44. Holiday Show - 2022

COPYRIGHT 2022 Peter Schmitz - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

[AITH OPENING THEME]

Hello Everyone! Chris and I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season, as the year 2022 draws to a close. We’re taking a brief break from our season “Drama is Conflict” just to bring you some short stories and vignettes from Philadelphia theater history - these are all small stories that I’ve written and shared over social media recently, and I thought I would bundle them together, as it were, and just share them with you. They are all dated somewhere between December and January in the year - but all from very different eras. So I’ll read them one by one, Chris will add a little celebratory music in between, and then we’ll all get ready to warm up our eggnog and welcome in the New Year of 2023.

Okay, here we go.

[MUSIC: “Wasn’t That a Mighty Day?”]

December 2000: The Freedom Theatre's adaptation of Langston Hughes' Black Nativity had returned to the company's newly renovated home, The John E. Allen Theatre, on North Broad Street. [01:23 - MUSIC OUT]

Originally staged in 1994 by director Ozzie Jones and choreographer Patricia Scott Hobbs, the show had sold out its run and won multiple Barrymore Awards.  The exuberant production was performed in the small 125-seat space on the lower level of the company's home. (This was the annex that had been added to the former Edwin Forrest mansion, during the period it had been occupied by the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.)

By 1995, construction had begun on an ambitious new theater to house the company. This had been a long-held dream of Freedom Theatre's founder John E. Allen, who had died in 1992. Unfortunately, construction and funding issues that arose while shoring up the crumbling 19th century exterior of the building kept the project from being completed swiftly.

For two years, Artistic Director Walter Dallas staged Black Nativity at the Arts Bank on South Broad Street, and then for two more years it moved to the even larger Zellerbach Theatre in West Philadelphia. The show always attracted audiences and much favorable critical attention. But in 1999 the company, beset by funding issues, had not staged the show at all.

So Black Nativity's return to North Broad Street in December of 2000 was an especially celebratory occasion. Then, in 2001, newly revised and updated by director Clinton Turner Davis, the show added contemporary songs into the first act, which recounted the story of the birth of Christ from an Afrocentric perspective, including the Nigerian song "Ah Way Your Ahari". Once again Patricia Scott Hobbs set all the dances, utilizing the talents of her many students from the Freedom Theatre's school.

In the second act, the scene shifted to a modern street setting, with the company dressed mostly in white. Bryan Clark sang "A Mighty Long Way", Antwine Davis soloed in "My Soul  Has Been Anchored in the Lord", and Barbara Mills' "God Has Been So Good" reportedly shook the rafters of the new Freedom Theatre home.

 December 25th, Christmas Day, 1941. The actress Blanche Bates dies at her home in San Francisco.

In the Philadelphia newspapers the next day, her long career as a stage and film actress is little noted - her former marriage to George Creel, the journalist and head of President Wilson's infamous ‘Committee on Public Information’ during World War One, is only briefly mentioned.

Instead Blanche Bates’ obituary writer in the Inquirer recalled an incident that took place in April of 1923, when the actress was playing in one of her final roles in The Changeling at the old Broad Street Theatre. Bates was doing a scene - when a small fire broke out backstage . . .and now I’ll read from the obituary’s text:

"A wisp of smoke, hardly noticeable, eddied over the orchestra pit from behind the backdrops. There was the sudden cry of 'Fire' and the audience, in panic, rose to make for the exits."

"Rising was as far as they got, for the middle-aged actress whose scene was thus interrupted, dropped her lines, strode to the footlights, and took command of the situation."

" 'There's no fire here!' she shouted. 'And if there were, what the hell would you do about it?' "

"Startled by her vigorous language, the audience halted its exit march, saw no more smoke, looked sheepish, and sat down again. The fire meanwhile had been extinguished."

"That,” concluded the writer, “Is how Philadelphians best remember Blanche Bates, one of the great old troupers of the theatre's golden age."

[Transition MUSIC: “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”]

 December 27, 1973: For the Holiday Season, Philadelphians could go to the Locust Street Theatre, just north of the Academy of Music, and see the adult film star Linda Lovelace, famous for her performance in Deep Throat, in a  bedroom farce entitled Pajama Tops, adapted from the original French play Moumou by Jean de Letraz.

In his review, Philadelphia Inquirer critic William Collins was not very kind to the production, referring to the show as an “old time stock production” and only praising the efforts of the actor William Browder, who was playing a stereotypical gay character. Collins also referenced the movie which made the star of the show famous, and obviously resented that his job required him to be present at the performance at all. His review seemed to seal the fate of the production, and this particular Pajama Tops was never seen anywhere else.

