Vaudeville at Poli's Palace - Springfield, Mass.

Above is the bill of acts for the Poli’s Palace in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1917. At this time, the Poli Palace was a vaudeville theater, but entrepreneur Sylvester Z. Poli was among the first to introduce movies to his theaters. So, right after Evelyn Elkins “singing comedienne” performs live, we are treated to a silent Western “Their Compact” starring Francis X. Bushman.

The flickers and the “legitimate stage” share an audience, and presumably, worlds collide.


Not that vaudeville was ever really considered “legitimate” stage, but Poli, an Italian immigrant who made his fortune through a string of theaters he owned, most located in New England, intended that his vaudeville theaters provide, according to a publication of the day called “S.Z. Poli’s Theatrical Enterprises”, quoted in The Papers of Will Rogers - Wild West and Vaudeville, Volume II (ed. Arthur Frank Wertheim and Barbara Bair, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000, p. 404) “devoted to progressive and polite vaudeville.”

We can’t be certain how progressive singing comedienne Evelyn Elkins was, but she was probably polite.

Will Rogers toured the Poli chain of theaters in 1908, and came to Sylvester Poli’s Springfield theater in February of that year. The theater was located at 286 Worthington Street, and after having its name changed to the Park Theatre in 1913, was destroyed in a fire in 1914. Poli was already busy building a new theater, called Poli’s Palace, a little farther down the street at 192-194 Worthington. This theater would continue as a vaudeville house, and after some years of sharing its audience with silent films, would eventually be turned over completely to that new medium when the talkies arrived, and Poli merged his chain with the Loew’s Corporation in 1934.


Vaudeville had its own hierarchy of “top banana” comics, and lesser acts that “played to haircuts” (meaning people walked out on them, so all the performers saw was the backs of their heads). There were “small-time” vaudeville theaters and “big-time”. In Springfield, Poli’s would have been considered small-time, compared to the vaudeville acts that were booked for the more prestigious Court Square Theater in town, which would carry an odd week or two of vaudeville in between legitimate stage shows.

The Shuberts, Keith, Albee and William Morris, all top vaudeville bookers who, regulated by the Vaudeville Managers Association, collected acts to run on the country’s regional vaudeville circuits. Springfield’s Pat Shea, one manager on the New England circuit, helped start the United Booking Office, a clearing house for vaudeville acts.

In February 1922, Shubert’s “High Class Vaudeville” played the Court Square Theater, and fifth on the bill was “Whipple and Huston.” Walter Huston, who later went on to movie fame, at this time played in comedy sketches with his wife, Bayonne Whipple.


Over at Poli’s Palace, there were lesser known acts, like the Harvey-Devora Trio, which billed themselves as “Grotesque Singing and Dancing Novelty.” We cannot be certain if “grotesque” was added to attract attention, or was merely an honest assessment of their abilities.

Things were more hopefully put with Bixley & Lerner, who called themselves “The Melba and Caruso of Vaudeville.”

Spectacular acts were saved for last, “show-closers”, and on July 13, 1914, Gilmore & Castle, “Blackface Singing and Talking Comedians” (yes, they could also talk), were followed by show-closer Hassan Ben Ali’s Troupe.


In his American Vaudeville: It’s Life and Times (NY: Dower Pub., Inc. 1968), author Douglas Gilbert noted of the Troupe, “Their handsprings were never springy, and their tumbling was wild, reckless, effortless. American acrobats could never approach them. At the end of the act Ali held the entire troupe on his head, shoulders, and arms. Then, at curtain, they would take off like pigeons, throwing themselves, so it seemed, out into space. The illusion was perfect. This was the best of the alley oops and no act has beaten it since.”


Box seats were 50 cents at the Poli’s Palace (orchestra seats were double that at Court Square), but if half a buck was still too steep, you could sit in the balcony for 10 cents.

Sylvester Poli, incidentally, was among the first theater owners to construct a single cantilevered balcony in this building, built in 1913.

Vaudeville ran with a new bill every week at Poli’s from Labor Day through May 30th, when summer stock would take over. Poli had his own traveling theater group, called the Poli Players, that would tour his theaters. One future film actress to get her start with the Poli Players was Gladys George.

Sylvester Poli, known not only for adding to his chain of theaters, but remodeling old ones, built the Poli Memorial Theater in 1927. The Springfield Republican noted in December 1926, “Modeled, to some extent, after the elaborate Metropolitan picture theater in Boston, its stage and auditorium will be suitable to legitimate productions, vaudeville, and motion pictures.”

