3rd Encore - Tragedy and Comedy on the Mountain - Published

Tragedy and Comedy on the Mountain - 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts is now published and available in eBook and paperback online at Amazon and CreateSpace, as well as at Blue Umbrella Books in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Panned in Boston - John Philip Sousa's "Desiree"

These were hard times in the theatre in December 1884, at least in Boston’s Bijou Theater for one particular production called “Desiree”. Featured actor De Wolf Hopper got off lightly by the critic, “in spite of his exaggerations, he is a true comic artist and made all the success.”

This unnamed critic reporting in Byrne’s Dramatic Times called the play “a wearisome affair, well calculated to please Philadelphia and Washington, but devoid of any merit so far as the libretto is concerned. Some extremely pretty and fascinating music is saddled to the worst rot imaginable.”

One may ponder if the audiences of Philadelphia and Washington are less apt to spot “rot” than a New England audience, but one has to admire the old world flourish of condemnations like “rot”.

“It is a little bit the worst stuff presented in the name of comic opera for some time.”

He saves his best stuff for the heroine: “Miss Rose Leighton was, on the other hand, the worst. What possible excuse she had for appearing is beyond me.”

He liked the costumes.

“Desiree” was a comic operetta whose score was composed by the famous “March King” John Philip Sousa, with libretto by Edward M. Taber. Perhaps the above critic’s opinions were not unfounded, as the libretto was later revised by Jerrold Fisher and William Martin. It had premiered several months earlier at the National Theater in Washington.

De Wolf Hopper, a 6-foot, 5-inch mountain of a man, which in theatre terms made him more appropriate for comic roles than heroes, later went on to fame delivering recitations of the poem “Casey at the Bat”, which he also occasionally did for curtain calls. Perhaps that might have saved the play here.

Curtail Call, Arrested in Hartford

George and Sarah Bartley, players on the English stage from the late 1700s through the early 19th century, came to America on tour in 1818. It was a great success for them, but one episode in Hartford, Connecticut put a dent in their shiny newfound fame and fortune.

They took the stagecoach from New York City to Boston, and stopped in Hartford for a rest. According to Curtain Time - The Story of the American Theater by Lloyd Morris (Random House, NY, 1953), some prominent citizens in town invited them to present readings from plays and recitations. It wasn’t every day famous theater folk came to town. Probably because they had no theater. There were reasons for that, as we shall see.

The ballroom of Hartford’s “principal hotel” made do, but, this being New England, several more puritanical town fathers voiced opposition and demanded that the Attorney General of Connecticut “enforce the ‘blue law’ prohibiting theatrical performances and circuses.” Theatre, as we know, is a vice.

The Attorney General duly forbade the landlord of this establishment to hold his planned entertainment, but the landlord did not tell Mr. and Mrs. Bartley. So, on went the show in theatre tradition, and the thoroughly confused couple were immediately arrested after their bows, which the author notes was after midnight.

Bail was set at $500, more than a princely sum in the new republic, but fortunately, their hosts paid the bail. The court eventually let the Bartleys go, likely skedaddling up the Old Post Road with fresh horses. One hopes they had a better reception in Boston.

Maude Adams' Boston Box-Office Bonanza

(This portait photo of Maude Adams, taken when she was about 20 in the early 1890s, is in the public domain.)

In 1901, it was reported of actress Maude Adams, “Miss Adams’ receipts last week in Boston were the largest in the history of Boston theaters or anywhere -- $23,000.” Not bad when you think most ticket prices were probably around fifty cents.

This quote chronicled in “Curtain Time - The story of the American Theater” by Lloyd Morris (Random House, NY, 1953), though a cold, if impressive fact, barely scratches the surface to describing the popularity of Maude Adams.

Born in the 1870s, she toured in stock since her early childhood, and by the turn of the century was at the top of her game. The works of J. M. Barrie were paramount in her repertoire (his “What Every Woman Knows” was written for her), and she is noted as the first American actress to play Barrie’s “Peter Pan” in 1905. It was the highpoint of her career, an enormous success in an era where theatre was the primary entertainment and had no competing media.

