4. FEBRUARY 1898: Week 6

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 6: February 7, 1898-February 12, 1898 

 

The rising classical star Julia Marlowe graced Brooklyn’s Montauk Theatre stage for the second week of her two-week appearance, following her performance in The Countess Valeska with a repertory program. Meanwhile, another, even more well-established star, leading matinee idol John Drew, was the big attraction at the Columbia Theatre, playing in Charles Frohman’s sumptuously costumed production of a period comedy of manners called A Marriage of Convenience, adapted by Sydney Grundy from the elder Alexandre Dumas’s Un Marriage sous Louis XV, and just recently the occupant of Frohman’s Empire Theatre, across the river. The same French play had been adapted into English by several others over half a century, including by Dion Boucicault who called it Love in a Maze.

As for Drew, “He is a polished actor, whose fitness for the line of parts that he follows enables him to hold a unique position on the American stage,” said Brooklyn Life. Isabelle Irving, Drew’s new leading lady, was there to share the plaudits of this “comedy soufflé,” as were important supporting players Elsie De Wolf, Arthur Byron, Daniel Harkins, and Graham Henderson.

The picturesque, four-act, light comedy was noted for its privileging of bright dialogue over stage action, and for how nicely it captured the original’s “piquant Gallic flavor, . . . quaintness, . . . daintiness and . . . exquisite good breeding” (Times Union). The Eagle noted that this version has “repressed some of its French frankness in deference to our American prejudices in favor of a woman’s acquiring lovers before marriage rather than after.”

Drew (great-great-uncle of actress Drew Barrymore) played the Comte de Candale. The comte has chosen to marry his heiress cousin (Isabelle Irving), whom he has never seen, taking her from a convent through the medium of her uncle. Bon vivant that he is, though, on the very day of his wedding he has a dinner date with the Marquise D’Eparville (Elsie De Wolf), a thrice-divorced aristocrat. Thinking it a trifle, he explains to the innocent bride the freedom he enjoys as part of their marriage of convenience. Her surprising response is to report on her own dalliance while at the convent with the Chevalier de Valclos, brother of another girl.

The chevalier is crazy about her and has arranged to be beneath her window on her wedding day, waiting for her signal that her new husband has departed. The comte finds him there and, instead of objecting, invites him in to make himself at home, hoping by such behavior to escape looking ridiculous. Everything must be out in the open, with no sneaking around. The comte and his wife gradually come to recognize admirable qualities in each other, and fall in love, teaching us how these compatible persons might otherwise have been kept apart by the corrupt spirit of a vicious age, to whose dictates they had shallowly been adhering. But first, many complications, including those at a grand ball, must be overcome with the help of the comtesse’s uncle (Daniel Harkins), before the mariage de convenance evolves into a mariage d’amour.

Julia Marlowe, having followed her pattern of adding a strong new play each season to her growing repertory, making it the finest of any American actress of the day, switched for the week to her past successes, including last season’s Bonnie Prince Charlie, for three performances (Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday), Romeo and Juliet (Alfred Kendrick as Romeo, Bassett Rowe as Mercutio) on Monday evening and Wednesday matinee, Rosalind in As You Like It on Wednesday evening, and Parthenia in that old 19^th-century warhorse Ingomar on Saturday afternoon and night. Marlowe was then the nation’s foremost Juliet, but it was her Rosalind that first began to move her into the upper echelons. Her beloved “girlish” charm remained untouched in all her roles.

The Bijou offered this week an up-to-date English melodrama replete with exquisite sets that moved the play, Fallen Among Thieves, by Frank Harvey, between Virginia and New York for a story contrasting country and city life. A young girl is lured away from her country home and lover by a sneaky con man who wishes to make her an accomplice in his deviltry. Numerous complications ensue. Comedy and pathos mingled in a work whose dramatic highlight came during a moonlit scene when the heroine, played by high diver Mlle. Trabond, leaped off Manhattan’s High Bridge—still connecting the Bronx and Manhattan near the entrance to the George Washington Bridge—into the Harlem River to rescue the victim of the villainous con man.

