A lovely bit of theatre ephemera, today. This American musical comedy was seen all around the country, between 1894 and 1902 ... during which time it played just eight nights in New York City. At the minor Star Theater. Somebody made a heap of money, while more pretentious producers were losing wads 'on Broadway'!
As you can see on the bill, which we can tell from its credits is an advertising leaflet from the earliest months of the show, the people deemed billable were the librettist and the producer and his 'manager'. The manager was, for reasons unexplained, sacked pretty soon in Grand Rapids, so dating this becomes easy. 1894.
So (1) what was it? and (2) who were these people?
It was what was oddly called a 'farce comedy'. A farcical comedy involving present day Amiercan characters (no Princes and Duchesses) in all sorts of fairly low comic adventures, with regular pauses for pretty irrelevant (to what story there was) songs, dances and speshes.
So what made one of these shows -- often, basically, variety bills -- stand out from the hundreds of others, and stand the test of years on the touring circuits? A strong, deep-pocketed producer? A popular star? Certainly not the songs and dances, which were changed for fresher with unnerving frequency, and even advertised 'all new music a speshes' in its second year.. Could it be -- and, I suspect, in this case, it was, a strongly defined, literate and characterful backbone. The comedy. Author: Charles Edward Blaney (b Columbus, Ohio c1866; d 21 October 1944).
Now, I'm not going to dilate on Mr Blaney. He had many stage successes and wrote my successful screenplays later in his career, and has been pretty well documented by the cinephiles. Suffice it to say, at this stage he had dumped a career as an actor, and taken up writing, to much better advantage. In 1892, he had written a farce comedy ['with Joseph M Gaites') entitled A Railroad Ticket, produced in his home town of Columbus, in August of that year. '..it is a comedy, pure and simple, with an original plot, and a well-developed story, in which it may be seen it differs very materially from the so-called 'farce comedies'. Mr Blaney had hoisted his banner. A Railroad Ticket -- with the former Jennie Worrell (with a Butterfly Dance' and touring comic Willard Sims went on the road no author's name, nor producer's name, attached ... and proved a success.
Of course, the 'comedy' had plenty of adjuncts -- 'real rain', an electric street car, and other 'special scenery and mechanical effects' but whatever songs were included didn't call for much notice. And when Jennie handed over her role to Alma Earle, that didn't seem to matter either. Apparently the show was a 'satire on real estate speculators and the cut-rate ticket system'. And the company was referred to as Messrs Blaney and Gaites Company, so it seems they were their own producers.
The piece played on, with ever changing cast, and -- I imagine -- content. It reached the Bijou, Brooklyn, now headed by Arthur Moulton, James T Kelly and the young Anna Caldwell in early 1894 and then was advertised as being played by 'Freeman's Fun Makers'. Who? 'Featuring the California Quartet'. Oh look! Here's the plot! Robert and Jack Tickets are left a small, but equal, sum of money to start in business, the one having the larger bank account at the end of a year to get 2/3 of the dollars, the other 1/3. The 'satire' comes in the job they choose to make a quick buck. Of course, all ends happily, with the boys paired of with a sweetheart apiece, and them splitting daddy's money 50-50.
Dr Freeman of the Fun Makers continued to tour into 1895, by which time Blaney (now the author of A Summer Blizzard and A Run on the Bank) had launched his new piece: A Baggage Check. Quite where and when the piece was produced for the first time I do not know. I spot it playing New Haven in October 1894.
Well, this time, as well as the plot, we have some song titles. But no composers. I see that one act was devoted to a satire on strikes -- the laundry girls strike, with plenty of 'laundry' -- and that some of the music was supposed to be written by one young Walter Ross Hawley (b New York 2 February 1872; Forrest Home, Chicago 17 March 1936). Mr Hawley was a variety performer whose father, an electrician and sometime soldier, was one Lucius Jackson Hawley. Any relation to the Lucius B Jackson credited above, I wonder.
Hawley went on to team with Flo Irwin in a vaudeville act, went bankrupt, turned out many songs ...
Of the company manager, Mr 'Giles Renold' I know nothing. I suspect that Blaney himself was the active party.
Alfred Moulton had been on the comedian scene since about 1889 (Little Puck etc). He rose to 'stardom' by A Railroad Ticket, married one of the show's chorines, Rose ?Chesnean. He had gone to produce a new vehicle for himself, but when that fell to bits, he scuttled back to take the part intended for him in Blaney's new piece. He didn't stay long. After a few months, the part of Conboy was taken over by Mark Sullivan with his impersonations. And a few years later, his sister had him committed ...
Blaney also married, as his second wife, a chorine, Elizabeth Melrose Rockefeller (b 1877), who rose to be leading girl ('Lizzie Melrose') in the company. The marriage lasted until 1908, four children, before they were divorced. Lizzie died 21 December 1909 'aged 32'. Blaney had already married actress Cecil Spooner.
However, the player who gained the most press was Miss Winifred Margaret Drysdale ka 'Madge Yorke'. While the show was in Philadelphia, she was shot dead in her hotel room by a Virginian-Italian boyfriend/actor named Donatello. The killer was convicted of murder in the first degree and condemned to hang, but for some reason was reprieved. It seems that Madge had been flirting (?) with another company member, Eddie [Charles Edward] Magee (ka 'Reddy' and 'The Professor'), who played Billy Butts ... in his absence ... The court instructed Blaney to sack Magee, but he refused, saying the man might have been a fool but he was a good comedian. The press referred to him as 'the cause of Madge Yorke's murder and he went to lengths and the papers to dent any misdoing. He stayed on with the show (his song 'But They Can't Lick Me' now having a double meaning) for a little, but then moved on. I see him in Hoss and Hoss in 1896 before he disappears from my ken.
Lida Clark[e], Madge's roommate, who had witnessed the shooting, was an experienced singer/dancer (Spider and Fly, Fay Templeton's Geneviève de Brabant etc). She also stayed on after the trouble ('The Little Red Hat' by Andrew Le Roc -- composer of 'College Chums Forever -- 'a pretty little waltz tune of no originality'), then essyaed a double act in variety with Fred W Stevens before I lose her.
After some indifferent notices, Blaney rewrote the book somewhat and the show could still be seen, with the favourite comedian James T Kelly (1854-1933) into the twentieth century.
The libretto/play which had originally attracted some scorn in some quarters, was now hailed as 'one of the best of farce comedies' of all time ... well, that's theatre, and that's journalism!
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