Author Lloyd Morris notes, “Miss Adams was…winsome rather than pretty, slight, frail and girlish. Her lilting speech and muted laughter, the delicacy of her treat, the graceful swiftness of her movement, gave her a quality that soon was described as ‘otherworldly’. Though intensely feminine, she made a curious impression of elusiveness, as if she had an elfin strain.”

Such qualities gave magic to anyone playing Peter Pan.

“Millions of Americans saw Miss Adams on stage, rejoiced in her performances, cherished a sense of genuinely personal relationship to her. Yet, paradoxically, only a handful of people really knew her. Frohman (producer Charles Frohman) believed that the illusions of the theater would be shattered if the public saw his stars off-stage, or knew too much about them.”

Intriguing, and somehow sad. So much devotion, so many box office receipts, to be really known by only a handful of people.

The Audience That Wouldn't Leave

Sometime in the mid-1800s, when theatre was hundreds of years old and yet still, seemingly to our modern sophistication, still in its infancy, “Oliver Twist” was presented in Lowell, Massachusetts. The play, based upon the Charles Dickens novel, must have been a hit, because the audience did not want to leave.

According to the “Before the Footlights and Behind the Scenes”, a book on American theatre stories by Olive Logan, (Parmelee & Co., Philadephia, 1870), after the play ended, the audience stayed in their seats, looking, perhaps expectantly, at the drawn curtain.

It is a painful moment in theatre when the audience walks out before the play is over, but perhaps merely awkward when they choose not to leave at all.

At last, the stage manager came out in front of the curtain and handled the problem, as stage managers are supposed to do, with absolute authority, and if possible, tact. He announced,

“Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to inform you that the play has terminated. As all the principal characters are dead, it cannot, of course, go on.”

That seemed reasonable to the audience, who finally went away.

Lizzie May Ulmer on Tour

This ad from Byrnes’ Dramatic Times announces the beginning of a new season with Lizzie May Ulmer in the lead of “Dad’s Girl”, a part she would play in traveling stock for several weeks, if not years, to come. Her tour had its ups and downs.

The play, as the ad tells us, was written for her by Mr. E. J. Swartz, who was a well known journalist as well as playwright of the day. The play opened in Boston in August of 1884. We might assume that the North Scituate, Massachusetts address for G. T. Ulmer, the company’s actor/manager, could be the Ulmer summer digs, in this era before summer stock in small towns.

The play is set in New England, and a famous scene takes place on Nantasket Beach, that finger of sand that stretches out into Massachusetts Bay, just north of North Scituate.

Miss Ulmer plays Malvina Hoskins, a New England girl adopted by a grizzled adventurer from the wild West. “Dad” has made his pile and is settling down in the refined East with his tomboy charge. The ad calls it a “New England Ideal Play” and we can also assume that stereotypes abounded.

Following the play on a few stops around the country through newspaper reviews, we glimpse the astonishingly hard life the stock players had. Not only did they have to brave audiences and critics, but endured a rigorous schedule of arduous traveling.

After two weeks in Boston, the company headed for the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York City. The New York Times of September 5, 1884 referred to Miss Ulmer as “a young actress seeking a ‘metropolitan reputation’ in a “felicitously entitled ‘Dad’s Girl’.” The slightly condescending “your playing with the big boys now” attitude fails to note that Lizzie May Ulmer had already trod the boards in traveling stock for many years, and had already had her portrait painted by Nelson A. Primus in Boston. Painted in 1876, her portrait is now part of the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. Primus was one of the eminent African-American artists of his time.

The painting shows a dark-haired young woman, quite girlish, with an almost impish expression on her face that may have served her well in the number of child waifs and ingénue roles for which she was famous.

In “Dad’s Girl” her robust curiosity and courage helps to solve several thefts and murders. Oh, and she falls in love with a Good and Honest Man.

The review in the New York Times on September 9th hammers both the play and the actress.

