MenuVaudeville Wars Notes: Part 2
Notes for other pages of Vaudeville Wars can be found by clicking on the appropriate link in Notes.
Page numbers below refer to page numbers in the printed book. When a paragraph in the book does not contain a note it is identified by placing quotation marks around key words in the first sentence. In cases where there is a note in the published version, references have been added after the cited note, often followed by the word "see."
Part Two Evolution
4. The Great Orpheum Circuit
1. NYC, November 29, 1890, 711. See Eugene Clinton Elliott, A History of Variety-Vaudeville in Seattle, From the Beginning to 1914, University of Washington Publications in Drama, ed., Glenn Hughes, no. 1 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1944), 17-23, 27-28, 33, 36-38, 45-47; Alice Hensen Ernst, Trouping in the Oregon Country, A History of the Frontier Theatre (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1961), 137-41; CGAT, 418-20; OCAT, 167; Billboard, September 23, 1911, 3; NYC, August 10, 1889, 367, NYT, November 19, 1929, 29, November 21, 1929, 29; VO 2: November 20, 1929.
2. NYC, November 29, 1890, 711, February 28, 1891, 812.
p 64. "Cort's management of the Orpheum"
Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform and Expansion, 1890-1900 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959; Harper Torchbooks, 1963), 141-47; Henderson, City and the Theatre, 226; Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management, 566; CGAT, 127. Cort eventually became a successful Broadway producer and owner of numerous legitimate theaters, including the Cort Theatre (1912) on Forty-eighth Street.
3. San Francisco Call, September 4, 1916, The Referee, May 12, 1917, vol. 10, OPNR-C-B; SFC, August 16, 1908, 17; "Morris Meyerfeld, Dreamer and Doer," San Francisco Call, May 3, 1908, Morris Meyerfeld, Jr., file, CSf-PALM. See also Berson, San Francisco Stage, 97; Gagey, San Francisco Stage, 198; Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management 191; NYT, June 21, 1935, 19; SFC, June 21, 1935, 2; Variety, June 26, 1935, 51.
4. SFC, August 16, 1908, 17; SFE, August 13, 1911, vol. 5, OPNR-CU-B.
5. Argonaut, February 21, 1898, 11; Orpheum playbill, week commencing Monday, March 18, 1895, binder 1895, CSf-PALM; "Famous Playhouses," History of the San Francisco Theatre, 130-32, copy, CSf-PALM.
p. 54 "During the 1890s"
Argonaut, May 3, 1897, 11; NYDM, August 28, 1897, 3.
6. NYC, January 23, 1897, 772; Argonaut, March 29, 1897, 11.
7. Wells, Champagne Days of San Francisco, 43-44.
8. Burgess, Bayside Bohemia, 38, 39; Gelett Burgess, Gelett Burgess Behind the Scenes: Glimpses of Fin De Seicle San Francisco with commentaries by Joseph M. Backus (San Francisco: Book Club of San Francisco, 1968), 47. See Oscar Lewis, Bay Window Bohemia: An Account of the Brilliant Artistic World of Gaslit San Francisco (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), 81--86; Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 251-68; Laurie, Vaudeville, 199-200.
9. Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources Criticism, ed. Donald Pizer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 56. See Franklin Walker, Frank Norris: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1932), 89-90.
10. Norris, McTeague, 55-56, 58, 59, 60, 61.
11. SFE, August 13, 1911, clipping, vol. 5; The Referee, May 12, 1917, clipping, vol. 10, OPNR-Cu-B; Orpheum Circuit of Theatres (New York: Orpheum Theatre and Realty, 1909), n.p.
p. 57 "Los Angeles offered excellent potential"
Charles Nelson Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, History of Urban America (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 109-10; Grau, Business Man in the Amusement World, 213-15; Mohl, New City, 16; Stanford P. Singer, "Vaudeville West," PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1987, 112-13, 116, 129-30; Stanford P. Singer, "Vaudeville in Los Angeles, 1910-1926: Theaters, Management, and the Orpheum," Pacific Historical Review 61 (November 1992):103-13; Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (1985; New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press paperback, 1986), 64-75; CGAT, 287.
