Bits of old theatrical and musical stuff

 

It's that time again.  My desktop is getting as crowded as the Drury Lane stage in Novello days. It's time to plonk some these fascinating (to me) finds on The Blog ...

A couple of 1920s from American showbusiness. Different area of the American showbusiness ...

This is from 1924. How do I know that? Because Mr Strayer's 'Amusement Company', which was a carnival act, seemingly existed only between May and July 1924. Jarvis Robert STRAYER (b Martinsburg, West Virginia 19 July 1883; d Biloxi 18 October 1955) had worked for some years for the Cream City Amusement Co as a showman on the road circuits. I see him in the 1920 census 'carnival manager, travelling' in Milwaukee, with his wife Hannah Maria ...  In 1942 he is 'manager Pan American Shows, Cincinnati'. At his death, he was 'operator of a trailer court'. 

A little more pretentious was this one, also from the 1920s ..

Fanchon & Marco ..?

It is not inscribed, but the ebay vendor has labelled it as a Fanchon and Marco revue.  Fanchon and Marco Wolff were billed as 'the cleverest of modern dancers and terpsichorean specialists in the country'. They wrote their own material, played San Francisco and even ventured to New York in 1921 with their revue Sun Kist for a month of performances. Reading the breakdown for Sun Kist, this doesn't appear to belong in there. Perhaps 'the Mack Sennett Girls' in Let's Go. Anyway, they apparently made their money by producing potted musical comedies for production on film programmes. Perhaps that's them in the background?

They were brother and sister, the children of Solomon Isaac Wolff, (d 1929) a Russian tailor, and his Polish wife Ester (d July 1958), and the three eldest children -- Fanchon, Marco and Reuben (who was their musical director) -- were all born, yiddish speaking, in Los Angeles.

Marco (1894-1877) outlived his sister, as did brother Rube (1895-1976).

Findagrave, which I usually correct!, has a neat biog/obit for Fanchon (Mrs W H Simon) (1892-1965) which I reprint here, and which may be correct(ish), even if they can't spell Cyd's name correctly, or Wolff's:

"Vaudeville theater performer in the team of Fanchon and Marco and also operating a theatrical school in Hollywood some of the students being Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Cyd Charrisse, Joan Crawford and Mae West. She was a first female producer producing dance numbers for Hollywood studios and she was a former owner of the Roxy and Paramount Theaters. She introduced the concept of actors presenting the awards. She was the sister-in-law of Abe and Mike Lyman and wife of William Simon of well known Hollywood restaurateur and sister of her partner Marco Wolf".

Well, I had never heard of Miss Fanchon and her family till this morning. So, that was an interesting one.

Here's another of the period and the type. It is simply labelled The Love Shop.  A 1920 George Choos variety production, featuring Eddie Vogt, and eight showgirls with lots of costumes. 'The act is as far as books and lyrics is hardly worth talking about .. it is the wardrobe of the act which really makes up the offering' reported the New York Clipper.

It did the Keith circuit rounds for a couple of seasons, like other 'big vaudeville acts' of the kind, and was then shelved in favour of more, like 'shows'.  This, apparently composite, photo survives ...

The occasional French lady ...

This is Zélie Anna DERASSE (b Ixelles, Belgium 19 September 1847). I knew her only for having played the part of Mimi in the Opéra-Comique production of Vert-Vert. She was a winner of a premier prix at the Paris Conservatoire in 1867, and multiple accessits in chant, opera and opera-comique (pupil of Révial), before being engaged Rue Favart. I see her there in 1869 playing Haydée, Isabelle in Le Pré aux clercs, and in Mignon, Camilla in Zampa, La Dame blanche .

She is credited with later appearances at La Haye (1872), Lille and Angers, and I see her in 1870 acclaimed for her 'magnifiques qualités vocales', Had her early promise evaporated?  Been held up by unplanned motherhood? Or had she gone to parts abroad? No, she'd just slipped from metropolitan memories.

I see her in 1873 giving Faust at Pau, in 1877-8 singing Le voyage en Chine, Inès in L'Africaine and Berthe in Le Prophète in Marseille, Leonora in Il Trovatore in La Havre ('très belle personne, qui donne au personnage une très grande allure dramatique'), in 1875 'fort chanteuse' at Montpelier, in 1880 ('after ten years') back in Paris at the Château d'Eau in Si j'étais roi, in 1883 playing Carmen at Limoges and ... is that in Réunion? Yes. 21 October 1883 as La Favorita ...

Whether or not she was a mother, she was evidently a 'wife' of some sort. She inherited the all of English photographer Robert Jefferson Bingham (1824-70), which earned her the occasional lawsuit re: reproduction rights.

A different type of performer was Madeoiselle LASCONI [NICOLAS, Aimée Fanny] (b Saint-Servan 31 August 1848) who featured on the Paris stage in the 1870s.