The central figure in a not-over ambitious drama entitled “Dad’s Girl” cannot be said to have achieved brilliant success. To what extent this is owing to the deficiencies of Mr. E. J. Swarz’s remarkable picture of New England life, and in how great a degree to the actress’s own shortcomings cannot yet be decided. Miss Ulmer’s character is that of a slangy young woman whose heart is in the right place. If we are not mistaken, the same character has been seen before in various guises. The play is utterly improbable and is devoid of literary value. Two murders and any number of thefts are connected with the plot of “Dad’s Girl”, and its most striking scene is a view of Nantasket Beach at night, with not a soul in sight to enjoy the dazzling effect of the light of a monster moon falling upon a placid sea. Mr. Leslie Allen played a conventional old man in a conventional manner, and Mr. George C. Boniface imparted some interest to the character of an unaccountable idiot.

Still, he hands a valentine at the end:

“Last night’s audience found a great deal to admire in Miss Ulmer’s acting.”

Either the play improved, or the critics’ mood did, by the time the company reached Charlotte, North Carolina two weeks later. The Daily Mirror of October 4, 1884 noted of the September 22nd performance, that “Dad’s Girl” played to “crowded houses. Miss Ulmer has made herself a favorite, and she will always be assured of a good house here.”

On the way to Charlotte, they stopped for five days to perform at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.

However, when they played in Pittsburg the following February, The Sporting Life newspaper of Philadelphia reported:

A great misfortune occurred to Miss Lizzie May Ulmer at Pittsburg, PA on Wednesday night when she was playing in “Dad’s Girl.” At the close of the performance she fainted, and on regaining consciousness she was found to be totally blind.” This was said to be a relapse from a long illness she had in St. Paul.

When “Dad’s Girl” came back to New York, this time playing at the Third Avenue Theatre. The New York Times noted:

This was her first appearance in several weeks, as her season was interrupted at Pittsburgh some time ago by sickness. She performed her part with considerable dash and spirit, and evidently pleased the audience, which was large enough to fill half the house.

Dash and spirit, but only a half-full house. So goes another year of bringing Nantasket Beach in all its moonlit glory to every great city and whistlestop.

Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth

Ford's Theater, April 1865, Library of Congress, in the public domain.

On this day, April 14, 1865, Good Friday, Edwin Booth, who came to be one of the most famous and important American actors of the 19th century, was in his dressing room at the Boston Theatre putting on his makeup for that evening’s sold out performance.

Edwin Booth, Libarary of Congress, public domain.

He was 31 years old, rising in his profession, heir to his famous actor father, Junius Brutus Booth, in the family trade. Only the previous Sunday Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse and the horrific Civil War was close to an end. It seemed that week as if the nation, both bloody, torn halves, were taking a much needed deep breath, and relishing a moment of peace. The North was celebratory, and in Washington, D.C., like the fans of Edwin Booth in Boston, President Abraham Lincoln was going to take a diversion from his troubles at the theatre.

Playbill for "Our American Cousin", original in the collection of the Libarary of Congress, reprinted National Park Service.

Laura Keene’s troupe staged the popular comedy, “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. She was a notable stage actress of her day, had toured in previous years with Edwin Booth, and managed her own theater, one of the first American women to do so.

A former member of her acting company, Edwin’s younger brother John Wilkes Booth, showed up at the theater that night as well, entered the President’s box, and shot him in the head.

Much has been written about the tragedy, but for the moment let’s turn our attention to Edwin Booth in his Boston dressing room, focusing himself on his upcoming performance, completely unaware that his life had changed forever because of his brother’s crime.

An interesting account of this event, and the rivalry of both brothers, is discussed in the book “Good Brother, Bad Brother - The Story of Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth” by James Cross Giblin (Clarion Books, NY, 2005).

The morning after the show, Edwin was woken by his valet with the heart-stopping newspaper headline.

The manager closed the theater, partly out of respect for the deceased President, and partly for the safety of Edwin Booth and the cast. Actors, always considered on the fringes of respectable society, were now suddenly suspect as anarchists. Edwin was chief suspect of them all, for being the brother of an assassin.

The New York Herald front page, April 15, 1865.

Edwin had intended to return to his home in New York, but federal marshals detained him in Boston for questioning about his brother’s activities. They continued to forbid him to leave the city until several prominent people, including the Governor of Massachusetts, vouched for him. On Easter Sunday afternoon, he was allowed to leave, and took the five and a half hour train trip to New York City.

