Family Archive

The Great White Way.

Here is a card from my collection for the 7th Ed. (light) Postcard Festival on A Canadian Family at http://wp.me/pp92w-850 . It shows New York's Theater district during the late 1920's. This was the time and the place where the entertainment world all came together. Theater, Vaudeville and Movies all shared this midtown neighborhood. The stretch of Broadway from 42nd street up to around 53rd street became known as "The Great White Way." On a site called Big Apple Corner I discovered how this phrase came into being and changed over time to become the defining title for the area.

"The Great White Way" was originally the title of a 1901 book about the South Pole. The term was applied to Broadway by Shep Friedman of the New York Morning Telegraph, after a snowstorm on Broadway in 1902 had turned the street into a "white way." Later, "white way" referred to the lights of Broadway. The term was used to describe the multitude of lights that were used to illuminate the NYC Theater district every evening during these formative years for entertainment.

Jeanne

My Grandfather Harry and Great Aunt Juliet were not the only Vaudeville performers in the family. Jeanne Densen (born in 1902 in New York City) was a stage actress who performed in Musical Theater and  Operettas in the early to mid-1920's. Harry and Jeanne were married on June 19, 1927. They had 2 children my Aunt Enid and my Father Harry Jr. After my Grandparents were married Jeanne left the Theater. I've uncovered only a few items from her stage legacy in my archive and found very little about her career on the internet, but I'm still hunting.

Above is an article from the Seattle Sun from the year 1926. My Grandmother, Jeanne is on the bottom right(5). She starred in an adaptation of Franz Schubert's "Blossom Time". I've done my best to protect the clipping using archival materials but the newspaper is disintegrating away. The article on the left below was from an issue of Variety, 1927. The article on the right I'm not certain which newspaper it came from.

  

 

Postcards

Thanks Evelyn for including me in your festival at http://acanadianfamily.com/. As I mentioned I've recently moved and my Archive is packed away in boxes and I'm not able to find everything but here are three black and white real photo postcards of my Great Aunt Juliet in descending chronological order that provide a brief sampling of her career in early entertainment.

The top postcard circa 1910 is from her early career on the Vaudeville stage. Amongst her many talents, Juliet did comic characterizations and impersonations on the Orpheum Circuit. The middle postcard, circa 1915, Is a promotional piece for her act. By this time she had changed her name to Juliet? as you will see on the middle card; the implication being that she was so skilled at mimicry nobody was able to tell for sure if the performer on stage was really her. The bottom postcard is from the late 1920's or early 1930 when she was touring internationally. I believe this is Venice.

Palace Vaudeville Lineup.

Normally I wouldn't post a newspaper article of this length to a blog for fear that my readers would get totally bored and turned off by it and just skip on to the next post in their reader. I know I would. But to me, this review written by Sam M'kee and taken from the March 31,1925 New York Telegraph, did such a remarkable job capturing a representative image of a Vaudeville lineup both from the perspective of the shows content and 1920's era journalism I wanted to include it and see what others thought.

From what I could extract from the article, the show proceeded as follows:

I Opening Act:  "Study in Nonsense" The Duponts

II "The Lovable Pup With his Gang"(Dog)

 1.Hector The lovable pup

 2.Hector's 19 year old Grandfather

 3.The Gang (15 others)

III Olgamayra and the Bittel Sisters (Dance)

  1."Black and Gold" Staged by Alan K Foster

  2.Olgamayra solo numbers

  3.Bittel Sisters Duet numbers

  4.Climax A rustic Russian flirtation number (all three)

IV "Ourselves" Dougie Leavitt and Mary Ruth Lockwood joined by Charles Bates (Comedy)

  They illustrate the sappy politeness preceding marriage and the nervous irascibility after the ceremony

V Nate Leipsig (Card Tricks)

VI Clifton Webb and Mary Hay (Dance Team) with Club Ciro (9 man Orchestra) conducted by Dave Bernie who splits time on the Piano. Featuring Dillon Ober and his Marimba Solo. BTW Yes it is the same Clifton Webb with 3 Academy Award Nominations and a Golden Globe Award for Razors Edge

    Dances  

   1.Rendevous

   2.Strolling

   3.Allez Up

   4.Charleston.

VII Miss Juliet AKA My Great Aunt (Impersonations and Characterizations)

VIII James Barton (Comedy/Dance)

   1."The Pest" assisted by Lew Christy and Charlot Allen

IX Charles King (Singer)

X Closing Act: Rose Irene Kress and her associate whirlers (Dancing Acrobatics on Roller Skates)

Searching Vaudeville

Discovered a Program/Playbill circa 1921 in my archive from another stop on the Orpheum Circuit, the Hennepin Theater in Minneapolis. On this bill, Harry Delf not only performed his notable comedy and dance routines but also wrote the headlining number, a "Dramatic Incident in Five Parts" titled "The Joker" featuring Silent Film star Ethel Clayton.