12. LAT, December 30, 1894, 10, 17. See NYDM, January 5, 1895, 5; "Cinema Treasures," http://www.cinematreasures.org/theater/9619 (accessed December 23, 2004); "Los Angeles Public Library Photo Database," http://www.jpg1.lapl.org/pics42/00040902.jpg and 34/00036854.jpg (accessed December 23, 2004); "Los Angeles Theatres Orpheum," Theatre Historical Society of America Annual (no. 32---2005): 12-13.
13. Cohan, Twenty Years on Broadway, 171-72. See McCabe, George M. Cohan, 47, 280; Argonaut, February 12, 1897, 11.
pp. 58 "The success of their two California theaters"
"A Short History of the Orpheum Theatres, San Francisco, 1876-1977," typescript ms., ca. 1977, CSf-PALM; San Francisco Orpheum tenth anniversary material, CSf-PALM; NYC, October 19, 1895, 516; NYDM, December 7, 1895, 20.
14. Orpheum Circuit of Theatres (1909), n.p.
p. 58 "Kansas City, Missouri"
Glaab and Brown, History of Urban America, 102, 104-6; Mohl, New City, 13-21; NYC, February 19, 1898, 841.
p. 59 "Three months after the Kansas City Orpheum"
Argonaut, May 16, 1898, 11; Figaro, June 14, 1899, n.p.; NYC, May 14, 1898, 173, 177; July 22, 1899, 404; NYDM, May 21, 1898, 16, May 28, 1898, 17; SFC, May 19, 1899, 14.
17. NYC, May 28, 1898, 210; "Morris Meyerfeld, Dreamer and Doer." See NYDM, May 28, 1898, 18.
p. 59 "Meyerfeld quickly expanded the Orpheum"
Glaab and Brown, History of Urban America, 102, 128-29; Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management, 227-30; JCOTG, 255; NYC, December 17, 1898, 1707, January 7, 1899, 754, January 14, 1899, 772.
18. NYDM, July 13, 1895, 19, July 20, 1895, 5.
19. W. C. Fields, W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography, commentary by Ronald J. Fields (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 15, 16. See James Curtis, W. C. Fields: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 43, 46-47, 53, 55; Simon Louvish, Man on the Flying Trapeze (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 71-72. 488; David T. Rocks, W. C. Fields: An Annotated Guide---An Annotated Guide, Chronology, Bibliographies, Discography, Filmographies, Press Books, Cigarette Cards, Film Clips and Impersonators (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993), 6-7.
20. Fields, W. C. Fields by Himself, 17; NYC, May 19, 1900, 281.
21. NYC, July 24, 1897, 334, 343; NYDM, August 7, 1897, 18. On the WCTV's formation see NYDM, June 19, 1897, 18, July 24, 1897, 17, 18; NYC, June 12, 1897, 236; July 24, 1897, 334; July 23, 1898, 350. On Middleton see Bogdan, Freak Show, 37, 71 287, n11; Dennett, Weird and Wonderful, 40-41, 69; Fields and Fields, From the Bowery to Broadway, 42, 44, 46, 56; Isman, Weber and Fields, 34-37; Harold Kellock, Houdini: His Life Story (London: William Heineman, 1928), 40-41, 62, 133; George Middleton, Circus Memoirs: Reminiscences of George Middleton as Told to and Written by His Wife (Los Angeles: George Rice & Sons, 1913), 68-72, 108-9; Beryl Williams and Samuel Epstein, The Great Houdini: Magician Extraordinary (New York: Julian Messner, 1950), 33-34, 39, 52, 60; Billboard, March 16, 1901, front cover, 4; Barry Gray, "The Good Old Days of the Dime Museum," Billboard, December 8, 1928, 98; CT, March 4, 1883, 11. On Kohl see Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 220-21. On Castle see Robert Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and the Drama (New York and Baltimore: Broadway Publishing Co., 1909), 39-40; Laurie, Vaudeville, 348; Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management, 201-2; "How Vaudeville Came into Being in Chicago," Orpheum Circuit: Third of a Century, 1877-1922, ed. and comp., Mort H. Singer (San Francisco: 1922), 8, copy, THS; Billboard, January 5, 1918, 3, 64; CT, December 31, 1917, 11, NYT, December 31, 1917, 7; VO 1: January 4, 1918. On Hopkins see Brett, Temples of Illusion, 21-23, 58-65; Fields and Fields, From the Bowery to Broadway, 67-69; Isman, Weber and Fields, 58-63; Willard, History of the Providence Stage, 274; NYC, February 14, 1914, 11; NYDM, July 27. 1895, 18, August 17, 1895, 8, February 15, 1896, 21, September 11, 1897, 5; Variety, October 6, 1906. 2, October 30, 1909, 19.