Edwin, who as a boy accompanied his father on tour and spent a fair amount of time dragging him out of saloons as his nursemaid, made his own debut just before turning 16 years old in 1849, in Boston, when his father was playing at the Boston Museum. Have a look at this earlier post about the Boston Museum.

Junius Brutus Booth, Library of Congress, public domain.

His father Junius encouraged Edwin to take small roles, and in a couple of weeks that September Edwin graduated to a larger role in “Othello” opposite his father in Providence, Rhode Island. A couple of years later, he took over his ailing father’s role in “Richard III”.

It was a long, arduous apprenticeship in small theaters, saloons, and open air performances in mining camps out west. When Edwin returned to Boston, the city of his debut, in April of 1857 playing the villain Sir Giles Overreach in the melodrama “A New Way to Pay Old Debts”, he was again, just as in his Shakespearean roles, treading on a path his father had already made famous. Junius Brutus Booth cast a long shadow.

But Edwin, through diligence, and a new way of performing that was more natural and less dramatic and showy than men of his father’s generation, won over dubious audiences and critics.

The Boston Transcript noted that the play was “Quite a triumph for young Booth…It brought back the most vivid recollections of the fire, the vigor…which characterized the acting of his late, lamented father.”

Louisa May Alcott, future famous author of “Little Women” went one better when she wrote in her journal, “Saw young Booth in Brutus…and liked him better than his father.”

Boston audiences were enthusiastic. They were less so when Edwin’s younger brother John Wilkes Booth arrived in town in 1862. Author Mr. Giblin quotes a Boston drama critic:

We have been greatly pleased, and greatly displeased…In what does he fail? Principally, in knowledge of himself -- of his resources, how to husband and how to use them…He ignores the fundamental principle of all vocal study and exercise: that the chest, and not the throat or mouth, should supply the sound necessary for singing or speaking.

John Wilkes Booth played the Boston Museum as Romeo on May 3, 1864, with Kate Reignolds as Juliet. Orchestra seats went for 50 cents. John Wilkes Booth was apparently not the accomplished actor that his brother Edwin was, but he cut a dashing figure. Both brothers were likely uncomfortable with comparisons, but comparisons were always made, against their father and against each other.

In November 1862, Edwin played a month-long engagement in Boston, and the Boston Post offered this comparison of the acting style of the brothers:

Edwin has more poetry; John Wilkes more passion; Edwin has more melody of movement and utterance, John Wilkes more energy and animation; Edwin is more correct, John Wilkes more spontaneous; Edwin is more Shakespearean, John Wilkes more melodramatic; and in a word, Edwin is a better Hamlet, John Wilkes a better Richard III.

From the end of September 1863 to the end of November, John Wilkes Booth toured in Boston for two weeks, then to Providence, Rhode Island, then to Hartford, Connecticut, briefly to New York, and then back to New Haven, Connecticut. At this point he was plotting against the Union and smuggling drugs like quinine to the South.

In April of 1864 he returned for a four-week run in Boston in 34 performances in 18 different plays, the lead in them all. He began to have vocal strain, which would contribute to a downslide in his acting career, but was more interested in revenge at this point in his life.

In March, 1865, John Wilkes Booth played Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. for the last time in the melodrama “The Apostate.” He played the villain, Pescara, and received an enthusiastic reception from the audience. According to author Giblin, “Apparently the warm welcome did not make much of an impression on John. At the end of the play, he ignored the crowd’s applause and declined to make a curtain call.”

That same night, Edwin performed Hamlet in New York City, then headed for Boston. The brothers were on the outs with each other at this time, not over their acting rivalry, but over politics. Edwin supported the North, and John Wilkes, supporting the Confederacy, avoided his brother.

Laura Keene, Library of Congress, public domain.

