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 5: Monday, January 31-Saturday. February 5, 1898
The big news in Brooklyn’s theatre world as January faded
into February was the beginning of a two-week appearance by Julia Marlowe,
increasingly recognized as one of the leading dramatic actresses of her time. Her
reputation would later increase even more significantly when she married and
teamed up with E.H. Sothern to tour the country in Shakespeare. A season
earlier she had found great success in Bonnie Prince Charlie, but
her career is thought to have really taken off with her appearance in Charles
Frohman’s production of Countess Valeska, a romantic costume drama, which
formed the first week of her run at the Montauk Theatre. The second week would
be devoted to several classics in repertory.
Having introduced it on January 10 at Manhattan’s Knickerbocker
Theatre, Marlowe took it on the road when her engagement ended, beginning with
Brooklyn. This was the star’s own adaptation of Rudolph Stratz’s German play, Der
Lange Preusse (The Tall Prussian), in which Napoleon, although briefly seen
from the rear, plays a crucial role in the plot. Set in 1807, just prior to the
Battle of Friedland, it presents Countess Valeska (Marlowe), a Polish widow, hosting
Napoleon, whom she reveres, at her castle the night before, while her former lover,
the “tall Prussian” (Bassett Roe), who—his horse having been shot from under
him—is hiding from the French in the castle. The countess is split between her patriotic
loyalty to Poland and Napoleon and her still burning love for the Prussian
officer, who disguises himself as her overseer until he can manage to slip
away. The presence in the castle of his father, who plans to assassinate the “Little
Colonel,” further complicates matters, as does the interference of a French
officer who not only desires the countess but sees through the Prussian’s ruse.
The excitement mounts until the Prussian, with the countess’s help, leaps from
a castle window into the moat, and swims to safety.
Marlowe made the best of the highly emotional situations, and
managed the comic moments with aplomb. Attractive castle scenery and vivid
costumes made this swashbuckling drama extremely popular.
Each of Brooklyn’s other legitimate theatres had something
to offer this week, with Western district playgoers able to visit The Idol’s
Eye at the Columbia, The Pacific Mail at the Grand Opera House, The
Electrician at the Bijou, and The Ticket-of-Leave Man at the Park.
Over in the Eastern District, the Amphion had My Friend from India, and
the American showed a pair of Irish comedies, The Dear Irish Home and The
Cruiskeen Lawn. Each of Brooklyn’s four major vaudeville and burlesque
houses was similarly active.
The first of these, The Idol’s Eye, was a Kiplingesque
comic opera set in India, and starring Frank Daniels, who had met with great
success in his previous outing, a comic opera called The Wizard of the Nile,
which recently had occupied him at New York’s Broadway Theatre and on the road
for a couple of years. Like his last show, this one also had a book and lyrics
by Harry B. Smith, librettist of the Reginald De Koven operettas, and music by the
still admired Victor Herbert (“bandmaster of the 22nd Regiment”); loosely
inspired by Kipling’s “The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney,” it told of the
adventures in India of an American aeronaut touring the world in search of
adventure, a Cuban planter and his daughter, a Scotch kleptomaniac, and an
American novelist. The company, sets, and costumes from the New York run remained
intact.
Abel Conn, the aeronaut (or balloonist), played by Daniels,
descends in his balloon into the waters near a British garrison. Soon, he
involved with a nearby Brahmin community involved in trying to catch the thief
who stole the precious ruby of the title; it’s a gem capable of making women fall
in love with whoever possesses it. A matching jewel, with similar powers, is in
the eye of an idol in the Temple of Juggernaut. It is believed that the idol is
about to come to life. As Brooklyn Life put it, “The aeronaut’s running up
against peculiar Brahmin customs, his substitution of himself for the supposed
vivified image, the theft of the second ruby and the queer things that happen to
the possessors of the two jewels, bring about many amusing complications.”
Chief of the comic engines running the show is what happens
when Abel saves someone from suicide, which, says a judge, makes the latter
legally dead, and his rescuer responsible for his behavior. This allows him to get
into all kinds of scrapes from which Abel must extricate himself to stay out of
trouble.
The critics liked the lyrics and exotically-hued tunes, and
Daniels again proved himself an entertaining comic lead. Among his supporting
cast members, Helen Redmond scored as the pretty Cuban maid, and Claudia
Carlstedt was applauded as the High Priestess. The chorus girls were “pretty, pure
voiced, and well drilled,” said the Times Union.