p. 62 "As part of its association"
On Beck see Timothy D. Connors, "American Vaudeville Managers: Their Organization and Influence," PhD. diss, University of Kansas 1981, 34-37; Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and Drama, 29-30; DAB, vol. 11, supp. 2, 32-33; Laurie, Vaudeville, 359-65; Leavitt, Fifty Years in Theatrical Management, 192; Martin Beck files, HTC-MH, NNMuS, PP; Billboard, November 4, 1911, 3, 58; January 25, 1919, 8; NYC, October 23, 1897, 98, 124, July 23, 1898, 350, October 1, 1898, 523, October 8, 1898, 537; NYDM, October 16, 1897, 19; NYT, November 17, 1940, 47; VO, 3: November 20, 1940.
22. Ada Patterson, "Two Carriers Are Every Man's Right," National Magazine (March 1925): 372. See CGAT, 124.
23. Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 210; Variety, December 11, 1909, 27.
24. SFE, January 31, 1909, vol. 2, OPNR-CU-B; NYS, January, 29, 1919, 9. See NYDM, August 12, 1899, 19.
25. SFE, January 21, 1912, clipping, vol. 5; October 18, 1919, clipping, vol. 6; San Francisco Call, February, 19, 1911, vol. 4, OPNR-CU-B.
26. "Martin Beck Breaks His Silence of Years to Talk to the Theatre," NYMT, January 25, 1925, clipping, Martin Beck file, PP; Variety, April 2, 1920, 19.
27. "Martin Beck Breaks His Silence of Years to Talk to the Theatre"; San Francisco Call, February, 19, 1911, vol. 4, OPNR-Cu-B; "Martin Beck Anecdota," VO, 3: November 20, 1940; Laurie, Vaudeville, 364.
28. Town Talk, January 13, 1912, vol. 5, OPNR-Cu-B; Kellock, Houdini, 124-25. See Williams and Epstein, Great Houdini, 65-67.
29. NYC, May 12, 1900, 244.
5. Upstaging Tony Pastor
1. McLean, "Genesis of Vaudeville," 94; NYDM, October 12, 1895, scrapbook #26, KAC-IaU.
p. 67 "The Union Square Theatre"
John F. Frick, New York's First Theatrical Center: The Rialto at Union Square (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985), 32-41; Henderson, City and the Theatre, 134, 140, 143, 145; John Frick, "The Theatres of Fourteenth Street." Marquee 16(Third Quarter 1984):3-9; Christopher Gray, "The Ghost Behind a Huge Sign," NYT, January 29, 1989; Donald C. King, "New York's Oldest Existing Theatre---the Union Square," Marquee 6(Second Quarter, 1974), 18; clippings, Union Square Theatre file, NNMus.
2. Susan Kattwinkel, Tony Pastor Presents: Afterpieces from the Vaudeville Stage (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 1; Parker Zellers, Tony Pastor: Dean of the Vaudeville Stage (Ypsilanti, MI: Eastern University Place, 1971), 79.
3. NYH, March 22, 1890; "A Medal for Tony," New York Sun, March 22, 1890, Anniversary Scrapbook, March 1890, box 30, TPC-HRHRC-TxU; NYC, March 29, 1890, 33.
