The Dreamland Boys Band

 

 The image is blurred, hazy,
with colors ill defined.
The picture edges are torn,
crumbling from decay.
Yet as if in a dream
silent faces stare at us
across a void of time.
Their eyes seem to plead,
"Do not forget.
Remember me."

 

 This is a story about how memory
can be preserved in any photograph
no matter how spoiled or corroded.

 

 

 

The full damaged photo shows a band of 15 boys, mostly of a preteen age, playing outdoors in front of a building. Three adults are in the picture too. A middle aged woman stands at the back, an older gentleman with a star pinned to his coat is at right, and on the left, a man wearing a bowler hat stands  holding a trombone and a conductor's baton, clearly the band's leader. The band's name is on the bass drum and along the bottom in the photographer's handwritten caption.

Dreamland . Boys . Band . Redding . Cal

The location appears to be the entrance to a cinema theater as painted atop an arched double doorway is Dreamland, Continuous Performance / Motion Pictures with two playbills on either side. Though this much abused postcard was never mailed, the caption alone made it easy to find the group in newspaper archives.

 

 

Redding CA Courier Free Press
23 March 1912

 

They were first organized in March 1912 by the City Marshal of Redding, Henry Seng, the man standing right. He was a German-American having immigrated to America in 1882. He and his wife had six children, all born in Oklahoma. One son, Marvin, is playing cornet in this photo.

 

The director was Joseph Martin, a professional musician and music teacher in Redding. According to a nostalgic profile piece published in January 1983 by the Redding Record-Searchlight, Hestan Wright, a former member of the Dreamland Boys' Band, recalled that Joe Martin was a "paroled convict who washed dishes at the Lorenz Hotel."

 

"He could play any instrument—he was a marvelous teacher," said Wright, who played the trombone. "We had our own band hall on Pine Street. We played all over, including  Castella, Tehama, Chico, and Red Bluff. we used to have street dances in Redding."

Beginning in 1912, Joe Martin took out a regular classified ad offering music lessons on all brass, wind, and string instruments. I suspect with such talent he no longer needed to wash dishes, and it seems likely he played in the Dreamland's theater orchestra which accompanied the silent movies and vaudeville acts. By September 1912, he also became the leader of the Redding Cornet Band too.

 

 

The owner of the theater was Mrs. Jane Olney, standing at the back and it was she who sponsored the boys band and purchased their instruments. Born in Wisconsin in 1868, she and her Irish parents moved to northern California in the 1880s where she married A. H. Olney a Redding businessman. When he died in 1900, Jane Olney, now a widow, began using her husband's estate to invest in local property and businesses. In 1910 she secured full ownership of two Redding theaters, the Majestic and the Dreamland.

 

This was the first great age of motion pictures, and though they were silent, there was always music. Every day the Dreamland offered evening and matinee shows with two or three movies accompanied by a small "orchestra" of around five or six musicians. The movies were generally short and during the time to change reels, live vaudeville acts like acrobats, dancers, comedians, and trick artists of all kinds filled the entertainment. The bookings of films and acts changed regularly and were announced in Redding newspapers.

 

 

Redding CA Searchlight
19 April 1912

DREAMLAND

"It's the song ye sing, and the smiles ye wear,
That's a-makin' the sun shine everywhere,"—
If you go down to "DREAMLAND" every once in a while,
Their Pictures will cause you to laugh, cry and smile;
It is a place for the ladies, the children and men,
You'll learn more of real life there, than can be told with the pen,
You will see foreign lands which you know only by name,
You will see only clean pictures, which no one can blame.

Dreamland Theatre
Latest Photo Plays and Vaudeville
Mrs. Jane Olney

 

 

 

 

In the photo there are two playbills on the walls outside the theater entrance. One title reads: "A Sister's Love". and the other has only "...To Mend" as it is partly hidden by Joe Martin's hat. The first title, A Sister's Love, was a short melodrama about two sisters, who on the death of their mother, the eldest makes a sacred promise to care for the younger. This causes her to sacrifice the love of her sweetheart who refuses to assume responsibility for the extra sister's care. Separation and heartbreak ensues. 