There is a famous quote by film actor Spencer Tracy to the effect that actors should stay out of politics and pointing to John Wilkes Booth and the assassination of Lincoln as an example. Remembered less is the fact that it was an actress who provided the first comfort to the dying President, when Laura Keene, star of “Our American Cousin”, still in her costume and stage makeup, brought a pitcher of water up to the box where Lincoln was being attended, and held Lincoln’s head so the doctor could give him a sip of brandy.

Her act of compassion did nothing to rehabilitate the almost poisonous hatred for the acting profession in the wake of the Lincoln assassination. After the funeral, Edwin was back in New York City, kept under house arrest in his home by the police.

John Wilkes Booth was killed when captured resisting arrest on April 26th. Edwin continued to receive death threats and hate mail, with the same unreasonable hatred that spurred his brother to murder the President.

Then as now, political convictions seem to be the only excuse some people need to reveal their inner thug.

Edwin took ads out in newspapers in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia denouncing the assassination and proclaiming his own innocence, “bearing a heavy heart, an oppressed memory, and a wounded name.”

Front page Harper's Weekly, April 29, 1865.

Edwin was subpoenaed as a potential witness in the government investigation of the crime after an initial interview, but was later dismissed. His older brother, actor Junius Booth was held for questioning at the Old Capitol prison, and the entire Booth family came under suspicion, but nobody really knew much about John Wilkes Booth’s political activities, and nothing about the conspiracy to murder.

Edwin finally returned to the stage the following year, in January 1866 at New York’s Winter Garden as Hamlet. Police were stationed outside in case of an expected riot.

Edwin got a standing ovation on his entrance, but as gratifying as this must have been, he took no curtain calls, to avoid the possibility of becoming a target for someone with a gun. He took this play to Boston, and all performances were sold out. He refused ever again to play in Washington, D.C.

In the early 1880s, long after this sad period ended for the country, if not for him personally, Edwin Booth maintained homes in Boston and in Rhode Island. He died in 1893, and is buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts beside his first wife, actress Mary Devlin.

In a coincidental twist of fate, Edwin had rescued Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert, from injury or possible death when he pulled him from harm’s way on a train platform in Jersey City at least a year before the assassination. Edwin Booth in later years felt a little consoled that if his brother had murdered the father, at least he himself had saved the son.

For more on Edwin Booth, have a look at Monday’s “Another Old Movie Blog” for a discussion of Richard Burton’s portrayal of him in “Prince of Players” (1955).

"Our Irish Visitors" in Fall River, 1885

On this St. Patrick’s Day we note the touring troupe of Murray and Murphy, whose “Our Irish Visitors” played in Fall River, Massachusetts on this day in 1885.

It was a farce, typical perhaps of that era when opinion toward the Irish in America were starting to morph in a painfully slow way from lazy, thieving, drinking, brawling, unwashed undesirables that Need Not Apply to a more benign, if still stereotyped, characterization of charming, harmless, winsome indolence, witty, of a proud people who comically thought well of themselves.

As every ethnic and racial minority knows, equality starts with an open mind, and theatre, when it does not perpetuate stereotypes, is usually quite effective in opening the mind.

One notable who got her start in the cast of “Our Irish Visitors” was Loie Fuller, a pioneer in dance who also invented many stage lighting techniques, apparatus, and garments.

According to “Loie Fuller - Goddess of Light” by Richard Nelson Current and Marcia Ewing Current (Northeastern University Press, 1997), Miss Fuller was the leading lady of “Our Irish Visitors”, and danced and sang in her role. The authors quote the recollections of one who saw her perform some months later at the Boston Theatre in August, 1885:

“…in her skirt and her jersey-like waist, she created excitement, and people flocked in to see what the newspapers called a `sensational dance,' which some even called `daring,' just because the dancer wore no corset, and the muscular sway of her young figure was visible."

So much for Irish stereotypes. After the show’s performance in Fall River, they next appeared in Lawrence, Mass. on the 25th, then hopped over to Newburyport on the 27th.

They seemed to be running out of steam the following March of 1886 in Chicago, when the New York Times noted: “Murray and Murphy in “Our Irish Vistors” have been playing to a good many empty seats at the Columbia”.

Even the luck of the Irish runs out after a while.