To be fair, the final week of the year 1973 was not a high point in the history of the performing arts in the city of Philadelphia. True, you could go to see Romeo & Juliet at the Walnut Street Theatre that week, performed by a touring group of British actors just out of university. And if you were in town that week I would have personally recommended seeing Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, who were doing a Noel Coward play around the corner from the Locust over at the Shubert Theatre. But there was almost no locally produced theater at all that year.

To keep you in the holiday spirit, there was The Pennsylvania Ballet's annual Nutcracker at the Academy. Or The Ice Capades at the Civic Center. But looking at the film listings from the Philadelphia Inquirer from that year, if you wanted to see an actual adult movie, including Linda Lovelace, there were plenty of options around town.

Later in life, Linda Boreman, whose professional name was "Linda Lovelace", revealed that she had been abused, beaten, and forced into the film career that had made her infamous. She became an anti-porn crusader, but otherwise never went back on the stage.

[TRANSITION MUSIC “She’s Gotta Have It” CROSSFADE TO Boccherini Minuet. ]

 December 31, 1900: Two of the greatest actors of the French stage, Sarah Bernhardt and Benoît-Constant Coquelin, performed at the Chestnut Street Opera House in Philadelphia, as part of their ongoing tour of the United States. Bernhardt had incurred a massive personal debt opening up a huge theater in Paris, and was hoping to make up the deficit on an extended series of performances in American cities and then London.

The play was Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon (or “The Eaglet”), a six-act verse drama about the son of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (aka Napoleon II, aka 'le Duc de Reichstadt').

Bernhardt, who was 56 years old in 1900, played the role of the young man. The Duke's stage mother, Marie-Louise of Austria, was played by Maria Legault, an actress 14 years younger than Mme. Bernhardt. In the play the Duke is confined within a palace by his unloving mother, and the drama ends with a memorable death scene in which Bernhardt expired, as one Philadelpia critic wrote, "as dying angels would die if they were allowed to."

Rostand, fresh off the massive success of his play Cyrano de Bergerac, in which Coquelin had played the title character, had written L'Aiglon particularly for Bernhardt, who added it to her touring repertoire, along with Jean d’Arc, Hamlet and Phedre. Coquelin played the supporting role of the courtier, Flambeau. (On other nights she would play Roxanne to his Cyrano, and when she performed Hamlet, he would play the comic role of the Gravedigger.)

A critic for the Philadelphia Times, then one of the most popular newspapers in the city, was ecstatic over the famous duo's performances in L'Aiglon, and declared it even better than Cyrano. However, he sadly noted that the New Year’s Eve show the evening before had not been filled to capacity:

"The most charitable [reason for it] is to suppose that the crowds in the street were of such a size and violence as to render theatre-going an unlovely manner of spending an evening by folk of the kind to whom such an artistic appeal as that made by Bernhardt, Coquelin, and Rostand would be likely to appeal. The most popular reason seems to be that Philadelphians do not love the theatre, even its best and grandest estate, sufficiently to pay the tribute in material money demanded by the purveyors." (It should also perhaps be noted that the play was done entirely in French. And it was New Year’s Eve and the next day was the Mummers Parade, so people were resting up.)

However, noted the reviewer for the Times: "Those who were in attendance were privileged to witness a performance of poetic drama that has not been surpassed in quality, so far as American theatre is concerned, within the memory of any living being. . . . There will be nobody to cavill because of the form or manner of L'Aiglon. It is a drama that will endure . . . the play will take its place on the library shelves with our Shakespeare, with our Moliere, and with our Hugo."

[TRANSITION MUSIC: La Marseillaise ]

January 2nd, 1882: Mr. and Mrs. McKee Rankin and their touring combination of players returned to The Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia with the play ‘49 - a sensational and sentimental melodrama involving a heavily-bearded Western frontiersman and his wife during the Gold Rush.

The newly written '49 had a rather chaotic creation process - it was hastily thrown together after Rankin's production of the play William and Susan had failed when theaters closed in the fall of 1881 in mourning for the assassinated President Garfield. '49 had a number of authors, and like most melodramas of the day its plot was much too complex to be briefly stated. Basically it involved mistaken identity, a lost heiress to the Gold Rush fortune of an old miner, and a gamine character named "Carrots". There were run-ins with Indians, Mormons, and a gang of vigilantes. Rankin, playing the old miner and disguising his leading man good looks under a huge gray beard, was highly praised in the play. One critic said that he "has made the artistic hit of his career."