The might be what’s known as having it all, but we never have anything for very long. Vaudeville was dead by 1930, and the talkies carried what would be known as the Loew’s Poli theater for the remainder of the decade and beyond, until that distant day when downtown theaters would be replaced by suburban cinemas.

But for a good while, one could ride the trolley on Main Street, get off on Worthington and walk up to the Poli’s Palace to see Archie Onri “The Original Juggling Genius assisted by Miss Dolly”, and Rohem’s Athletic Girls, which featured feminine exhibitions in “Fencing, Wrestling, and Bag Punching,” or the ever popular Spencer & Williams “Singing and Dancing Duo.”

Later, Loew’s Poli showed first-run MGM films for another generation.

Note: The photos of the exterior and interior of Poli's Palace are from postcards posted on the Image Museum site. The programs and tickets are from my collection.

The File on Esther Zidel

As mentioned on my "Another Old Movie Blog" this week, I'd like to refer you to another blog called “The File on Esther Zidel.” This blog is comprised of scrapbook photos taken by a young woman named Esther Zidel in the late 1930s and 1940s. The photos are of actors and actresses (stage and screen) she seems to have accosted outside the stage doors of Boston, Massachusetts area theaters. Some dressed to the nines; some, like one of Bette Davis, devil-may-care casual. The more famous actors are easily recognizable, but many others are not.

The photo of James Dunn seems especially poignant to me, strolling alone through the deserted back alley.

See if you can help identify some of these actors, and fill in the blanks.

Upcoming Plays

Upcoming plays for September and October:

At the Barrington Stage in western Massachusetts:
“Freud's Last Session” is being extended September 23rd through October 4th. The play by Mark St. Germain is suggested by "The Question of God" by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr., directed by Tyler Marchant. After escaping the Nazis in Vienna, psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud invites a young, little known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in London. Lewis expects to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book but the dying Freud has a more significant agenda. On the day England entered WW II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chose to take his own.

At Connecticut’s Goodspeed Opera House: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” runs from September 25th through November 29th.

In Ivoryton, Connecticut, the Ivoryton Playhouse presents William Gibson’s classic “The Miracle Worker” September 23rd through October 11th.

At “The Kate”, the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook, Connecticut we have Shakespeare’s “All's Well That Ends Well” on October 1st.

The Legacy Theater Company of Saco, Maine presents “Run for Your Lives” October 9th through October 18th, a series of funny and poignant short works by David Ives, author of "All In The Timing"

The Portland Stage Company of Portland, Maine presents “Third” by Wendy Wasserstein, September 29th through October 18th. From their website: "A liberal university professor finds her seemingly well-ordered life as mother, friend, and daughter thrown into disarray when she accuses a conservative student of plagiarism. Full of the smart dialogue and easy wit that made her famous, Wasserstein's last play is a thoughtful examination of politics, family and the unconscious misconceptions that still divide America."

Hartford, Connecticut’s Bushnell presents Tony winners Roger Bart and Shuler Hensley reprising their roles in the first national tour of the musical “Young Frankenstein” October 6th through 11th, book by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan, music & lyrics by Mel Brooks. Direction and Choreography by Susan Stroman.

Boston’s The Huntington is currently running August Wilson’s “Fences”, directed by Kenny Leon through October 11th.

The Ridgefield Theater Barn of Ridgefield, Connecticut is currently running “Beyond Therapy” by Christopher Durang, directed by Lester Colodny through October 3rd.

"This comedy/farce involves the unstable lives of two New Yorkers searching for a stable romantic relationship and the 'advice' they receive from their equally unstable psychiatrists. The line between neurosis and insanity blurs as complications....and comedy....inevitably follows."

Connecticut’s Westport Playhouse presents Jane Alexander and Stockard Channing in “The Breath of Life” by David Hare, directed by Mark Lamos September 29th through October 17th. On a small island off the coast of England, two women with a shared history meet for the first time. For twenty-five years, though strangers to one another, Frances and Madeleine were intimately connected in ways they’re only now beginning to understand. Over the course of a single night, as they confront the past, they finally come to terms with the choices they’ve made and the lives they’ve lived.

Opening of "The Kate"

A couple of days ago, a new theater opened, or re-opened we should say, in New England. We welcome the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center.

