3. 1898--Week 9: February 28-March 5

By 

Samuel L. Leiter

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre

Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

For an introduction to and explanation of this blog, as well as a list of contemporary Brooklyn theatres, click here.

Weeks 1-6 are covered on this blog's predecessor, STAGES IN BROOKLYN'S PAST, starting with weeks 1-2 here. 

The ninth week of theatre in the brand-new Borough of Brooklyn brought a couple of powerhouse dramas, one new to the former city, one more familiar, but both among the most cherished American plays of the late 1890s. With William Gillette starring in one and Mrs. Leslie Carter in the other, the borough glowed brightly from their luminescence. There were also other big offerings to draw attendance, one of them making Brooklyn a decidedly “gay” town, while other shows did their musical and comical best to compete.

Only the American Theatre, Williamsburg’s home for old-school melodrama, was absent, closed, it was said, for Lent. The closing offered a chance for a benefit in manager Pierce L. Jarvis’s honor, with two Monday performances of a short play called The Chain of Destiny, followed by a bill of vaudeville entertainers. A month later, in April, the American, having held that name since 1896, would be put up for auction. It would come back in November under one of its former names, the Novelty. Its absence left seven legits still active, while the four nonlegits continued with vaudeville and burlesque. 

Here are the attractions for the week at the remaining legitimate theatres:

Montauk: Secret Service

Columbia: The Heart of Maryland

Grand Opera House: An Irish Gentleman

Bijou: At Gay Coney Island

Park: The Land of the Living

Amphion: The Idol’s Eye

Gayety: A Hot Old Time

The week’s great novelty, as plays not previously seen locally were called, was at the Montauk in Charles Frohman’s production of actor-playwright William Gillette’s Secret Service, another of this commanding star’s impressive contributions to the American stage. Tall, athletic, and handsome, he was an ideal leading man, revered for his realistic acting style, especially in the roles of “cool, collected persons” like Capt. Thorne, as Brooklyn Life declared; the originality of his plays, which represented a transition between melodrama and more modern tendencies, was duly recognized.

The extremely successful Secret Service—booked for an unusually long three weeks, with Wednesday matinees omitted—was considered a highly unconventional Civil War drama that held its audience tightly in its grip with its tale of the government secret service during the conflict. The previous year, a French version failed because it didn’t correspond to French notions of dramatic structure, but it—and Gillette—overwhelmed London audiences to a degree never before experienced by an American play. It had opened in New York in 1896, had toured many American cities to huge success, and was only now reaching Brooklyn, which, having waited patiently, accepted it with open arms.

The cast had changed much since 1896, with Sara Perry and Hope Ross playing the roles originated by Amy Busby (and taken later by Blanche Walsh) and Odette Tyler. Originally staged somewhere in Pennsylvania with Maurice Barrymore in Gillette’s role, it was considered controversial for having a spy as its hero (an idea most then considered anathema), and, even worse, one willing to sacrifice his country for a woman; also, it focused on the men in gray, not blue, being set in the Confederacy. The original script’s verbosity was trimmed, more attention to swift action was applied, and Gillette took over the lead, making it one of his greatest hits before he eventually scored as Sherlock Holmes in another of his plays.

Secret Service, despite ignoring the rules of conventional dramaturgy, seemed strikingly real, its comedy natural, and its emotional values true; some saw echoes of an earlier Gillette Civil War drama, Held by the Enemy. It was widely touted as “the greatest American play,” and had such a “phenomenal” run at Manhattan’s Garrick Theatre, with people turned away nightly except for Christmas Eve, that Richard Mansfield, who owned the Garrick, had to play at the Garden Theatre until the run was over.,

The following, which notes that the nearly three-hour play (different sources give different lengths) is written to be performed in real time (from 8:15 to 11:00 PM, said one paper), is from the Brooklyn Eagle of March 1, 1898:

There has been in the successful American drama no such perfect example of dramatic unity. The action all passes in one evening in Richmond, when the Union troops were intrenched [sic] outside the city. The scenes are supposed to occupy no more time than does their mimic presentment; there is no strain upon probability in this respect and there are none of the usual pauses which the spectator is expected to fill from his imagination. The whole story is told from the stage precisely as it might have happened in one critical evening in a besieged city, and, although this is a technical detail, its effect in the singular vividness and lifelikeness of the scenes is by no means to be overlooked. The dialogue has been cut down . . . remorselessly. . . . Everything which it is possible to tell by pantomime is so told, and the text is merely the incidental remarks absolutely necessary to elucidate the meaning. . . . Last of all, the story is vital in itself and its basis is elemental.