McKee Rankin was a Canadian actor who as a young man had spent a good deal of the 1860s in Philadelphia (not being an American citizen he wasn't subject to the Civil War draft). He was returning to a well-known base of operations. Because from 1865 to 1866 he was the young leading man in the stock company at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theatre, which he regarded as the place where he really got his training and his education as an actor. In 1869 Rankin had married the Philadelphia-born actress Kitty Blanchard, and now a leading man in his own right, McKee Rankin was touring the nation with '49, though sometimes playing to half-empty houses. Philadelphia, however, proved a great home for the melodrama, and it did great business over the holiday season. Mrs. Drew was always glad to be his host, because his shows were such good box office.

Now interestingly, Rankin's involvement with Mrs. Drew’s family would have an even longer and more tangled history. Two of his three daughters would marry into the Drew family. Gladys Rankin, his eldest child with Kitty Blanchard, would marry Mrs. Drew’s youngest son Sidney Drew and Doris Rankin, his child of an extra-marital affair, would marry her grandson Lionel Barrymore. To complicate matters even further, Rankin's other daughter Phyllis married into the family of the well-known actor E.L. Davenport. Over the years, all of the various offspring of all  these showbiz families: the Drews, Barrymores, Rankins and Davenports stayed in some form of show business, eventually all moving into motion pictures and television. Indeed if the name "Rankin" appears to ring a bell for you, it's probably because of his grandson Arthur Rankin, of Rankin-Bass Productions, who produced the Christmas specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town. All the Rankins always knew how to do good business over the Holidays.

MUSIC - “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”]

January 7, 1901: Ethel Barrymore, aged 21, made her debut as a star actress on the Walnut Street Theatre stage in the Clyde Fitch comedy Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. However, the evening did not go well.

It should have. She ought to have felt right at home. After all, the Walnut was where her grandmother, Louisa Lane Drew, had made her own debut (at the age of only eight) as the little Duke of York in Richard III, starring Junius Brutus Booth. Her late mother Georgiana Barrymore had been a popular actress in the city, as had her father, the handsome and disreputable Maurice Barrymore. Ethel Barrymore had been born in Philadelphia, and had been educated at the Notre Dame Convent in the city. Her uncle John Drew made frequent appearances on Philadelphia stages, bringing his latest Broadway hits down to the Chestnut Street Theatre annually. And another uncle, Sidney Drew, was a well-known comic actor, as well as being a well-known denizen of the city's pool halls.

But by 1901, Ethel, the newest member of the Drew-Barrymore clan, had a few years of stage experience herself. After a start as an understudy in John Drew's company in New York, she had gone to London in 1897 with the actor William Gillette. She had impressed London society, and had been ardently wooed by a young Winston Churchill.

Nevertheless, Ethel Barrymore was still by nature quite shy - and like her brothers Lionel and John, she had rather resisted joining the family acting profession at all. But the producer Charles Frohman, knowing Ethel's distinguished family history (and the commercial possibilities thereof), took her under his wing, and carefully prepared her for American stardom in Captain Jinks. Playwright Clyde Fitch already had two hit plays running on Broadway, after all, this was a sure thing, Frohman calculated.

In the play Captain Jinks Barrymore was to portray "Madame Trentoni" a European opera star of the 1870s who is romanced by a British cavalry officer, and bets his friends he can win Madame Trentoni’s affections. What begins as a cynical ploy, of course, ends up developing into true love over the course of the play.

By all accounts, however, on opening night at the Walnut Ethel was terrified. 

[SFX - 18:42 - Audience pre-show conversation noise, UNDER] Oddly, as she stood in the wings, she demanded five dollars advance money from the Walnut’s stage manager, saying she hadn't been paid yet and she wanted some cash in her pocket. The stage manager handed her fifty dollars, and tried to reassure her by giving her a peek through the curtain at the packed house. [19:00 - SFX - Curtain up applause, then SFX OUT] But evidently this only made things worse, and when the action of the play began she could barely be heard beyond the footlights. An encouraging Philadelphia voice called out from the balcony: "Speak up, Ethel! All the Drews are good actors!"  [19:16 - SFX - Audience laughter ] And Ethel rallied a bit from that point on, and one critic proclaimed her "a charming young girl - just coquettish enough at times to elicit greater tribute." But at the final curtain call, when Clyde Fitch also came before the curtains, and called on her to say a few words to the crowd, poor Ethel could only barely squeak "I thank you all very much," before running from the stage back to her dressing room in embarrassment.