Duaghter of Pierre Marie Nicolas and his wife Aimée Marie Lemoine, she married the writer [Paul] Armand Silvestre, 30 January 1876.

I see her first in 1874, playing in matinées at the Porte Saint-Martin, then, over the three or four years to follow at the Châtelet (Les Muscadins, Acté in Les Folies du jout) and Théâtre Lyrique Dramatique cum Théâtre Historique (Maréchale de Mirepoix in Latude, Domenic in Regina Scarpi, La Botte Secrète, Catherine de Medicis in Le Jeunesse du Roi Henri, Elvire in Le Cid, Les Filles de Marbre et al) and in 1878 the Odéon.

Just fancied this photo of Ivy Sawyer, on her way from child performed to centarian ... not quite Lewis Carroll's demure little Alice in Wonderland, is she!

Ivy SAWYER [Elsie SAWYER] (b London, 13 February 1898; d Irvine, Calif., 16 November 1999) began her career as a London child starlet. She appeared for a number of years as Alice in Wonderland, originally (1906) as the dormouse, the first oyster and the cornflower (with two solo dances) and later as Alice (1909-1914), played in the chorus of Seymour Hicks's My Darling (1907), and for George Edwardes as the midshipman in The Marriage Market (1913) before, aged 20, she went to America, to appear in the title-rôle of Edwardes's Betty. She married her co-star, stayed, and they became an on-stage as well as off-stage pair appearing together in the Oh, Boy! tour (1917, Mrs Budd), Oh! My Dear (1918, Hilda Rockett), She's a Good Fellow (1919, Jacqueline Fay), The Half Moon (1920, Grace Bolton), It's Up to You (1921, Harriet Hollister), three Music Box Revues, Mayflowers (Elsie Dover), Just Fancy (in which she played an American girl, Linda Lee Stafford, whilst her American husband played the English Prince), and Lucky (Grace Mansfield), in which Miss Sawyer appeared for once with, but not opposite, her husband.

MÉALY, Juliette [JOSSERAND, Juliette] (b Toulouse 1 October 1861; d Monaco 9 January 1952). Had plenty of photos taken in her long and scrumptious career. But I like this one. And anyway, folks could do with the facts :-)

Juliette Méaly 'with her abbreviated skirts, a wealth of rustling frills and a huge hat' not to mention a very fine soprano voice, led a full career in the European musical theatre, starring in many a Parisian rôle where a certain glamorous audacity was needed, yet proving herself a fine performer in a wide range of parts, from the classics to the music-hally, through a long career.

 She made her earliest appearances at a very young age at the Eldorado in 1884, but she first came into fuller evidence as a young and appealing jeune première at the Théâtre des Menus-Plaisirs (Marcel in La Fiancée des verts-poteaux 1887 etc) when she took over from Yvonne Stella in the central rôle of Audran's L'Oncle Célestin (1891). She followed up at the same house alongside Félix Huguenet in Roger's Le Coq (1891, Cécilia) and in the leading rôle of Audran's Article de Paris (1892, Jeanne) before moving on to appear in La Vie parisienne at the Variétés, and starring on the rather larger Gaîté stage as Michelette in Le Talisman (1893). She followed this distinct personal success by taking her new-found stardom to the rest of Europe, and later the same year she visited Budapest’s Somossy Theatre, Bucharests’s Théâtre Lyrique and the Vienna Carltheater playing Miss Helyett and Le Petit Duc, and then London where she appeared at Alhambra with Paul Fugère in a selection from La Femme de Narcisse, and was featured in a pasted-in `green-room scene' in In Town at the Gaiety Theatre (August), alongside American whistler Tom Browne and impersonator Cissie Loftus.

 Back in Paris, she starred as Christiane in Le Troisième Hussards (1894) at the Gaîté, as the voluptuous Mimosa, nude scene and all, in the spectacular Le Carnet du Diable(1895, 1897, 1899) and as another near-the-knuckle demoiselle, Paquerette in Le Carillon(1896), both at the Variétés where, under the direction of Fernand Samuel, she would make her `home' for most of the next two decades. In between her appearances in osée opérette à grand spectacle, she played in the Variétés revivals of the classics (Dindonette in L’Oeil crevé, Gabrielle in La Vie parisienne, Marguerite in Le Petit Faust etc). In 1897 she created the rôle of the actress Fanny in Le Pompier de service, but the years which followed brought no new rôles of value as Mlle Méaly appeared as Fragoletto to the Fiorella of Tariol-Baugé in Les Brigands and as Eurydice at the Variétés, and took another turn around central Europe, playing Madame Méphisto, Blondeau and Monreal's Parisian `opérette-folie' spectacle, which had her as a female demon taking vengeance on her underworld husband, Mam'zelle Nitouche, Le Pompier de service and L'Auberge du Tohu-bohu (Flora) at Budapest's Magyar Színház (16-20 April 1901), Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater (15 May 1901) and Theater des Westens (22 February 1901) and Vienna's Theater an der Wien and Carltheater.