The revival of Paul Potter’s The Pacific Mail, seen
last week at the Gayety, moved this week across the borough to the Grand Opera
House, where it was well received. As before, the play proper was filled with variety
acts, including opera singer Mme. Alexa and boxer Kid McCoy.
At the Bijou, there was Charles E. Blaney’s melodrama The
Electrician, which had provided its audience with some entertaining shocks
when it played there a year earlier. Making use of elaborate scenery showing the
young Western city of Denver and the nearby gold mining territory, it featured Frank
Karrington as the hero, P. Augustus Anderson as the bibulous villain, Helena
Collier as the soubrette, and Florence Stone as the heroine.
The story is that of young Tom Edson (Karrington), son of a
inventor, who rises from the humble job of electrician to that of
philanthropist and millionaire mine owner. The plot involves a mortgage on Tom’s
father’s electric plant, which is on the brink of being foreclosed; Tom’s stymied
attempt to pay off the mortgage when challenged by scoundrelly bank cashier Kenneth
Sauvage, his rival for the hand of Edith Sessions; Edith’s clever ruse to pay
the mortgage just as the clock-operated vault is closing; Kenneth’s plot to ruin
Tom by cutting the lines in the power house, thus breaking his contract with
Denver; Tom’s father’s death in the power house when he discovers Kenneth’s
villainy; Tom’s last-minute mending of the wires; his search for his father’s
killer by becoming a miner; and, after becoming a mining millionaire, known as
Edwin Palmer, the Gold King, his Monte Cristo-like entry, when he finally
brings Kenneth Sauvage to justice.
And the Park Theatre Stock Company, its labor problems
settled, revived Tom Taylor’s once very popular British melodrama, The
Ticket-of-Leave Man, an 1863 play, first produced in New York in 1864 at Wallack’s
Theatre, and not seen locally for some time, but still welcome for its being
both “sensational and rational,” according to the Brooklyn Daily Times.
As common in such melodramas, it deals with an innocent man
being thought guilty of someone else’s malfeasance, and the ultimate discovery
and punishment of the perpetrator. A young Lancashire man, Bob Brierly, played
by Howell Hansel, is the unfairly persecuted hero. The action largely takes
place in Pentonville Prison, to which he is sent, and the story recounts his
struggle to wash off the stain of the stigma placed on him by this experience. Only
his sweetheart, May Edwards (Henrieta Crosman), believes in his innocence. Playing
a crucial role in all this is Hawkshaw the detective (Edward Esmond), whose
name eventually became a synonym for his job.
Across town at the Amphion, My
Friend from India, a farce by H.A. Du Souchet based on theosophy, and produced
by the Smyth and Rice Comedy Company. Originally seen in 1896 at New York’s Bijou
Theatre, it had been successful when it premiered at Brooklyn’s Montauk a year
earlier, and then was a hit in New York at Hoyt’s before packing them in on the
road. In England it was so popular it had as many as five touring companies, its
title there being My Friend the Prince.
Erastus Underholt, a retired Kansas
City pork packer, has been struggling for years to get his family into the upper
strata of metropolitan society, and thinks he has a golden chance when his
man-about-town son Charles brings home a barber he stumbles across named A.
Keene Shaver. He has no idea the next morning where he found the man or even
what his name is. While the man is sleeping Charles goes through his clothes to
learn his identity, but all he finds is a book on theosophy. When the barber
wakes and can’t find his clothes, he wraps himself in a yellow bedsheet, soon running
into Charles as he is being admonished by his father for his indiscrete behavior.
Seeing the barber in his sheet, he is inspired to introduce him as his friend
from India, a distinguished teacher of theosophy in “The Order of the Yellow Robe.”
Erastus, thinking it will be the lever to spring him into society, makes it
widely known that an esteemed Indian theosophist is his houseguest. Anxious to
flee, the barber finds his every exit blocked by Erastus’s security, so he
decides to play along and pretend to be a learned pundit. Therein follow a
series of rib-tickling complications until all is happily resolved.
Funny, lively, and consistently amusing,
it had audiences laughing throughout. The current showing had Frederick Bond as
the ambitious pork packer; Helen Reimer as an old maid who has a hilarious
scene with a mirror; and May Vokes as Tilly, a German servant girl, a role that
established her reputation.