4. "Chicot Interviewing the Veteran Tony Pastor," New York Evening World, July 6, 1903, scrapbook #29.6, January 1903--September 1905, TPC-HRHRC-TxU. See also "Tony Pastor's Anniversary," New York Sun, March 21, 1890, Anniversary Scrapbook, March 1890, box 30; "A Chat with Tony Pastor," New York Mercury, scrapbook #32, June--August 1894, TPC-HRHRC-TxU; Zellers, Tony Pastor, 1-3; Myron Matlaw, "Tony the Trouper: Pastor's Early Years," Theatre Annual 24 (1968): 70-74; NYC, September 5, 1908, 722; NYDM, July 27, 1895, 2.
5. NYC, January 2, 1864, in William Slout, ed., Broadway Below the Sidewalk: Concert Saloons of Old New York (San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1994), 3-4; WST, March 16, 1861, 24, June 8, 1861, 224, July 18, 1861, 304; "Chicot Interviewing the Veteran Tony Pastor." See "A Chat with Tony Pastor," New York Mercury, scrapbook #32, June--August 1894, TPC-HRHRC-TxU; NYT, March 28, 1874, 8.
6. Zellers, Tony Pastor, 42; Variety, December 15, 1906, 17; NYT, April 21, 1907, pt. 5, 4; NYT, August 16, 1908, pt. 5, 3; NYH, October 2, 1865, in George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927-49), vol. 8 (1865-70), 85-86. See Susan Kattwinkel, "Tony Pastor's Vaudeville: Serving the New York Community," Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin 25, no.3 (1995): 51-75; WST, April 10, 1875, 209.
7. Zellers, Tony Pastor, 55.
8. Lillian Russell, "Lillian Russell's Reminiscences," Cosmopolitan 72 (February 1922) in Charles W. Stein, ed., American Vaudeville As Seen by Its Contemporaries (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 10-11. See NYM, February 1, 1879, 7.
pp. 71-72 "After six years"
Frick, New York's First Theatrical Center, 107-25; Henderson, City and the Theatre, 134; James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit (New York: Random House, 2004), 8-9; John Frick, "Stock Companies on Union Square," Marquee 19 (Fourth Quarter 1987): 11-19.
p. 72 "On October 24, 1881"
Zellers, Tony Pastor, 91-92; King, "New York's Oldest Existing Theatre--The Union Square," 8; Frick, "Theatres of Fourteenth Street," 7;
p. 72 "By the time"
Traub, Devil's Playground, 11-16; Margaret Mary Knapp, "A Historical Study of the Legitimate Playhouses on West Forty-second Street Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in New York City" (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1982), 1-15;
Jack Robinson, "Fourteenth Street, Cradle of American Vaudeville," Marquee 15 (First Quarter 1983):19-20; NYDM, April 4, 1892, 4.
9. Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and Drama, 4.
p. 73 "A standing-room only crowd"
Edward Milton Royle, "The Vaudeville Theatre," Scribner's Magazine 26 (October 1899) in Stein, American Vaudeville as See by Its Contemporaries, 31; Keith's Union Square Playbill, December 17, 1894, in "A History of Early Variety and Vaudeville in America," scrapbook compiled by Paul E. Glass, PP.
10. WC-NMAH, Box 5, folder 38.
11. Brett Page, Writing for Vaudeville (Springfield, MA: Home Correspondence School, 1915), 155-56; Variety, September 6, 1923, 18. See Grau, Business Man in the Business World, 318-20; Page, Writing for Vaudeville reprinted in http://www.authorama.com/writing-for-vaudeville-3.html (accessed February 17, 2005); NYDM, December 24, 1898, 92; NYMT, January 30, 1910, 2, February 13, 1910, 2; Vaudeville, November 16, 1895, copy HC-LC.
12. NYDM, August 6, 1913, 4.
pp. 74-75 "Legitimate actors"
Alison Kibler, Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudeville (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 170-79; Gilbert Seldes, The 7 Lively Arts (New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 221-24; Leigh Woods, "Sarah Bernhardt and the Refining of American Vaudeville," Theatre International Research 18(Spring 1993):16-24; Woods, "Two-a-day Redemptions and Truncated Camilles: the Vaudeville Repertoire of Sarah Bernhardt," New Theatre Quarterly 110, no. 37(February 1994):12-13; Woods, "`The Golden Calf': Noted English Actresses in American Vaudeville, 1904-1916," Journal of American Culture 15 (Fall 1992):61-71; NYC, August 30, 1902, 573-74; NYDM, May 1, 1897, 14.