Located in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the theater was once the town hall that opened in 1911, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

For many years the building was the home of the Musical and Dramatic Club, showed movies, and the Ivoryton Players moved here for a time during WWII. Ethel Barrymore trod the boards in 1935. By the 1950s, the town offices required more room and theatre was abandoned.

When the town offices moved to a new Town Hall, the historic building underwent, and is still undergoing, a most delightful transformation as the Town of Old Saybrook set upon creating a 250-seat theater, as well as a museum honoring Katharine Hepburn, their most famous resident.

Have a look at the link above and welcome the inaugural season of “The Kate.”

Kitty Carlisle On Tour at the High School Auditorium

This program for “The Man Who Came to Dinner” is undated, but could have been about 1949, the year Kitty Carlisle toured in summer stock with this now theatre classic written by her husband, Moss Hart, and his partner George S. Kaufman.

Intriguing in this production is the cast of theatre veterans, and the theater: the auditorium of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Trade High School.

This small brick inner city trade school has long been defunct, but evidently had appropriate facilities for what was billed as the Springfield Drama Festival. The Albert Steiger Company, whose flagship department store was in Springfield, also now defunct, (see this article on Steiger’s in my New England Travels blog), took out a full-page ad. The fox furs worn by Miss Carlisle and Miss Libaire came from another local business, Scott Furriers, and the radio equipment for the broadcast scene was provided by the local downtown radio station, WMAS. In between acts we are encouraged to drink Coca Cola, “On sale ice cold in the lobby.”

The program might have the look of a senior class play, but the cast carried a few veterans who’d probably played in more humble venues, and certainly in theaters more grand.


Kitty Carlisle’s career on stage spanned decades, though beyond her few films is probably most remembered for her stint as a game show panelist. She played Maggie Cutler, who is the secretary of the impossible Sheridan Whiteside, played by Forrest Orr. No longer a household name, Mr. Orr made his Broadway debut back in 1907 in the old chestnut, “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines.” His Broadway career continued through the middle 1940s, and he appeared in the original “Philadelphia Story.”

Kevin McCarthy, Joseph Pevney also had long stage careers, and Dorothy Libaire, who played the gold-digger Lorraine Sheldon had a number of films under her belt by the time this gig at the Springfield Trade School came along.

Harold J. Kennedy, who played the prankster Beverly Carleton, also directed the show and co-produced with Harald M. Bromley.

Summer stock requires one to wear a lot of hats sometimes, and demands a lot of versatility, in cast, and in venue, including a high school stage. Now that it’s September and school is back in session, we conclude our posts on summer stock.

Summer Theatre Summary - 1940

The first summer theater is believed to have begun in the 1890s in Denver, Colorado. But like most new inventions, the public was not exposed to this new entertainment, at least not in very large numbers, for a long while, not until the late 1920s and early 1930s. This is when more people could afford to leave the sweltering cities in the summer. This is when they began to vacation in the country, and this is when the automobile first made that journey a bit easier. This is when those lush and lovely locales in the mountains or by the sea provided theater entrepreneurs the opportunity to push their own unique product to the vacationers.

In June 1940, Theatre Arts magazine celebrated the first decade of summer theatre with an article by author and theater manager, Warren P. Munsell, Jr., who noted, “It is no longer a quaint idea to pop out to the country in July and take in a straw hat show.” He rejoiced that now it was a commonplace thing to do. He noted that “actors, like everybody else, like to get out of the city in the hot weather. Unlike everybody else, in their spare time actors like to act.”

Interestingly, Munsell observed that even at this time, slowly over the preceding decade of the Great Depression, the old-style repertory theater was being altered by the presence of big-name stars from Hollywood. If the audience was asked to pay the enormous sum of $2.75 a ticket to see Henry Fonda live on stage, then by golly, they would expect to see an entire season of big stars rounding out the casts. Munsell notes that such demands by the audience, no longer content with the backwoods repertory, put a huge strain on the theater’s coffers, so much that summer theaters are “generally close to bankruptcy.”

He notes that audiences prefer familiar titles of recent Broadway hits (at the time of this article, it was “You Can’t Take it With You” and “Susan and God”). Giving the public what it wants also extends to what he calls his hesitancy “to offer Oscar Wilde to an audience comprised mainly of farmers.”