In a switch from its steady diet of melodramas, Williamsburg’s
American Theatre featured Dan McCarthy in a pair of his own Irish plays, The
Dear Irish Home, seen in Brooklyn at the Bijou the previous year, and
The Cruiskeen Lawn, first seen locally in 1891. Neither appears ever to
have been done in Manhattan. McCarthy was a versatile Irish actor, singer,
dancer, and playwright. In The Dear Irish Home, performed Monday through
Wednesday, he played two roles, old Dennis Burns and young Dennis Burns,
“a gallant Irish lad,” with each involved in a series of comic
misunderstandings. A highlight was an Irish Christmas Eve scene in which he played
Santa Claus, with a very funny entrance down the chimney. Songs and dances were
scattered through the play for additional fun.
From Thursday through the end of the week, McCarthy offered
The Cruiskeen Lawn, dealing with a villain’s attempt to gain possession
of an estate rightfully belonging to others. He stops at nothing short of
attempted assassination to carry his plans into effect, and has, like all Irish
villains, the satisfaction of succeeding until a certain period, when all is made
right. McCarthy displayed his versatility as Dublin Dan, and Act Three allowed
for a succession of beautiful Irish scenic pictures.
The Gayety, inclining lately toward nonlegitimate attractions,
boasted a bill led by British music hall male impersonator Vesta Tilley, “the best-dressed
man of the day,” who sang songs that “are not only free from offense, but are
pretty and diverting as well. Her clothes are at once the envious despair of
the chappies,” said the Daily Times. Her performance involved quick
changes allowing her to play five different characters. The Eagle pointed
to her “the Vesta Tilley scarf, which was one of the novelties of her long
engagement at Weber and Fields’; it is made from an old-fashioned Paisley shawl
and it is worn with a peculiarly Tilley grace, which imitators find it hard to
equal.” Blackface performer Lew Dockstader shared the stage with Tilley, along
with “his singing coons.” Also on the bill were the Four Cohans—with George M.,
of course—Charles T. Aldrich, René and Richards, and others. The weekly Sunday
variety concert featured Pauline Hall, the Donovans, Joe Welch, and other then
familiar performers.
Burlesque visited the Empire Theatre under the aegis of Al
Reeves’ Burlesque Company, with Reeves singing and plucking his banjo with topical
songs, joined in the olio by Cissy Grant, “shapely serio-comic,” comedy
acrobats Manning and Prevost, and so on. The two burlesques were “Fogerty’s Boarders”
and “An Isle of Gold.”
Hyde & Behman’s Adams Street emporium proudly presented
another first-class woman impersonating a man, Miss Johnstone Bennett, doing
her popular sketch, “A Quiet Evening at Home,” costarring George Leslie in the
part formerly played by Miller Kent. The bill also listed Mr. and Mrs. Robyns
in the sketch, “The Counsel for the Defense,” Prof. Leonadis and his trained cats
and dogs, the “equestrian baboon” called Jessie, comedienne Marie Heath, “American
costers” Hines and Remington, monologist Ray L. Royce, the Newsboys Quintet,
etc.
The Brooklyn Music Hall bill featured the sensational wire
walker Lina Pantzer; musical comedians Howe, Wall, and Walters; Irish storyteller
John Kernell; married sketch team Harry Foy and Florence Clark; comic bicyclists
Ferrell and Stark; and, among others, song and dance artist Elsitia.
And, at the Star, there was Brooklyn Bridge jumper Steve
Brodie, who leapt last year from farce acting to vaudeville, with a sketch from
a play he used to appear in, set in his Bowery saloon. The press release for
his sketch, “A Night at Steve Brodie’s,” noted that in England, Albert Chevalier
had made a career out of presenting the songs, stories, and character types of
London’s “East Side,” but that New York’s East Side was an even richer territory
for such material. “There is a greater jumbling of nationalities, a more
various and amusing jargon of tongues, for, besides its usual residents, who
would no more think of moving from their locality than if it meant stepping off
the globe altogether, the Bowery is a great district for the cosmopolitan. Brodie
has mastered all the various characters to be met with in his neighborhood, and
especially in his saloon, which is the popular resort for the many, and has
adapted them to the stage for the amusement of the theatregoing public.
The bill was managed by Gus Hill, whose company included
Annie Hart, mimic C.W. Williams, musical sketch artists Hiatt and Pearl, several
boxers sparring and bag punching, and the like.