At the suggestion of a "Family Archive" reader in a comment to my post Continuous Vaudeville http://cityvoice.typepad.com/family_archive/2009/11/continuous-vaudeville.html I've made it my standard practice to search (Google, IMDB, IBDB and Wikipedia) the performers listed on these Program/Playbills that shared the stage with my Vaudeville relatives. As well as yielding many fascinating and unique stories, what I've learned from these searches has helped me put the Era into a broader historical context. While some of these performers haven't been household names for close to a Century, I would argue, they were the first generation pioneers and the origin of what we think of today as the Modern Entertainment Industry. Take Ethel Clayton for example from a quick search I learned: she was born in 1882 in Champaign Illinois. She started out as a stage actress eventually landing starring roles. She made her first film "Justified" a silent short in early 1909 and had 3 other credited roles that year. She was in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1911. The IMDB mentions her as having 189 credited and uncredited film appearances roughly 2/3 were in Silents. She made her last film appearance in 1947 in "The Perils of Pauline".

When you consider that Edison's "The Great Train Robbery", generally recognized as the first narrative film, came out in 1903 and Clayton's film career started in 1909 and lasted 38 years and that during this period she was performing on a stage with Fanny Brice and Bert Williams in the Ziegfeld Follies a few years after it was founded; for my money these seem like ample credentials to justify the status Pioneer of the Modern Entertainment Industry. 

 

The Bellhop

The bellhop or bellboy character is a timeless comedic classic. Could this cap wearing uniformed hotel porter's position have been created first for comic purposes and secondarily for the transportation of baggage? So many of the great American comics have taken a turn with the role both as bellhops and interacting with bellhops, I seriously wonder. Some particularly hilarious bellhop performances were given in 3 silent short films;The Bell Boy with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton , Laurel and Hardy in Hop to it Bellhop and Bughouse Bellhops with Harold Lloyd. The first 2 Marx Brothers features The Cocoanuts(1929) and Animal Crackers(1930) included quality bellhop scenes. Even Donald Duck tried his hand at bellhopping in his 1942 short Bellboy Donald. Jerry Lewis reset the bar in 1960 with his feature film The Bellboy. Search your favorite comic actor and bellhop and see what you find. One of my favorite contemporary Bellhop scenes occured in the finale of the 4th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled "Opening Night" where the bellhop is taking the notoriously paranoid and thrifty Larry David up to his room and trying to coax a tip out of him by explaining how to use the various amenities the high end hotel has to offer including how to use the room key, how to turn on the television and how to use the shower.   

Here is my Grandfather doing a bellhop routine at a Vaudeville show in Detroit Michigan circa 1915.   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellhop

Continuous Vaudeville

The Vaudeville Era was a quirky period of America's history. For many it was their big chance to break into the new and rapidly emerging entertainment industry. Several of the great performers from  Hollywood's Golden Age cut their teeth on the Vaudeville stage. Shortly before the turn of the century, Vaudeville Theaters started popping up all over the United States. Circuits or chains of inter-state Theaters owned by an individual or group were formed to insure both the maximum exposure of the entertainers and that they played only the venues that were owned by the individual/group they were under contract with. The performers traveled the Circuits by train, sometimes playing a venue for only a single day then moving on to the next Theater in the chain. The managers of these Theaters were a shifty but resourceful bunch. They answered directly to the owners and were under constant pressure to keep revenues increasing. Sometimes to realize these financial expectations they were forced to develop new marketing schemes designed to increase profitability. Out of this came ideas like starting the shows in the morning and running them consecutively deep into the night, a practice that became known as "Continuous Vaudeville." The managers designed the shows to bring an audience in, keep them entertained for a couple of hours and then move them out of there. What emerged from this plan looked somewhat like a baseball lineup. Each act was given a position on the bill with a particular purpose to it. The first acts got the audience warmed up while the crowd came in and found their seats. Then came the headlining acts, which were the heart of the lineup. These were followed by the finishing acts which were arranged to help facilitate the crowd's exit from the Theater. These last acts were often so distasteful or just plain bad they would efferctively clear the hall enabling the managers to refill the vacated seats with a whole new crop of paying customers for the next show.

My Grandfather Harry and Great Aunt Juliet were both headliners and "top billers" on the Orpheum Circuit. They spent part of the year performing from Theater to Theater in the Midwestern United States eventually winding up at the end of the circuit in California.

Sheet Music

Just a strange coincidence? It's eerily similar to the title of my blog.....

Various parts of the collection from my family archive still remain unexplored. One segment that I find a bit intimidating and haven't fully delved into yet are the reams of hand written sheet music I found in an antique hand painted chest hidden under my parent's piano. Even though I can visually appreciate this collection I lack the musical skills needed to read or play it. My Grandfather Harry wrote both music and lyrics for the Vaudeville stage, Musical Revue and Broadway. Certain pieces he wrote to be performed by himself, some he wrote for his sister Juliet and others he wrote for top performers of the era. I've been starting to familiarize myself with the sheet music and lyrics but haven't made much of a dent yet. The Family Album was a piece he performed as part of a Vaudeville routine. He wrote the lyrics for this piece but not the music. When I searched the title I found this article from a periodical called the New York Clipper dated May 23, 1917 under the header Fifth Avenue Vaudeville.