13. J. C. Nugent, It's a Great Life (New York: Dial Press, 1940) 151, 155.
14. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, My Life and Some Letters (London: Hutchinson, 1922) in Stein, ed., American Vaudeville As Seen by Its Contemporaries, 88, 90-92. See also Town Talk, February 20, 1915, vol. 8, OPNR-Cu-B.
15. San Francisco Call, August 21, 1910, vol. 4, OPNR-CU-B.
pp. 75-76 "The need for well-constructed playlets"
Brian Duryea, "Will Cressy Tells About Vaudeville," Green Book (June 1915):13; NYDM, January 14, 1914, 37.
p. 76 "Stars from the legitimate stage"
Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and Drama, 6-7; Grau, Business Man in the Amusement World, 319-20; David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 28-29; "The Growth of Vaudeville," NYDM, August 6, 1913, 4; Variety, December 16, 1905, 2.
16. Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and Drama, 2. See Variety, July 23, 1915, 5; John Frick, "Stock Companies on Union Square," Marquee 19(Fourth Quarter 1987):17.
17. Grau, Forty Years Observation of Music and the Drama, 2.
18. Fourteenth Street Financial Journals, #22.1, October 1892-October 1893; TPC-HRHRC-TxU. See also #21.4, October 1889-October 1890; #22.2, October 1893-October 1894.
p. 77 "As salaries for headliners"
Fourteenth Street Financial Journals, #21.3, October 1886-October 1887; #21.4, October 1889-October 1890; #22.2, October 1893-October 1894, TPC-HRHRC-TxU; "Vaudeville Only in its Infancy," New York Press, scrapbook #34, February 1896--March 1898, TPC-HRHRC-TxU; Sarah Maitland, Vesta Tilley (London: Virago Press, 1986), 37-38; Gwynedd Sudworth, The Great Little Tilley: Vesta Tilley and Her Times (Luton, England: Courtney Publications, 1984), 76-79; Zellers, Tony Pastor, 76-77, 94-96, 102-3.
19. Zellers, Tony Pastor, 96.
20. Billboard, December 10, 1914, 38; NYMT, March 27, 1910, sec. 4, 2.
21. NYH (1896), scrapbook #34, February 1896-March 1898, TCP-HRHRC-TxU; NYDM, January 18, 1896, 19.
22. Billboard, October 22, 1910, 12.
23. NYC, September 5, 1908, 722, 727. See Zellers, Tony Pastor, 107-12; Frick, "Theatres of Fourteenth Street," 8-9.
6. Gentrifying Keith's Quadruple Circuit
1. NYMT, May 4, 1919, sec. 6, 2; Billboard, December 24, 1921, 105.
2. NYDM, December 24, 1898, 96; Frank B. Copley, "The Story of a Great Vaudeville Manager," American Magazine 94(December 1922): 47. See William H. Birkmire, Planning and Construction of American Theatres (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1906), 48--56; Birkmire, "The Planning and Construction of American Theatres, Gaiety Theatre," Architecture and Building 24(March 7, 1896): 113-16; Donald C. King, "From Museum to Multi-Cinema," Marquee 6 (Third Quarter 1974): 17-18.
3. Billboard, December 24, 1921, 105.
4. NYDM, March 31, 1894, 10, December 24, 1898, 96; "B. F. Keith's New Theatre, Boston, Mass.," 1895 pamphlet, Keith clipping file, NN-BRTC. See also Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 206; NYDM, December 24, 1898, 96.
5. BET, March 10, 1894, 7, March 27, 1894, 5; "The Model Playhouse of the Country," brochure, Boston Theatres, Keith Theatres miscellaneous file and Keith's Theatre 1894-1928 file, HTC-MH. See Gunther Barth, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 192-94.
