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.

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.