 She had her best fresh rôle for a decade when she starred as the Princess Bengaline in Planquette's posthumous Le Paradis de Mahomet (1906), and then stepped aside from the Variétés to appear at the Moulin-Rouge alongside Mistinguett in La Revue de la femme(1907) and the following year as the star of the opérette Son Altesse l'amour, this time in competiton with Gaby Deslys. She was seen regularly on the Paris stage for another decade, repeating her best rôles (notably La Vie parisienne's Gabrielle, but no longer those requiring a nude scene) and creating the occasional new rôle, as in Les Merveilleuses (1914) or, as late as 1921, in a return to the stage, in La Galante Épreuve at La Cigale.

Now a piece of music. I don't know why I saved this. Some odd songwriters, a curious publisher -- Moorgate Station and Toronto, Canada. Errrr...?

Well, you have to investigate the unfruitful oddities along with the druitful, or else you never 'discover'.

Francis William SWIFT (b Cheetham 1 July 1850; d Workhouse, Lambeth 3 May 1905) was a son of Benjamin Swift, a salesman in the linen trade, and his wife Betsey née Denby. Their next son was Charles Albert Swift (b Cheetham 4 April 1852). Both boys had firm ideas as to career. Charles, it was the sea. He was, in turn, a coastguard, a member of the naval reserve, a missionary with the British and Foreign Sailors' Society, a naval pensioner ... Frank wanted to be in showbusiness. 

He began (1872) as a vocalist -- Mr F W Swift 'the new tenor' of 37 Lyme Street, Chorlton on Medlock. He can't have been awful, for I see him in Dundee 'singing several well-known and original songs' in 1873. But he doesn't seem to have stuck it. By the time, in 1878, he went bankrupt 'lately of Glasgow, Sunderland and now of Longsight' he was ticketed as 'music seller and composer'. He was also married 'professor of music' to one Clara Newton.

His published songs didn't attract many good reviews: 'Alone' ('a poor production'), 'My Fisher Maid' ('a simple ballad of medium compass'), 'The Path by the Mill' ('cheerful little love ditty of a familiar type'), 'In Dreams Alone' )('easily learnt, of moderate compass') or 'At the Stile' ('somewhat commonplace sentimental ballad') which was published by Willey and Co. They also put out a set of four songs in 1882 ('King David's Lament', 'Loyal and True', 'A Sailor and his Lass', 'Cheerily Haul, Hi!').

Frank had had two children before he abandoned Clara for the charms of a young variety performer, by name Nellie Roberts. They would have three daughters, who died as children, and apparently one son.

In the same time, he had sunk fairly low in 'the business'. When he, briefly, promoted something named 'the Swiss Choir' he was arrested for fraud, for scarpering without paying the choir's hotel bills. So he tried another trendy field: he composed the 'score' for a J H Booth burlesque-cum-musical piece entitled Moonlight, or The Pirates' Plunder. The piece was manufactured around the brothers, Fred and James May, and it was shown 8 December 1892 at Hereford. And it went on! Although the Brothers had their pantomime engagement to fill first! It got showings at Pontypridd, Bristol, Gloucester, Derby ... not many, but ..

Frank's next theatrical achievement, however, at last gave him a profile. For a while. He formed an association with the Dundee writer, Robert Fenton Mackay (b Fochabers, Co Elgin) 'for many years a representative of the publishing house of Mackenzie'. Mackay had been successful with his earliest plays: The Black Diamond (with its sensation coal mine scene), The Life We Live produced by Charles Warner, Spellbound et al, and Willie Edouin had tried some of his little musical comedies. Then he got involved in producing. The Life we Live was now 'by Fenton Mackay and F W Swift' and the men were partners (October 1895) in something called 'the Music and Arts Corporation' exploiting their works. They sold or hired their lucubrations to producers, and the greatest of these was Edouin. And their first new piece was a hit. It was a conventional 'French' comedy entitled The J P, by Mackay, with songs by Swift (plus 2 or 3 others and David Stephen for the entr'actes). Lionel Rignold and Florence Lloyd starred for Edouin at the Strand Theatre ('full of fun'). Of course, it was all too good to last, the following year their firm was liquidated and Mackay went on alone (The Skirt Dancer, Another Man's Wife, Brown at Brighton) eventually to diminishing returns.

I don't know what happened, but Frank -- who described himself as 'composer and dramatist' in the 1901 census -- died in Lambeth Workhouse 3 May 1905. 

Well, that's one pile sorted. I'll start the next tomorrow ...