Theatre merchandising 1884: "Four Little Dudes"

 

Today's nice bit of theatrical ephemera.  All the way from San Francisco. And I can date it precisely .. to the day!

12 May 1884.

What I can't do, and I've tried, is name the girls -- I don't have a programme of the musical comedy Pop! from which this photo comes ...

These photos were given out, in the fashion of the time, as 'free gifts' on 'special' nights. I see there were others, less attractive ..

Pop, by the way, was the name of the leading character, Adolphus Pop, played by James A Mackay. And the story was a regular farce comedy decorated with musical numbers, burlesques (Romeo and Juliet, Pygmalion and Galatea, Tirolean singers), impersonations, specialities and a pot pourri of songs from the shows. It called itself -- or its concocter, Edward Rice, called it -- 'A Highly Sensational, Melo-Dramatic, Operatic Comedy Melange'. It began in London, then moved in typical fashion, to 'the salon of the steamship Scythia' where an entertainment was given, tying up its ends in Union Square and the New York Police Courts. 

As was the usual case with this type of show, the musical portions and burlesques could be slipped in and out around Mackay's stand-up imitations and (English) Kate Castleton's twenty-second-hand musical hall song, introduced at London's  Oxford and Pavilion Music Halls in 1877 ('a smart satirical topical effusion') and thereafter 'sung in the Principal Theatres throughout the Kingdom' as well as in the year's Covent Garden pantomime of Puss in Boots .

Kate sang it in the garb of a Quakeress. 

The Four Little Dudes were introduced into the show during its New York run, in a Rice-made scena entitled plainly 'The Dudes'. 'Dudes' had become a fashionable term a year of two earlier, to describe the 'men-about-town', the crutch-n-toothpick, monocle-eyed creatures who lurked around stage-doors ... well, the type parodied later by Noel Coward in 'The Green Carnation'. Rice was never a man to miss putting a saddle on the latest topical trends ...

His routine (surely there was a song?) was greatly successful .. 'the little dudes have become great favourites. Kate Castleton has introduced a couple of new songs'.  A later review from Canada speaks of 'a chorus of dudes' but maybe four was considered a chorus?

Well, some day I will hap upon a Californian programme which tells us who the little dudes were. Number three looks as if she had promise ...!