Here’s how the Daily Times described the scene: “The audience is supposed to be looking from a wharf at the foot of one of the piers of High Bridge. The scene is not badly painted and the bridge towers up well toward the skies. The villain chokes the heroine into insensibility and throws her into the water, real water in a tank, as the people in the orchestra can see, when it splashes up. Then a woman diver, in a red bathing suit, jumps, not from the bridge, bur from some lesser height at one side of the stage out of sight of the audience. She makes a bigger splash in the real water than the heroine did and the curtain comes down as the girl in the red bathing suit stands on the bottom of the tank and raises one hand toward the flies, while she wraps the other about the rescued heroine. To convince the audience that the heroine and the girl with the red bathing suit really do go into the water, they come before the curtain to the ‘tumultuous’ applause and bow their dripping acknowledgments.”

At the Park Theatre Stock Company was a revival of John A. Stevens’s old-style melodrama, The Unknown, now retitled The New Unknown, which he introduced in 1880, starring in it for years. He revised the play considerably for this production. According to the skimpy Eagle plot summary, Howell Hansell played the “unknown,” “Harold Merribright, by name, who looses [sic] his mind and wanders about. He is taken in charge by his sister, Bessie Merribright [Henrietta Crosman], who has not seen him in years, and fails to recognize him. In the last act, he regains his reason, and all ends happily.” Actually, much more is involved in a plot filled with skullduggery, romantic deception in the interests of financial gain, a villainous lawyer, true love, murder (both attempted and actual), and assorted mayhem. A new actor, Butler Davenport, was involved, but it was too late to save the company, which, according to the Eagle of February 8, was on the verge of folding.

The Park Theatre Stock Company had been losing money all winter, and was forced to abandon its stock system in favor of touring shows (combinations), although it was reported that the situation for the actors was not as dire as it might have been, as most had secured new engagements. Proprietors Hyde and Behman offered the actors salaries reduced by 25%, so they could continue for several more weeks while they looked for jobs elsewhere, but the actors declined to accept.

According to Hyde, “We have given the stock a good trial, but Brooklyn has no floating population, and it didn’t go. If this stock company had been located in any other city, it could have been a big success. In the matter of plays it is very much like music, People want only the new. They are tired of the old plays that have had the life squeezed out of them. The people of Brooklyn want the latest productions, or, at least, plays that are new here or have not been seen played here very often. . . .”

Another factor pointed to by observers was that the popular prices charged made earning a profit impossible. “It has been practically impossible to convince most theater goers that a good performance could be given for 50 cents. If the price had been a dollar many people would have gone who have never seen the present company.” Some claim that Hyde and Behman lost $25,000 on the venture, but those who knew the truth “say nothing and saw wood.”

The company was scheduled to close on February 19, after which it was to present Frank Chanfrau in Kit, the Arkansas Traveler. This, ironically, was itself an overly familiar piece that Chanfrau, like his father, had played on the road for years, including multiple visits to Brooklyn. As for the leading actors, Henrietta Crosman, for example, was already planning to begin touring as a star in the fall, said her only complaint was that she'd taken a lease on an expensive flat for a year and the lack of income meanwhile would be a burden. Howell Hansel, the leading man, intended to go into vaudeville, where many legit actors were finding lucrative work doing sketches.

The stock company’s final show would be The Galley Slave, after which its 26-week season would conclude.

Things were altogether lighter at the Grand Opera House where Primrose and West’s Minstrel Company held sway. Unlike most other minstrel troupes, Primrose and West stood out for including in its roster well-known actors from the legitimate theatre, among them Ezra Kendall, who headed his own farce company before venturing into vaudeville. Another respectable legit actor was Carroll Johnson, although his background included a considerable amount of minstrelsy performance as an end man. Billy Rice was yet another recruit from the legit. The show also had several singers and acrobats, as well as “handsome scenic and electric effects.”