If the show did not, eventually, go on, Loie Fuller did. Have a look below at a sample of Loie Fuller’s choreography and invention in her Dance Serpentine, filmed in 1896, a decade later.

The Show Goes On at the Depot in the Blizzard of 1888

Tomorrow, it will be 122 years since the notorious Blizzard of 1888, which we noted on my New England Travels blog with this post last year. One consequence was a disruption in theatre.

A small troupe called the Hi Henry Minstrels, whose star and owner was cornet-playing Colonel Hiram P. Henry were slated to the play the Opera House in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but the high drifts of snow stranded their train between Northampton and the Mt. Tom Railroad station in Smith’s Ferry. Knowing the show must go on, they walked the rest of the way to town, but first stopping to warm up at the Smith’s Ferry depot.

So relieved to have made it even that far, they broke into song and entertained other stranded folks with their medicine show brand of music. It was customary anyway for the Hi Henry Minstrels to play in the streets in a sort of impromptu parade to get people to follow them to the theater. No such luck this day.

The show did go on at the Opera House, but to a practically empty house. One wonders if they had left a larger audience back at the train depot.

Note: Photo of the Holyoke Opera House from Image Museum website.

Tremont Theatre - Boston

We recently received a question from Herb about the Tremont Theatre in Boston. Above is a photo Herb sent which he reckoned at being from about 1925.

There were a few theaters in Boston named Tremont Theatre at various times, at least three that I can think of, and perhaps more.

I believe the one in the photo is the Tremont Theatre at 176 Tremont Street across from Boston Common. I think it was built in the late 1880s, and in the mid-1930s started converting from a "legitimate" theater to a movie theater. It was re-named the Astor Theatre in 1947. The Astor Theater went out of business, I believe, in the 1970s or '80s. I'm not sure the building is still there.

However, the Cinema Treasures website has a description of this theater, with many interesting comments from readers sharing their knowledge about its history. If any of you have anything further to add, I’d love to hear from you.

Also visible in the photo above is the Hazel Boone School of Dancing just above the theater marquee. Herb’s family was involved in the operation of the Hazel Boone School of Dancing, and would like anyone with any information or memories to share about it to contact him at this website.

Ada Dyas, Comedienne

Ada Dyas, comedienne, must have taken the train from Norwalk, Connecticut to reach her stage work in New York. This ad in the Byrnes’ Dramatic Times from the 1880s is ambiguous for its very simplicity. Was she looking for work? Was she merely announcing she had arrived? Maybe both.

Ada Dyas, born in 1843, was an Irish actress who played in “Henry IV” in London in 1861, and would later become famous for her featured or starring roles in comedies. One of these most famous plays was Dion Boucicault’s “The Shaugraun.” We mentioned in this previous post that playwright/actor Mr. Boucicault played at Boston’s Hollis Theater in the late 1880s.

Here is link to a photo of Ada Dyas in “The Shaugraun.” We have another portrait of her as described by novelist Edith Wharton in “The Age of Innocence” (D. Appleton & Co., NY, 1920). In the book, the character Newland Archer is captivated by the scene in the play where Dyas and the hero part in romantic silence.

“The actress, who was standing near the mantlepiece and looking down into the fire, wore a gray cashmere dress, without fashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded to her tall figure and flowing in long lines down her back….” Wharton goes on to describe the famous scene where the actor in silent parting kisses one of the ribbons.

Edith Wharton, less romantically, remarks, “Miss Dyas was a tall red-haired woman of monumental build,” with a “pale and pleasantly ugly face…”

Her ungainly appearance, even more than her talent for it, would have consigned Miss Dyas to the comedienne’s roles. But, in her obituary in the New York Times, March 13, 1908, Ada Dyas is recalled in more dignified terms.

“She belonged to a school of actresses taught to pronounce the English language with marked accuracy.” Truly, a product of a bygone era was Miss Dyas of London, New York, and Norwalk, Connecticut.

Comedy Comes to the Boston Museum

Back in the days before theatre was acceptable, the Boston Museum on Tremont Street staged dramatic performances such as John Wilkes Booth in “Romeo and Juliet”, as well as other cultural presentations. Calling the theater a museum somehow made it more legitimate, as if Shakespeare performed in a building called a theater would be déclassé.