He notes comedy is a bigger draw than drama, and notes the risks of trying out new plays as opposed to presenting familiar chestnuts. Except for the price of the tickets, he could be talking about today. Munsell closes his article with a warm summation at which we might smile, “But if, in its maturity, the straw hat circuit seems to have less spontaneity, and to be of less value as an incubator for Broadway plays and Hollywood protégés than before, it has evolved its own special, significant function. It is another outlet for theatre. For summer theatres are supported on the whole by communities a varying percentage of which have no contact with the stage.”

That, too, may still be true, although the big cities are not so far away anymore, just a few exits down the superhighway for most people. But with so many competing sources of entertainment, is live theater likely to be any more popular today for an evening or afternoon’s entertainment than it was in the Great Depression when money was scarce, but many more small communities had a tradition of theatre?

"Singin' in the Rain" - Ogunquit Playhouse

Ogunquit Playhouse brings to life “Singin’ in the Rain” with elaborate sets, complex technical effects, and a cast whose energy and talent impress and delight. Ogunquit has a huge show in “Singin’ in The Rain,” and a huge hit.


Joey Sorge, Amanda Lea Lavergne, and Jon Peters seem to almost channel Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor of the original film on which this stage musical is based. The 1952 landmark movie has become so iconic that a stage musical must of necessity evoke memories of the film, and for this production we therefore have the iconic Gene Kelly pose on the street lamp, umbrella in hand, by Joey Sorge, the Donald O’Connor inspired frenetic sight gags during the “Make ‘Em Laugh” number performed by Jon Peters, and Amanda Lea Lavergne’s “All I Do is Dream of You” bursting from a cake a’la Debbie Reynolds.

Particularly impressive for the audience to remember is that Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor were not singing at the top of their lungs while doing those impressive dance routines; they were lip-syncing to playback. On the stage, everything is live (though the tinny sound of the mics is somewhat distracting), and Sorge, Lavergne, and Peters don’t have the luxury of mouthing to playback or re-takes. They give it everything they’ve got, and what they’ve got is great. Their soaring voices and snappy tap dancing may have evoked the actors of the original film, but no mimicry was used or needed. They let us know from the start that, though this show might have been inspired by an old movie, this was live theater in all its immediacy and energy, its ability to excite and involve.

Other moments inspired by the film is the scene of the gossamer scarf of dancer Cyd Charisse enveloping Gene Kelly during the “Broadway Rhythm” number, and it is replicated with an interesting and creative variation. In the “Good Morning” number, at the moment Sorge, Lavergne, and Peters leap in unison onto the back of the couch and tip it over, the audience responded with impromptu applause, because that is one of the most memorable moments of that dance number in the film, and they were delightfully surprised to see it replicated on stage.

Amy Bodnar, who plays the ditzy diva Lina Lamont, rates a special mention for her fabulous performance. One would have to go a long way to top the comic antics of Jean Hagen in the original film, but Ms. Bodnar does it. I think whenever I see the 1952 from now on, I will be reminded with a warm memory of Ms. Bodnar’s performance. She is utterly hysterical in each line, each pose, managing to be both exasperatingly haughty and charmingly endearing. She was singled out for a standing ovation at the conclusion of the performance I saw, and well deserved.

Celia Tackaberry, who doubled as Phoebe Dinsmore the much-put-upon vocal coach, and Dora Bailey, the gossip columnist guiding us through the Hollywood premieres, gave us a touch of zany spoofing.

A fascinating, and highly entertaining aspect to this production is the use of silent film style film sequences of the actors shown on a screen in several scenes that meld with the live action and illustrate the sometimes wacky film world of the late 1920s. This was through the efforts of one of the new sponsors of the Playhouse, Video Creations. We see the difficulty transferring the accustomed silent film story to the new and groundbreaking sound film technology, not always with expected results. The “movie” clips were inventive and really funny.

And of course, it rained on stage.


Boy, did it rain. A spectacular special effect, this must have been a terrific challenge, and audience was taken away by it, and Joey Sorge leaped and splashily tap danced through puddles before our eyes. Bradford T. Kenney, Executive Artistic Director and Jayme McDaniel, director/choreographer are to be congratulated for the triumph “Singin’ in the Rain” represents for Ogunquit Playhouse. Musical director for this show is Matthew Smedal, who led the orchestra through the familiar, and some unfamiliar original numbers by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed.

“Singin’ in the Rain” runs at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine through September 12th. Make every effort to see this show if you can; it’s terrific. If you’re lucky enough to catch it, let us know what you think.