6. Variety, September 6, 1923, 18; NYMT, September 1, 1912, 1.
7. Albee Theatre News, December 15, 1921, clippings scrapbook #80, KAC-IaU; Billboard, December 24, 1921, 105; 12; "Model Playhouse of the Country." See B. F. Keith's Theatre News, September 12, 1921, 6, copy HC-LC; Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 244; Christopher Bentley, The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics and the Opening of Japan (New York: Random House, 2003), 94-98; Albert Suster, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theater, 1890-1920 (New York: Praeger, 1984), 41.
p. 84 "Keith and Albee's new Boston theater"
Brett, Temples of Illusion, 117, 120-21; "Very Beautiful Playhouse," clipping, BSH, October 23, 1898, Keith Theatres Miscellaneous file, HTC-MH; NYC, October 29, 1898, 591; NYDM, October 29, 1898, 18, November 5, 1898, 18. On Albee's successful stock company that performed plays during the summer see "Heyday of Summer Theater," Sunday Journal Magazine, Providence Sunday Journal, April 10, 1983, 6-8, copy, THS; NYC, January 17, 1918, 12, April 10, 1918, 13; NYMT, February 6, 1910, 7.
8. "Keith's New Philadelphia Theatre a Marvel of Beauty," Boston Keith, Keith Theater, miscellaneous file, Boston Sunday Journal clipping, HTC-MH. See Keith Chestnut Street Theatre file, PP; Gilbert, American Vaudeville, 204-5; Glazer, Philadelphia Theatres, 142--45 and Philadelphia Theaters, 3; JCGHTG, 61; Donald C. King, "Keith-Albee et al . . . ," Marquee 7(Third Quarter 1975):5, 16; NYDM, March 31, 1900, 20; NYMT, May 1, 1910, sec. 4, 2.
9. NYMT, May 1, 1910, sec. 4, 2; Keith News, April 6, 1908, scrapbook #42; "The Woman About Town," Providence Evening Times, October 23, 1901, scrapbook #29, KAC-IaU.
10. Providence News, August 27, 1900, scrapbook #28; Keith News, November 6, 1905, scrapbook #38; Keith's Providence report, December 1, 1902, scrapbook #1, 83; Keith's Philadelphia report, December 25, 1905, scrapbook #5, 138, KAC-IaU.
11. Keith's Boston report, May 9, 1904, scrapbook #3, 58; Keith's Philadelphia report, October 29, 1906, scrapbook #6, 147; Keith News, February, 27, 1905, scrapbook #28; Keith News, November 25, 1907, scrapbook #42, KAC-IaU.
12. Variety, February 28, 1919, 29. See NYC, July 28, 1900, 471; NYDM, April 18, 1896, 20.
13. Buster Keaton Oral History, 3, CLAC and YRL-CLU; Buster Keaton with Charles Samuels, My Wonderful World of Slapstick (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 34.
14. Managers Report Books, December 22, 1902, p. 122, KAC-IaU; Keaton Oral History, 3; Managers Report Books, May 18, 1903, p. 268. KAC-IaU. See Buster Keaton Scrapbook, CLAC, NYDM, January 23, 1904, October 7, 1905.
p. 86 "The Keith Circuit also booked"
Bettina Knapp and Myra Chipman, That Was Yvette: The Biography of Yvette Guilbert, the Great Diseuse (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 160; Vincent Sheean, Oscar Hammerstein I: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 87-89; NYC, September 8, 1894, 433, September 14, 1895, 436; NYDM, July 6, 1895, 14; Variety, December 12, 1908, 20.
15. B. F. Keith to Mr. Bryan, July 27, 1894, B. F. Keith file, HTC-MH. While on the ship he had an intriguing conversation with Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who was traveling to London to attend a temperance meeting. Willard and her fellow reformers regarded the theater as a place of sin, drinking, and vulgarity. Keith told her that his theaters catered especially to women, banned liquor, and offered wholesome entertainment. A few months later after visiting his Boston theater, Willard wrote a letter published in the Union Signal, a temperance newspaper, praising his theater. (Union Signal, June 11, 1896, 4) She called its atmosphere "as pure as a lady's parlor" and urged other managers to follow Keith's policy. Compared to Keith's, other theaters were a disgrace and needed the attention of reformers. Willard's letter caused the editors of the New York Dramatic Mirror to accuse her of holding a narrow view of the American stage. In a reply to the Dramatic Mirror written from Genoa, Italy, Keith rallied to her defense and criticized the paper for creating a rift between the church and the theater. Willard wrote Keith to thank him for his remarks and coming to her defense (NYDM, July 18, 1896, 12, June 27, 1896, 12, February 20, 1987, 12, April 17, 1897, 17).