“Secret Service” is a war play and there is a patriotism in it, of course, but the pivotal interest is the love of man for woman, older than country or race, and wider in its appeal. That is the key which reconciles the apparently conflicting ethical problems to which the play seems to give rise. . . . 

The Times Union offered this summary:

The scene is Richmond, and the acts embrace the drawing room in Gen. Varney’s home, and the War Department telegraph office. The principal character, that of Lewis Dumon, is taken by Mr. Gillette, . . . who, when the play begins is a Northern spy in the Confederate army, as Capt. Thorne. He falls in love with Edith Varney (Sara Perry), [Gen. Varney’s daughter,] and she with him. She secures from President Davis a commission for Capt. Thorne as head of the War Department Telegraph Bureau after he has been ordered to the front through the efforts of a rival. He is suspected of being a spy, and, of course, is watched. Before his final exposure and arrest he experiences a great many hairbreadth escapes, in which he manifests the cool daring and recklessness of death so necessary to men in the secret service. Even when his sweetheart offers him an opportunity to escape death he spurns the offer, because she does not promise him her love for him will continue. It appears, however, that the court martial has been illegally held; that the accused is not guilty of the official charge made, which causes the spy’s sweetheart to change her mind, and he promises, as the curtain falls to be true to her until his release from a Southern prison, wither he is taken in lieu of being shot.

Gillette, best known for light comedy, surprised audiences with the gravitas of his performance. His supporting cast’s lifelikeness was entirely suited to his standards, aside from Perry as the female lead, whose elocution and voice were severely taken to task by the Eagle critic.

Charles Frohman’s production of David Belasco’s widely admired melodrama, The Heart of Maryland, which had opened in 1895 at New York’s Herald Square Theatre, where it ran for 247 performances, was another top-ranked Civil War play. Now at the Columbia for two weeks, it was not new to Brooklyn, where it had played a year earlier in two engagements of a fortnight each. It again was approved for its exciting scenes, especially a climactic one in which a man is saved from execution by the bravery of the heroine, Maryland Calvert. She was played, to acclaim, by famed redheaded Chicago socialite and divorcée Mrs. Leslie Carter, who, in her maturity, had been given strict dramatic training by theatre master Belasco and earned a respectable position as a leading lady of high temperament. The large company, which included Frank Mordaunt, James E. Wilson, and Helen Tracy, was heading for an April engagement in London when its Brooklyn visit ended.

The Grand Opera House presented young Irish American singing comedian Andrew Mack, whose rendition of “Myles Aroon” had been popular the last two seasons, in a three-act vehicle written for him by Ramsay Morris; it had been seen recently at Manhattan’s Fourteenth Street Theatre. It was appreciated for abandoning many stereotypical Irish devices, including as a hero “a peasant boy in corduroy knee-breeches,” here replaced by Jack Shannon, “an Irish gentleman, a young college graduate of Dublin.” Songs warbled by Mack included “My Sweetest Girl,” “The Irish Street Singer,” “My Heart’s Delight,” and “The Dove Song,” in which a flock of doves was released to land upon the tenor’s shoulders. Well-known character actress Marie Bates appeared in his support as an old servant.

At Gay Coney Island at the Bijou was one of many old plays in whose titles “gay” meant gay as it used to defined. Here it was used for a play satirizing the increasingly popular habit of visiting Brooklyn’s Coney Island resort area for outings. As the Times Union described the place, “It has many imitators, but certainly no equals. It is a bedlam of noises, a cyclone of merriment and a riot of music and mirth of the wildest and most discordant description.” 