The Boston Museum was also really a museum, however, with art and natural sciences exhibits. One wonders if any pretense to culture was blown out of the water when The Dalys came to town.

Above is an ad from Byrne’s Dramatic Times of October 18, 1884, announcing the two-week engagement of The Dalys at the Boston Museum beginning November 3rd. Their show was “their now famous athletic comedy” called “The Vacation - or- Harvard vs. Yale”.

Perhaps “athletic” was used for what would later be termed “slapstick”, but this was such a novelty at the prestigious Boston Museum that the ad declared, “The only comedy on earth that ever played an engagement at the Boston Museum in its regular season.” The show had come straight from a brief run at Tony Pastor’s in New York, billed as “the most pronounced hit of any comedy during the present season.”

The Dalys were a popular family of vaudeville performers in the late 19th century. Several siblings entered the business one by one, and eventually formed a troupe that appeared together in plays.

Author William Ellis Horton in his “About Stage Folks” (Free Press Printing Co., Detroit, 1902), gives us a bit of background on the performing Daly family. Brothers William and Timothy were song and dance men, later joining with Mort Emerson and Willis Clark to form the “Four King High Kickers”, which was, according to Horton, “at one time considered the strongest act of its kind in vaudeville.”

The siblings William, Thomas, Robert, and Daniel were joined by Thomas’ wife Lizzie Derious for the comedy “Vacation.” There were other brothers and sisters, either not involved in the theater, like their oldest brother Timothy, who was a prosperous merchant in Boston, or had their own acts, like sister Lizzie who was a dancer and married minstrel show man Billy Buckley.

At the time of Horton’s 1902 book, some 18 years after their appearance at the Boston Museum, we learn that Thomas had died from “the effects of a severe beating given to him by a cowardly set of ruffians” who were the stage hands at the Academy of Music in Chicago. There’s got to be more to that story.

Robert died of consumption, and sister Lizzie, now a widow, performed a dance act with her daughter Vinnie.

All the Daly siblings owned summer homes on Crescent Beach, back in the day before summer stock, when theatre folk took it easy during the summer months. The only “season” was the theatre season. They, or the ad men, called “Vacation” -- “The laughing success of the century.”

Note: the photo of the Boston Museum is from the Library of Congress, now in public domain.

Hollis Street Theater - Boston

This ad in Byrne’s Dramatic Times is a bit cryptic about this unnamed new theater to be constructed in Boston, but evidently somebody was so confident that Harry E. Dixey in “Adonis” was going to be such a good show that people needed to mark their calendars even before the theater was completed.

“Adonis” was an operetta, one of Broadway’s most successful at the time, running 600 performances. Mr. Dixey, in the title role, was fittingly handsome and brought the popular play and his popular self on tour.

This ad likely referred to the old Hollis Street Theatre, which opened in November 1885. The ad mentions Isaac Rich was the manager, and he did own the Hollis Street Theater, which was managed by Charles J. Rich. The theater replaced an old Congregational church that had been built in 1811, and designed by Charles Bulfinch. That church had been the renowned American architect’s first building.

Today, the theater which replaced the church is also gone, replaced in turn by a parking garage. Each age has its own needs and its own priorities.

Some of the players who appeared here were actor and playwright Dion Boucicault, Augustin Daly, E. H. Sothern, the great Sarah Bernhardt, Ada Rehan, John Drew of the Barrymore-Drew theater family dynasty, Edwin Forrest, William Warren, Henry Irving, and Eva Le Gallienne. William Gillette, Sherlock Holmes to a generation, appeared in Sherlock Holmes in 1901. Maude Adams played Peter Pan, her signature role, here in 1906. Ellen Terry appeared with her company on April 15, 1907, in George Bernard Shaw’s play Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.

The final show, on June 8, 1935, featured the Abbey Theatre Players from Dublin. The theater was demolished August 21, 1935. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and 19th Century theatre took its last breath. "Theatre ghosts" are said to haunt old playhouses, but perhaps not parking garages.