 

The film was released on 8 February 1912 by the prolific director, D. W. Griffith, who produced 71 films in 1912 which was less than half what he did in 1909 when he made 149. He is best remembered for The Birth of a Nation, his controversial epic movie from 1915 that tells the story of two families during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. The Griffith's racist depiction of African-Americans, white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan contributed to a rise of segregation and violent racism in America during the 1920s.

 

Long Beach CA Daily Telegram
24 February 1912

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second title was a bit more challenging to find the missing words, but Umbrellas to Mend, a short Vitagraph comedy starring comic actor John Bunny fits very neatly. Like A Sister's Love it was also released in early 1912 and a theater in Long Beach, California put both films on the bill in February 1912. Since film studios were churning out new movies every week, neither film ran for very long. Comedies in particular had a short shelf life, so I believe the films coincidental run together likely date the photo of the Dreamland Boy's Band to around the end of March 1912 when the band was first formed.

 

 

 - - -

 

 

 

The population of Redding, California in 1910 was just 3,572 citizens yet in the surrounding county, there were several gold and cooper mines and other industries that put the region's population over 18,900. The town could boast of two newspapers in which Mrs. Olney managed to get regular notices about her theater billings every week. The block where the Dreamland theater was located had numerous hotels, restaurants, barber shops, gaming halls, and over 15 saloons.  The train depot was nearby and Mrs. Olney's other smaller theater, The Majestic, was two blocks away.  So Redding's entertainment district enjoyed more success than the town's population might suggest. Even so Mrs. Olney was smart to use the publicity about her Dreamland Boys' Band to generate ticket sales.

 Nearly 40 years later the band was still fondly remembered in Redding.

  

Shasta CA Courier
15 June 1950

  

In June 1950 the Shasta, California Courier published a special page of historic photos honoring  Shasta County's early pioneers. It included this same photo of the Dreamland Boys Band but with the valuable addition of a list of names, courtesy of Mrs. G. F. Graves.  "In the group are (back row) Mrs. Jane Olney, Clarence Ifincen, Earl Richardson, Earl Hersinger, Marion, Rolison; (front row) Joe Martin, leader, Max Polse, Melvin Geis, Adolph Bystle, George Graves,  Cecil Smith, Marvin Seng, Harvey Gilzezan, Tom Gardner, and City Marshal Henry Seng (with badge)."

 

 

 

 

Redding CA Courier Free Press
18 October 1912

 

 

 

 

 

After only a few months, Joe Martin had taught the boys' band enough music to schedule concerts at the Dreamland. Like most towns in America, Redding already had a regular brass band made up of adult men that had been around since 1885. This ban's popularity even sparked a spinoff boys' "cadet band" in 1899, but that group folded years before 1912.

 

I've written many stories about photos of boys' bands in my collection, and most follow the same pattern. Though it resembles the plot to Meredith Willson's The Music Man it was more often the result of a community's collective love of music. Usually a dedicated "professor" teaches boys the rudiments of music on an assortment of brass and reed instruments. The townsfolk, i.e. parents, are delighted with the discipline and culture that this instills in the boys, and soon their boys' brass band is touring the region acting as musical ambassadors for the town.

 

In the following year enthusiasm for the Dreamland Boys' Band increased and by May 1913 there was a campaign to buy the boys new uniforms. The band's membership increased and Mrs. Olney found patrons to fund travel expenses that took the band to other parts of the county and even to Sacramento, the state capital. 

 

 

 

 

- - -

 

  

Redding CA Searchlight
24 October 1914

 

Two years later in October 1914 a photo of the Dreamland Boys' Band was printed to advertise their next concert. There are now 26 musicians neatly arranged in front of the Dreamland archway all wearing stylish military-style band uniforms. According to another report the color was blue with gold trim. Joe Martin stands center in front of the bass drum and holding a fox terrier mascot. The feature film posted on the side wall is a 1913 Italian film, Anthony and Cleopatra. Directed by Enrico Guazzoni it was originally an 11 reel black and white silent movie but the U.S. release was shortened to 8 reels. It's curious that early cinemas like the Dreamland advertised big blockbuster films not by number of reels but by film length. A major motion picture might run with 3,500 feet or 4,000 feet of film which translated to about 45 minutes of playing time.