Written and starring a pair of farceurs named Sherrie Mathews and Harry Bulger, the show had been seen locally the previous season. One of its chief features was the recreation for stage use of Coney Island’s massive “Shoot the Chutes” attraction. There were many new songs performed, including “A Jay in New York,” “My Love Is a Gambling Man,” “Coney By the Sea,” “He Struck It Rich in the Klondike,” etc.

The Park Theatre, newly free of its stock company, booked something by prolific melodramatist Frank Harvey called The Land of the Living for the week. Produced by the Washburn & Burns Company, it was a sensational melodrama seen in Brooklyn before. It featured “a big explosion scene,” and showed “the streets of London after dark, South African diamond fields,” and other interesting settings. Lillian Washburn starred in what one report called “one of the most melodramatic melodramas ever presented.”

Over in Williamsburg, where the American’s absence reduced the competition, the Amphion offered Frank Daniels in The Idol’s Eye, a comic opera with music by Victor Herbert that audiences at the Columbia had enjoyed the first week in February. Between then and now, Washington and Baltimore had seen it. On opening night, each lady attending was gifted with a souvenir of a silver-mounted rabbit’s foot, described by the management as “the left hind foot of a cross-eyed rabbit, killed in a country graveyard at midnight, during the dark of the moon, on Friday the 13^th of the month, by a left-handed, red-headed, bow-legged negro, riding on a white horse.” One of the songs, you see, was called “The Rabbit’s Foot.”

Brooklyn Life announced that another “gay” show headed back to the borough was In Gay New York, seen last week and now intended for the Gayety. Instead, that theatre welcomed a A Hot Old Time, the musical farce starring the Rays, Johnny and Emma, who had shown it at the Grand Opera House the previous week.

We now move to the nonlegits, noticing that Hyde & Behman’s where Howell Hansel, leading man of the late, lamented Park Theatre Stock Company, entered the vaudeville world in a sketch he wrote, “The College Student.” He was supported by popular young actress Daisy Lovering and character actor Joseph Slaytor, both also of the stock company. The bill included the Mimic Four in a sketch; Lydia Barry and George Felix, comedians; blackface entertainer Billy Carter; Akimoto’s Royal Yedo Japanese, a 12-member juggling act; Nat Wills and Mlle. Lorettto as “The Tramp and the Soubrette,” among others.

 

The bill at the Brooklyn Music Hall in East New York was headed by Annie Ward Tiffany, long known “for her impersonations of garrulous and comic Irishwomen.” Her sketch was called “The Duchess of Dublin.” Others on the bill included Jessie, the trained baboon, “who turns somersaults, rides bareback and does other marvelous things”; Al Leach and the Three Rosebuds; comic juggler O.K. Sato; Hall and Stanley in a comedy sketch; baritone singer Laura Bennett; and musical performers Weston and De Vaux.

The Empire Theatre featured trapeze artist Mlle. Chenette, whose act, copied from a Mlle. Charmion, “consisted in disrobing on a high trapeze, finally appearing in conventional tights, and giving an exhibition of her acrobatic skill.” Other performers included Weston and Beasly, one of whom imitated comedian Johnny Ray; the Bernard Sisters; Maddox and Leach; Wounded Buffalo, “an Indian bag puncher”; Stanley Whiting, “in his diverting exposition of negro music”; and others, the finale being a burlesque, “Fun on a Yacht.”

Flynn and Sheridan produced a novel show at the Star, with a mixed “white and colored” company, unusual in those days. The olio included Mme. Dillon and Flossie Hughes, singers; Burt Marion and Billy Pearl, eccentric acrobats; a dance with white and creole girls, led by Gertie Sawyer; the Golden Gate Quartet of African American singers; Lila and Vari, acrobats; and comedians Haines and Pettigill. Mlle. Zitella headed the white performers, and appeared in the closing burlesque, “The Klondikers.” Back then the degree to which explorations of the Klondike were on people’s minds was indicated by the number of shows and songs about the place, As an extra gift, the bill offered an “animated music sheet,” with the heads of 40 singers serving as notes.