Harry Delf presents a single, in which he presents songs and patter of his own writing. After a song and some talk, he introduced a series of old-time characters from the family album.This is followed by another song and some more patter. He followed each song with soft shoe dancing which ranks with the best. For an encore he rendered another song. He is a capital all 'round entertainer and fully deserved the recognition accorded him.

Getting this opportunity to learn about my family history and the relatives I never got to meet through this unexpected discovery has been a gift. An additional benefit has been derived from getting the chance to explore and exhibit the personal collection of early 20th Century media using 21st Century tools and technology. It has been both enriching and rewarding getting to learn from the knowledge and experience of the various communities I've discovered around the Web. This wasn't my goal or interest when I first started Family Archive but as I become more familiar with the material and the technology the possibilities seem open ended .

I've been thinking about my Grandfather's Sheet Music. How can I use technology to showcase his music as I use JPG's to display photos? One suggestion that came from my downstairs neighbor was to put an ad on this site for a pianist, record some of these old tunes like The Family Album and play them with each post. 

Chic Sale

This has been bugging me since it happened and I'm trying to recoup something out of it. I did the antique store equivalent of whistling when you've got cards in a Poker game or what Joe Mantegna called "cracked out of turn" or "crumbed the play" in House of Games.

Earlier in the month I was up in Portland Maine visiting some friends and getting out of the city for awhile with the kids. My friend is the Director of the Portland Art Museum so one rainy morning we went downtown for the private tour. Before going into the museum I noticed an appealing looking antique store across the street. When our tour was done we had some lunch and did some shopping at the LL Bean Outlet store. We were on our way back to the house as the weather appeared to be clearing up and I asked the kids if they would mind taking a short detour past the store and started reciting the standard issue speech about not breaking anything. Something was pulling me in there. 

I've always liked collecting things and since I learned of my family's early entertainment roots I've started collecting vintage postcards of old Vaudeville Theaters from around the country. I asked the proprietor if they had any of these postcards and he told me that they didn't but they had a few old Vaudeville photos somewhere around and he continued on with his business. After a few minutes I asked him about the photos he had mentioned and he started looking for them. With a look on his face like he was straining to remember he said to me "I think his family name is Sale. Do you know anything like that?" This is where I cracked.....My Grandfather was writing and directing talking movies right when talkies first started. A few weeks earlier I'd been reading all about them. One of the stars of his earliest 2 reel films was a Vaudeville comic named Chic Sale. I just couldn't contain myself. I said to him "Sure I know a guy named Chic Sale" and  started spouting off every last detail I could remember with such relish and confidence that a huge smile started forming on his lips. 

He walked to the back and whispered something to his partner who looked around for a minute or so and found a few photos sitting on an old trunk covered in dust. He handed them to me and sure enough  there he was as his signature "Granpa" character in full garb with a hand written note and his name Chic Sale signed on the bottom. I tried backtracking but the damage was done. I made some stupid comment about how obscure these really were. Finally,  I asked him what he wanted for them and it was way more than I could justify spending. I tried bargaining but he had played his hand well. I asked him if I could buy one but he told me he couldn't break up the set. My only move for now was to walk and try something else but he had me. He gave me his card and told me to think about it.

Now 2-3 weeks have gone by and I'm still thinking about them. Lesson Learned!

Old Things

I've always been attracted to old things. There's something innately valuable about them.  They trigger a pleasure center by disrupting the context of the present world while providing insights into the future. Some people refer to this as history others might think its a form of escapism, still others call it nostalgia,  however you want to tag it, I'm drawn to it. Other than as decorations  what can you do with old things? How do you use them? learn from them? What are the factors that make  material  items evolve into new forms and make their predecessor old? Better technology. Is technology always better?  How is a passion for old things compatible with the current technological revolution and 2.0 world?  

I'm also intrigued and always pulled in by family stories and dynamics. People preserve their histories and legacies differently; heirlooms, lore, photographs, etc. But they're almost always handed down by way of the family. Sometimes they're simply given over by a parent or relative other times they can be discovered through  less traditional or expected paths.

These are my first thoughts and queries as I enter the blogging arena. A few years ago, I stumbled on a remarkable collection of personal family history  at the top of a closet in my parent's apartment. Some of my findings are over a century old and covered several different types of media. Since then I've immersed myself in this discovery and  figuring out how to "handle it"; to use the resources available to me to learn about, catalog, preserve, write about and ultimately pass it on to my kids and their families. 

In this space I hope to share the knowledge and insights I gained through this experience and hopefully get others to share their interesting family stories, discoveries and archives with me.