhattan’s Garrick Theatre. It now returned to Brooklyn, playing at the Amphion in its Charles Frohman production. E.M. Holland starred.

Seraphin is the concierge at 25 Rue Sardine, where he randomly takes names from the directory, writing to them that if they wish proof of spousal or romantic infidelity, to call at his address. Once there, they are connected to a hatter resident there, Seraphin’s partner in his trick. The hatter dispels their suspicions about their wives or lovers, and charms them into buying his hats, although some actually indiscrete characters get thrown in, and the complications accrue.

The Gayety returned to straight drama with a revival of Paul Potter’s The Pacific Mail, seen in 1894 with William H. Crane. In this revival, the emphasis was on farce. Robert E. Graham was appreciated in the leading role. As per the usual approach for such works, various variety acts were squeezed in for filler, among them pugilist Kid McCoy, punching a bag and jabbing at a sparring partner, Doc Payne, for three rounds; dancer Mlle. Fourgere, “a French serio-comic of particularly liberal ideas”; and Mme. Alexa, an opera singer. The Gayety’s Sunday night variety concerts continued, with Williams and Walker, “the genuine and clever negroes,” back again, along with popular singer Helen Mora, musical tramp Charles R. Sweet, and so on.

Another old warhorse, the racing melodrama In Old Kentucky, seen locally several times over the years, was mounted with new scenery at the Bijou. The play depended on its picturesqueness, colorful characters, and racing action, using treadmills. Queen Bess, ridden by the Kentucky heroine, wins the big race, and the villain’s horse is soundly defeated. Much loved features, noted by the Eagle, were “The breezy, gallant Kentucky colonel, the charm and innocence of the girl heroine, the faithfulness and loyalty of the old negro servant, the spirit, gloss, and beauty of the Kentucky thoroughbred, Queen Bess, and the fun and frolic created by a band of pickaninnies.”

Those indefatigable Park Theatre stock thespians had not yet gone on strike, this week seeing them slap on the greasepaint to revive Henry C. DeMille’s The Lost Paradise, adapted from Ludwig Fulda’s German play, and made into a film with H.B. Warner in 1914. It had premiered in 1891 at Proctor’s 23^rd Street Theatre, with future super-agent William Morris and future super stage star, Maude Adams. Half a dozen new actors joined the company this week, with Howell Hansel and Henrietta Crosman in the roles once played by Morris and Adams.

A labor-related play, which was ironic considering the Park company’s recent threat to strike, it tells of the love of an iron works superintendent, Reuben Warner (Hansell) for his boss’s daughter, Margaret Knowlton (Crosman), but she is already engaged to her father’s (Robert Ranson) partner, Bob Appleton (John Daily Murphy), who’s received a half interest in the business as part of the arrangement. Thus is the superintendent’s wish to gain the woman’s hand spurned. But the partner betrays his true nature in an outrageous fit of temper, and the fiancée abandons him in favor of the man who truly deserves her.

This week’s Grand Opera House slipped into nonlegitimate territory with Hanlon’s Superba, a musical spectacular show mingled visual appeal with vaudeville acts, which had been around for a decade, making frequent updating and revisions to keep it fresh. Its gorgeous costumes, sets, and lighting effects charmed young and old, as did master clown Charles Guyer; the Rossi Brothers, acrobats; beautiful whistler Nellie Daly; and many new ballets, illusions, and mechanical effects.

Audiences seeking nondramatic delights visited the Empire, where a 30-member troupe called the Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque Company satirized contemporary fads and fashions under the title “A World of Pleasure, with rope-skipping burlesquer Lottie Elliott, sketch artists Sullivan and Foster, Lawson and Ward with their comic bicycling act, and, among others, Frances Namon, “a woman bag puncher.” Audiences loved to see men and women pounding not only each other but the leather bags used when training.

Other variety acts on view locally were, at the Brooklyn Music Hall, Carl and Saphira Baggesen, doing a routine as a waiter and waitress in which he clowned and she juggled; the Stewart Sisters, doing “parlor imitations”; the two Abaccos, comedy acrobats; the Harpers, buck and wing “coons,” and others. The extensive bill at Hyde & Behman’s featured, among others, Irish comedian and singer Robert Gaylor, Lillie Western playing many musical instruments, Al W. Wilson and Lee Erroll in the comic sketch, “A Tip on the Derby”; comic opera performers Louise Royce and Josie Intropidi in a sketch called “Only Engaged”; and Baldwin and Daly, “The Happy Hottentots.” At the Star, Al Reeves’s Burlesque Company was engaged with its 35 members and two burlesques: “Fogarty’s Boarders” and “The Isle of Gold.” Also on view was Lumiere’s cinematograph, “one of the best moving picture machines before the public.” In time, it would be the moving picture machines that dominated as live theatre in Brooklyn shriveled.