Across town at Williamsburg’s Amphion was Augustin Daly’s production of The Geisha, recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as reported in an earlier blog entry. Stars Nancy Macintosh as O Mimosa San, and Virginia Earle as Molly Seamore were still popular draws, the former being an English artist who had gained repute in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. James Powers also continued to gain kudos for his participation. Songs that stood out included “The Interfering Parrot,” “The Amorous Goldfish,” and “Jack’s the Boy for Me” (a ricksha  duet).

Also in that part of town, the Gayety offered the premiere a farce, The Governors, presented by the Ward and Vokes Company, with an unusually large company of 32 performers assisting Hap Ward and Harry Vokes, popular vaudevillians. New songs by Charles A. Zimmerman enlivened things, and specialties were provided by Lucy Daly, Margaret Daly Vokes, Johnny Page, the Troubadour Four, and so on. Ward and Vokes, who had toured for two years in A Run on the Bank gaining popularity in the roles of Harold and Percy, brought those fellows back in this piece.

Harold and Perry, the comical leading roles, get into mischief in a hotel office, as opposed to the bank of their previous success. They appear in disguise as the titular governors, showing that “they can wear an evening dress just as they can a tramp’s attire.”

Williamsburg’s American Theatre returned to cheap melodrama with Frank Harvey’s The Land of the Living, a thriller given by a company headed by Lillian Washburn in the role of Meg. Variety acts were interpolated at various junctures. The scenic spectacles included London’s Parliament, London Tower, slum scenes, and even a scene in South Africa. The action involved a building exploding into the flies.

British male impersonator and quick-change artist Vesta Tilley was back as well, occupying Hyde & Behman’s vaudeville emporium with “her fifty odd suits of clothes, and her 750 neckties,” as the Times Union put it, while blackface singing comedian Lew Dockstader once again was on the bill, as were the Four Cohans, Charles T. Aldrich, the tramp juggler; the Lamont family of acrobats; Reno and Richards, tumblers; and the Musical Johnstons, etc.

The bill at the Brooklyn Music Hall in East New York was headed by sketch artists Fred Hall and Mollie Fuller, and they were joined by James F. Hoey; Johnston, Davenport, and Lorella in their sketch, “The Foot Ball Players and the Farmers”; Louise Montrose in hers, “Vaudeville at the Ball”; McCabe and Sabine, eccentric Irish comedians; and Pat and Mattie Rooney in songs and dances. The latter two were the children of the great Irish comic Pat Rooney, once a vaudeville star

The Star had “straight variety” this week, featuring comic Sam Devere’s company. On the bill was an early form of motion pictures called the “American biograph,” which had been seen in local variety shows since 1896, and was replacing the earlier “cinematograph.” It had been seen for 58 consecutive weeks at Keith’s vaudeville theatre in Manhattan. Other divertissements included musicians Bartell and Morris; sketch artists Leonard and Bernard; Catherine Rowe Palmer, contortionist; Walter J. Talbot, California tenor; Pearl Haight, “the American Anna Held”; a one-act called “Peep-o’-Day Club,” displaying Mildred Howard de Grey in her “barefoot passion dance”; a cakewalk routine; and “The Salvation Army Lassies Quadrille.”

Finally, the Empire Theatre featured Joe Oppenheimer’s Burlesque Company, opening with a burlesque called “The Greater New York Club,” “in which inuendoes of a startling nature and frankly broad lines were cheerfully recited by Harry LeClair and his assistants.” The olio offered acrobats, trained dogs, and impersonations, not to mention tumbling, juggling, and “serpentine dances.” Another LeClair-centered burlesque was “The Little Queen of Egypt,” allowing the comics “to smear their faces with all the colors of the rainbow.”