 

My story might have stopped here with this last image, but there was something else in this grainy newspaper photo that was more exotic than an Italian film poster. Over on the left is a boy trombonist who stands out because his complexion is not the same as the other boys. His presence is remarkable to see in any musical ensemble of this era when American society still suffered from pervasive racial segregation and discrimination. It took decades of civil rights protest and struggle to achieve this kind of public integration of children. This photo might match an image of a school band from 1962 but not from 1912. My ghostly postcard now had a new question to ask.

How did this kid get to play in the Dreamland Boys' Band?  

And then I found him in another photo.

 

Dreamland Boys Band, Redding, California, circa 1913-15
Source: IBEW.org.uk

This next image of the Dreamland Boys Band comes from the vast photo archives of the Internet Bandsman's Everything Within, or IBEW.org.uk. Like my postcard this photo is conveniently captioned and has the band's name on the bass drum. Here the boys are set up for a concert, presumably on the Dreamland Theatre stage, which can barely contain the two dozen musicians. Behind them is a painted backdrop of some grand house or castle. Their leader, Joe Martin, stands at the left. And just in the center of the back row is a dark face with a trombone, surely the same young black trombonist in the previous newspaper photo.

Even now in the 21st century the history of racism in America is a subject that remains challenging to discuss. As I have learned from many years collecting antique photographs of musicians and musical groups, a photograph of black musicians playing together with white musicians is a very rare thing to find. A few that I have in my collection have been featured in previous stories. Most recently in  The Star Ball Bearing Axle Band from April 2020;  The Springfield Technical High School Orchestra from May 2013; and in one of my first stories from May 2010, Schneider's 1908 High School Band which features a postcard with a young black trombonist. This same progressive concept of inclusion seems to be part of the Dreamland Boys' Band story. But this kid is not even a blur in the photo I own. He is literally an anonymous shadow in a news clipping. It seemed very unlikely that I could identify him and probably impossible to learn how he became part of the band.

Or so I thought.

There are very few internet references to the Dreamland Theatre in Redding California, much less its boys' band. But as I kept hunting this week I discovered another blog that actually answered my question on how a young African-American boy is pictured in this band, at a time when all of America, even in California, was rigidly segregated and rarely integrated. The blogger's name is Michael Kuker, and in his blog he writes about little-known history of Shasta County. In this post from 1 March 2019 he featured Jane Olney and the story of her theaters in Redding. 

 

He finished with an account he found in the Western Outlook, an African-American weekly newspaper in San Francisco, made by one of its journalists who went on a tour of African-American communities in northern California in the fall of 1915. While visiting Redding, the writer noticed a boy playing trombone in a local boys' band.

San Francisco Western Outlook
16 October 1915

One thing that pleased us very much while waiting for our train we stepped around to the theater where the boys' band plays in front three times a week, and to our surprise saw Adolph Norman, about 12 years of age, playing a slide trombone. On inquiry we learned that some of the boys objected at first, but the lady who owns the theater promptly informed them that Adolph was going to play if he played alone, so they could suit themselves about playing. This was a year ago, and they are all playing yet. He is a sight reader, a natural musician and the best of the bunch.  Merit will tell.

This was the key to solving my puzzle. In the previous paragraph the editor of the Western Outlook, described staying at the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Norman while visiting Redding. I easily found them in the 1910 census. James Norman, age 25, worked as a porter at a Redding barber shop. His wife was Mand, age 26, and they had been married only 5 months. Their only child was Adolph E. Brown, step-son, who was then only 9 years old. So it's understandable how the writer could mistake Adolph's surname. But he was right about the boy's talent. Even at age 12, Adolph Brown was getting feature billing at the Dreamland.

 

Redding CA Courier Free Press
21 November 1913

 

Using just his name, I found Adolph Brown linked to many reports in the Redding newspapers.It was surprising how many times this young boy got his name in the papers. Most notably he was connected to the Dreamland theater, as it was clear Mrs. Jane Olney was his secret patron. Though we can't know her real motivation the account of her defense of Adolph's participation in the band rings true because it came firsthand from an African-American newsman. 

 

Besides the slide trombone, Adolph also sang and performed solos. One piece that he played was "Alexander's Ragtime Band" the Tin Pan Alley song by American composer Irving Berlin that was released in 1911. This quaisi-march has a minstrel show style that quickly captured the attention of the public when it was first published, selling over two million copies by 1912, not to mention that several phonograph recordings of the song also became best sellers too. Its catchy melody is also so simple than it could be played by any school boy as accomplished as Adolph. Perhaps he also sang it too.