Week 4: Monday, January 24, 1898-Saturday, January 29, 1898

 

Not much was new on Brooklyn’s stages this fourth week of the new year, and 20^th of the 40-week, 1897-1898 season, running from September through June. Brooklyn’s first significant theatre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which opened in 1861 (near City/Borough Hall, not where it is today), had presented very little legitimate theatre of late, but this week it rented its stage to present four performances of the Japanese-inspired musical comedy, The Geisha, seen elsewhere in prior Brooklyn engagements.

It pictured the English abroad in Japan, with sprightly scenes set in the “Tea House of the Ten Thousand Joys” and a garden party given by a Japanese marquis. Brooklyn Life said it “conveys a really good idea of the picturesqueness of Japanese tea house life and the doll-like women, whose singing and dancing make these resorts a feature of travel in one of the most fascinating countries on the globe." Performed by the musical theatre actors in Augustin Daly’s New York company, at Daly’s Theatre, where it was ensconced since last season, its cast was headed by singers Nancy McIntosh, Virginia Earle, Julius Steger, and James T. Powers, etc.

Also making waves was comic star William H. Crane, at the Montauk, reviving his representative performance as Senator Hannibal Rivera in Washington correspondent David Lloyd and Sydney Rosenfeld’s long popular newspaper comedy of Washingtonian politics, The Senator. It had rarely been off the stage for nearly 10 years, having had four major New York productions; in Brooklyn, it piled up 32 performances at the Park Theatre when it was run by Col. Sinn.

Crane’s role fit him perfectly, the good politician whose goodness sent him to the capital, where he became even better liked when he demonstrated how high his character was. This Western senator seeks to pass a bill that will secure the claim of an old man who seeks reimbursement for the loss of a ship sunk by the British in a neutral port, where it should have been safe from attack. The claim, though just, had been allowed to drag along for years while the claimant grew ever frailer and older. The senator, having voted against some scabrous bills, has earned the enmity of certain of his fellows who now take revenge by refusing to pass his bill. He throws himself into the fight to win. When he achieved victory, the audience went wild.

Also on board were Annie Irish as Mrs. Hilary, Miss Percy Haswell as Mabel Denman, and so on.

Saucy French chanteuse Anna Held, of “the flowing locks, languorous eyes and the risky [sic] songs,” as the Eagle described her, who was either already or soon to be married to impresario Florenze Ziegfeld, left her prosperous assignment at New York’s Koster and Bial’s, coming over with her company for a week at the Amphion, her own company in support. In addition to her familiar repertoire, she added “The Animated Chorus” for which a sheet of music filled the theatre’s rear, the notes indicated by the “wooly” heads of a team of Black performers bobbing up and down, like the “follow the bouncing ball” shorts soon to invade movie theatres. Miss Held sang, of all things, a repertory of “coon” songs, most popularly “I Want Dem Presents.” Others tried imitating these bouncing head numbers, but hers remained the most popular.

The bill also contained a brief farce, “The Gay Deceiver,” and, far more importantly, Chester Bailey Fernald’s “The Cat and the Cherub,” a “Chinese” one-act that bore noticeable resemblances to the recently premiered The First Born, about life in a San Francisco Chinese tenement alley. These latter were the closest representations yet to showing life among America’s Chinese immigrant community. Brooklyn Life, recalling that Fernald’s story had first appeared in the Century, said readers would remember “the pretty tale of the little Chinese boy who was always carrying about his “good luck cat”—One-Two—and whose adventures led him to the house of glittering things. The play deals only with the kidnapping of the child by Chin Fang, keeper of an opium joint.” It was set on a street in Chinatown, and while tragic, “is never gloomy.”

Back for a second week at the Columbia Theatre was the beautifully mounted The Circus Girl, starring Amanda Fabris, which benefitted from the addition to the cast of sweet, pretty, and young Gladys Wallis in the ingenue part of Dora.