But, happily, over the course of the two week run, Ethel Barrymore's confidence slowly began to grow. By the time the play reached New York, she was learning how to command the stage, and Captain Jinks became a smash hit on Broadway, running for a straight six months. Ethel regularly trotted out "Captain Jinks" for years afterwards. And whenever she played Philadelphia in any at all play from then on, she learned to always give the same curtain speech on opening nights. Gazing to the balcony, she would proclaim: "It's good to be home!, which always received an enthusiastic round of Philadelphia applause.

[ MUSIC “Captain Jinks”]

And finally, one last story .  . . January 12, 1977: The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society played the tiny 50-seat black box performance space called "Theater Five" on the fifth floor annex of the Walnut Street Theatre. This was a step up for the group, as they recently had been doing their act on the streets, and in Head House Square, and in a shed at Temple Music Festival. The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society would also play middle schools and Renaissance Fairs when necessary.

The trio of Penn Jillette, Weir Chrisemer, and Teller (no first name) put on "an artful variety show," according to Inquirer critic William Collins. They were highly skilled and very funny, although he cautioned their humor occasionally took on "an undergraduate turn."

[MUSIC UNDER - “Sabre Dance”]

Jillette, taking on a loudmouth aggressor clown role, juggled knives in the tiny space and told the nervous audience "I don't want to be here any more than you do." Crissemer, in a formal black suit, was the musician and straight man, and played Khatchataurian's Sabre Dance while Jillette wielded a set of toilet plungers like swords. Teller, for his part, was always silent, doing expert magic tricks with a poetic grace.

The act was so successful that the trio would return multiple times to the Theater Five space. Once they booked it in an emergency when someone stole all their music equipment from their house - a ramshackle mansion in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Penn Jillette and (Raymond Joseph) Teller would later become the famous duo of "Penn & Teller". Teller, who was born and raised in Philadelphia and attended Philly's Central High School and then Amherst College, was working as a high-school Latin teacher while also performing with the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. Penn and Teller’s Off-Broadway show, which became a Broadway show, which became a movie and Las Vegas show, was all in the future. But back in 1977, you could have seen their show for five bucks. Support young and brash local artists, folks. You never know where they're going.

[MUSIC OUT - CROSSFADE  “JOY TO THE WORLD!” NOTE: PERFORMANCE COPYRIGHT CHRISTOPHER MARK COLUCCI ]

And I hope that you, all of you, during this holiday season, will take in a show. Go to the theater, wherever in the world you are right now - in Philadelphia, or anywhere else. Support young artists, support mature artists, bring some unexpected joy into your life. Joy to the World, everyone. We can all use more of it. 

Speaking of the world, a special thank you to my friends and listeners who download and listen to this show all over the world: Hello to Frankfurt am Main, in Hesse Germany. Hello to my English friends in Sheffield and Slough, Walthamstow and Windsor. Greetings to Toronto and Vancouver in Canada and to Melbourne Australia. Konichiwa to Tokyo!  And in this country: Hello to Arlington Virginia, Gainesville Florida, and Madison Wisconsin. Hello Hopewell New Jersey, Marietta Georgia, Brooklyn New York, and Greensburg PA. And closer to home, greetings to nearby friends in Ambler, and Ardmore, Narberth and Lansdale. And to all my friends and colleagues in the theater community of Philadelphia, a special Happy and healthy New Year to you.

I’m Peter Schmitz, and our theme music and sound engineering, as always, are by Christopher Mark Colucci (that’s Chris on the guitar playing for us right now, by the way!). Please check out our social media feeds on Facebook and Instagram, and maybe consider sending a little love and financial support our way on Patreon (the links are in the show notes), a lovely holiday gift, where there are all sorts of extra benefits waiting for you, if you do. Please visit our website www.aithpodcast.com for additional images and blog posts, and information and to listen to earlier episodes, if you need to, and then - here’s the thing - like us and subscribe to our feed on whatever podcasting platform you are using right now. Then leave a review! That would be so helpful, and that would be the most wonderful gift you could possibly give us. There are many worthy causes that want your money right about now, but if I could just ask you for a moment of your time. Follow the Reviews link on our website, it will only take a moment, and you will be doing us a great favor. [25:55 - MUSIC OUT]

Most of all, please join us again [AITH END THEME]