America 1870-1900 - ENTERTAINMENT: Standing Room Only and The Greatest Showman on Earth

The penultimate chapter! A double spread of a Broadway streetcar with tons of advertisements for plays, oats and catsup!

Standing Room Only

After the Civil War, we got soft. Going from 12 hour workdays to 10 hour workdays. Half a day on Saturday - what is this sloth?? All of a sudden there was a little more coin rattling around and people wanted to be amused. 

Baseball broke the seal with the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings going on tour to defeat amateur clubs . In 1888 Mike “King” Kelly, the catcher for the Cubbies went to the White House and made fun of Grover Cleveland’s soft hands. I think, like Curley in OF MICE AND MEN, he kept that hand soft for his beautiful young wife!

John Drew is mentioned as a “star” - a new concept. A hit play TOO MUCH JOHNSON stayed on Broadway for 216 performances. And that’s just too much TOO MUCH JOHNSON. Wow, that sounds dirty.

They define the most popular form of entertainment as the “variety show” with the interesting tidbit - “sometimes the choice between burlesque and vaudeville for a night’s entertainment was made when a stage manager peeked out at the audience and spied a cop.” I had always thought they were very separate entities. They also mention minstrel shows done in blackface with no indication that it was a bad thing. 

The real money was not made by performers, but by promoters. Tony Pastor, Harry Miner, B F Keith and E F Albee all made bank promoting shows. Keith and Albee started in Boston combining the Gaiety and Bijou theaters and spread their empire to 400 theaters coast to coast. 

In the section on P.T. Barnum - who TL clearly adores - it mentions “a negro woman” who Barnum billed as George Washington’s nurse. She was Joice Heth who was purchased by Barnum to display. He later repented of this and became an abolitionist. But TL mentions none of this.

I will not describe baseball or horse racing, because they still exist. But Primrose and West’s Big Minstrel Festival featuring “The Leaders of Modern Minstrelsy and the Genuine Negro Minstrels” bears some mention. The blurb beside it refers to P&W as “one of the boldest, presenting white and black performers on the same stage with equal billing.” I wonder if they were getting equal pay and equal amenities on the road. And the picture is diverse - Black men, White men, White men pretending to be Black men…

I have no interest in the circus. But the stage looks interesting. I have never heard of Ada Rehan, but apparently she was the first lady of the legitimate stage. 

And I have never heard of Henry J. Pain’s GREAT WAR SPECTACLE at Manhattan Beach - but it looks amazing!

Harry Miner’s Comedy 4 Company appears to have a pair of characters called “The Jeromes”, one of whom is either a person of color or in blackface. It is unclear which. 

There is a playbill for Lilly Clay’s Company of Ladies Only “An Adamless Eden” surely that is based on a poem by Sappho - and the 1880s version of Jackass. 

On page 266 a triple spread of “Buffalo Bill’s Western Spectacular” playbill is the precursor to the section. And also an illustration of the excesses of the time. I shan't photograph it because my regular sized photo skills are dreadful. I shudder to think what a triple spread photo would look like in my hands!

The Greatest Showman on Earth

And TL gets into it with Buffalo Bill! He hunted buffalo for railroad crews! He rode in the pony express! He fought Indians, scouted for the US Cavalry and performed for 11 seasons as a professional actor by the age of 37. So Bill was both performer AND promoter whilst Barnum was just the promoter. THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, indeed.

There is a bonkers story about Sitting Bull’s spirit going into a performing horse when he was gunned down. There is also mention of a Mrs. Phoebe Ann Butler who became Annie Oakley. Little Sure Shot is described as “a very comely young woman”. Was she? ANNIE GET YOUR GUN had me thinking otherwise. 

SO the entertainment section ends with a pretty girl and a horse possessed by a great leader of a disenfranchised population. And entertainment has pretty much remained thus. 

All quotes and photographs are from TL unless otherwise noted.

Ada Rehan picture - Burr Publishing Co. - The Burr McIntosh Monthly August, 1908 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Rehan#/media/File:Ada_Rehan_2.jpg

Bijou Theater picture - https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/715137435/boston-bijou-theatre-digital-download-a

Buffalo Bill poster - https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/circus-poster.html

Joice Heth poster - https://www.bethelhistoricalsociety.com/index-joice-heth.htm

Phoebe Ann Butler picture - Underwood Archives/Getty Images - https://www.thoughtco.com/annie-oakley-1779790

Too Much Johnson picture - https://lokkeheiss.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/too-much-johnson-is-never-enough-orson-the-lost-film-of-orson-welles/