Herbert Hale Winslow’s Who Was Who?, with Mason and Kelly, seen earlier this year at the Gayety, now moved across town to the Grand Opera House. And the musical spectacle called Superba entered the Gayety in its place. Critic Roland Oliver of the Brooklyn Citizen considered it “placid, polite, and rather pudgy.” On Sunday, January 23, the Gayety gave its next vaudeville concert, starring Maggie Cline, now over a case of the grippe.

The Park Stock Company, having abandoned their strike threat—when their demand for only two matinees, Wednesday and Saturday, was accepted—brought back a hoary but nostalgia-laden revival of The Streets of New York, remembered for Frank S. Chanfrau’s Badger and the big fire scene, during which not a word was spoken, and which used to be hailed as a miracle of realism. Adapted from Dion Boucicault’s The Poor of New York, originally known in French as Les Pauvres de Paris, it debuted at Wallack’s in Manhattan in 1857, almost 40 years earlier, with Lester Wallack as Badger, confidential clerk of banker Gideon Bloodgood. Its plot, inspired by the financial panic of 1837, was about an embezzlement and its action shifted around the city, showing Wall Street, the Five Points, and Union Square. Howell Hansell was now Badger, Henrietta Crosman (then spelled Crossman) was the banker’s daughter, Alida Bloodgood, William Davidge, Jr., was Capt. Fairweather, and Edwin Esmonde was Livingston.

A rip-roaring Western-style melodrama set in the Oklahoma territory and Northwest Texas, reputed to be hotbeds of crime and outlawry at the hands of ruthless gangs of violent gangs, arrived in Scott Marble’s The Great Train Robbery. The play was incorporated into a now classic early movie Western of the same name in 1903, which was highly successful. Premiered in 1896, the play, inspired by tales—among others—of the James brothers and the Dalton brothers, was reputed to be “the first American drama attempting to portray life in this section.” Action-packed, like the later movie, it had sensationalistic scenes, including a realistic train robbery in which the express car is exploded with dynamite and the safe cracked. Among the scenic splendors was a depiction of the Red River Canyon.

Like modern movies, 19^th-century plays sometimes exploited famous natural disasters for their intrinsic dramatic and spectacular effects. Among such events was the Johnstown flood of 1889, shown in Louis Eagan’s The Midnight Flood at the American Theatre within a melodrama of love, hate, and intrigue. Eagan himself played the hero, a young lawyer unjustly accused of murder, and in prison when the flood arrives; a highlight was his heart-stopping escape from drowning like a rat.

The vaudeville and burlesque houses were up to their usual stuff. Brooklyn Music Hall audiences enjoyed such acts as Arthur and Jennie Dunn in their sketch, “The Actresses and the Bell Boy”; Amelia Glover, recovered from her recent, widely published illness, demonstrating why she was so beloved a dancer; Dixon, Bowers, and Dixon in their “Three Rubes” sketch, and a nice complement of singers, jugglers, and comedians. More impressive, we’re told, was the lineup at Hyde & Behman’s, where you could see comic actor Odell Williams, recently applauded in such legit plays Pudd’nhead Wilson and The Heart of Maryland, now trying a Southern character sketch, “The Judge,” in Brooklyn before doing it anywhere else.  

Lydia Titus, art song specialist, graced the bill, as did T. Nelson Downer, “King of Koins”; the Donovans, doing Irish specialties; comic sketch artists Stinson and Morton; tenor James W. Morgan, and other long-forgotten entertainers. Finally, the Empire Theatre’s bill, under the aegis of Weber’s Parisian Widows’ Company, presented Howard and Emerson, with their illustrated songs; Letta Meredith, “a clever burlesquer”; the Cosmopolitan Trio; Tenley and Simonds, Irish comedians; Boyce and Black doing a blackface routine; Lizzie Vance, soubrette, and, among other acts, a sketch called “A Night in New York.”

Burlesque continued at the Star, with Scribner’s Columbian Burlesquers, the bill being the standard two burlesques in between which was the olio of variety acts, such as Clarice Thomas and Quinn, the Millar Sisters, and others. Burlesque #1 was “The Columbian Reception,” representing the Evangelina Cisneros episode, in which the beautiful young woman of that name, a rebel during the Cuban War of Independence from 1896, escaped from prison, gaining worldwide fame for her exploit. The Cuban revolution was on everybody’s radar; one could even go to New York’s Eden Musee and see 24 scenes, many of the war itself, captured by what was usually called the cinematograph. Burlesque #2 was “Mike from Klondike,” yet another piece exploiting the recent explorations of the Klondike.