p. 88 "During his three months"
Felix Barker, The House That Stoll Built (London: Frederick Muller, 1957), 12-69; Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, British Music Halls (London: Gentry Books, rev.ed, 1974), 148; "Moss Empire Jubilee: 1899-1949," brochure; Oswald Stoll biographical file, VATM; January 6, 1900, 18; NYDM, November 20, 1897, 18; Variety. December 23, 1911, 38, 112. In 1902, Keith purchased a thirteen-year lease held on the famous Princess's Theatre (1839) in London on Oxford Street. Hoping to remodel the condemned building into a vaudeville theater, Keith got into a legal dispute with a wine seller on the premises who demanded a hugh compensation and he consequently never opened the theater (see Murray Leslie, "A Lost Theatre: Gaunt Skeleton of the Old Princess's," Daily Telegraph, January 23, 1929, Princess's Theatre Building file, VATM).
16. McLean, "Genesis of Vaudeville," 95.
pp. 88-89 "Vaudeville venues were natural showplaces"
Robert C. Allen, Vaudeville and Film, 1895-1915: A Study in Media Interaction (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 23-66; Allen, "Vitascope/Cinématographe: Initial Patterns of American Film Industrial Practice," in Film Before Griffith, ed., John L. Fell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983,), 148; Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 4-6, 13-16; John L. Marsh, "Vaudefilm: Its Contribution to a Moviegoing America," Journal of American Culture 7(Fall 1984):77-78; Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 39-50; Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990, 78; David Robinson, From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 41-51.
17. NYDM, May 2, 1896, 19. See Albert Bial clipping file, NN-BRTC; John Koster envelope file, NN-RLC; Allen, Vaudeville and Film, 23; Allen, "Vitascope/Cinématographe," 144-45; Henderson, City and the Theatre, 147, 149; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 59-65, Robinson, From Peep Show to Palace, 62-63; NYDM, May 2, 1896, 19.
p. 89 "The premier was such a great success"
Charles Musser, "Introducing Cinema to the American Public: The Vitascope in the United States, 1896-7," Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), ed., Gregory A. Waller, 13-26; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 77-81; Sobel, A Pictorial History of Vaudeville, 62; NYC, June 6, 1896, 212; NYDM, May 16, 1896, 17, June 20, 1896, 7.
18. NYDM, July 4, 1896, 17; NYC, December 19, 1914, 1; MPW, May 7, 1910, 726; Providence News, September 8, 1896, scrapbook #27, KAC-IaU.
p. 90 "Keith was impressed"
Allen, "Vitascope/Cinématographe," 147-52; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 68-69; NYDM, July 4, 1896, 17, September 18, 1897, 3, 16.
19. Pawtucket Valley Gleaner, December 18, 1896, scrapbook #27, KAC-IaU; Argonaut, December 6, 1897, 11. See McLean, "Genesis of Vaudeville," 95; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 118; Union Square Theatre playbill, April 5, 1897, "A Record of Early Variety and Vaudeville in America," PP; NYC, October 30, 1897, 572, May 21, 1898, 200; NYDM, January 7, 1899, 20, February 4, 1899, 19, June 10, 1899, 18.
pp. 90-91 "The position of the Biograph"
Robert C. Allen, "Contra the Chaser Theory" in Film Before Griffith, ed. John L. Fell, 34, 105-15; Allen, Vaudeville and Film, 126-27, 148-51.
p. 91 "With first-class theaters"
"Model Playhouse of the Country"; Edwin Milton Royle, "The Vaudeville Theatre," Scribner's Magazine 26(October 1899):485.
20. B. F. Keith, "The Vogue of Vaudeville," National Magazine 9 (November 1898) in Stein, ed., American Vaudeville as Seen by Its Contemporaries, 20.
21. NYMT, July 23, 1901, clipping, John Koster envelope file, NN-L-RLC. On Charmion see Andrew L. Erdman, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 115-17.