 

However we should remember that this was only 1912, and the word "jazz" was not yet a common musical term. Most American would not hear New Orleans style syncopated bands until 1918, so it would be wrong to think Adolph was playing anything other than popular sentimental songs and traditional dance tunes.

.

 

  

Redding CA Courier Free Press
22 April 1914

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In April 1914 the Dreamland Boys' Band gave a concert that was reviewed by the Redding Courier Free Press. There was a full house and the band now number 31 boys. The program included a cornet solo by Harvey Gilzean; a clarinet duet with Max Polse and Manuel Brass with piano accompaniment; and "Adolph Brown, the pride of the Dreamland band, gave a trombone solo, with band accompaniment, which brought down the house. Mrs. Jane Olney, owner of the theater, and Joe Martin, instructor of the band, are to be congratulated on the development and showing of such an aggregation of youthful musicians."

- - -

 

A year later the Norman family hosted the journalist from the Western Outlook. The Dreamland Boys' Band got its picture in the paper. Mrs. Olney's determination to treat all her boys fairly and offer them an equal chance seemed to be paying off with success for the band. 

Then on 25 September 1916 tragic news reached Redding.
Adolph Brown had died, a victim of the great scourge tuberculosis.

 

Redding CA Courier Free Press
25 September 1916

When he became ill a few weeks earlier, Adolph was taken by his mother to Santa Cruz, California on the Pacific coast below San Jose, about 300 mile south of Redding. Years before, his father, Walter Brown, had died of the same disease. Adolph's obituary in the Redding Courier Free Press described him as "one of the most  talented trombone players in Northern California. He was a member of the Redding band and an active member of the Dreamland band from the time of its organization several years ago." For some reason Adolph's obituaries gave his age as 14 making his birth year as 1902, while the 1910 census record claimed 1901. I think the census taker was correct, as newspapers editors were likely to knock off a year so to add a degree of sympathy for a young person's untimely death.

 

Such sad news was all too common in past times when medical science gave doctors few diagnostic tools or effective treatments for virulent diseases like tuberculosis. The body of Adolph Edward Brown was laid to rest at the Redding cemetery a few days later. The Dreamland Boys' Band and the Redding Band combined to lead the funeral procession. The principal of the  Redding grammar school allowed the entire eighth grade class to attend the service. A female choir from the Redding "colored church" sang appropriate hymns. A week later the newspaper published a note from Mr. and Mrs. James Norman thanking the Dreamland band, Adolph's teachers, his classmates and his many friends for their kind sympathy.

 

Though he is not pictured in my tattered old postcard of the Dreamland Boy's Band, I think the memory of Adolph Brown is preserved in the hidden history behind this image. I decided to include him in my story, not so much for the tragedy of his unfulfilled life, but because the acceptance of his youthful friendships and musical talent made Redding, however briefly, the hopeful exception to an era filled with hate. That deserves remembering.  

  

 

Redding CA Record-Searchlight
7 February 1999

 

After Adolph's death, the Dreamland Boys' Band seems to have drifted apart. I could not find any concerts reported in Redding's newspapers after December 1916. Of course Redding still had music but the musical ensembles were changing with the turbulent times brought by the War in Europe.

 

In the fall of 1917, Joe Martin advertised for more students on all instruments to replace the musicians who were leaving for college or enlisting in the army. He was considering training a second younger band to help fill the vacancies, a system currently used by all school bands, but nothing came of it. In June 1920 Martin announced that he was leaving Redding for a music teaching position in Dunsmuir, about 55 miles north of Redding. He regretted that the "World war had nearly broke up the organization [the Redding bands] because of the loss of many of the players to army service." A few months later in December 1920 it was reported that Joe Martin, age 36, of Dunsmuir he had married Miss Mae Woodrum, 35, of Redding. Joe was employed at the Southern Pacific machine shops in Dunsmuir.

 

Mrs. Olney tried to sell the Dreamland theater in June 1918, but the deal fell through. Poor health forced her leave Redding. The following summer in July 1919 the Houston Undertaking company signed a five year lease on the building formerly occupied by the Dreamland theater and Mike Twomey's saloon. Their plan was to convert the theater into a chapel, undertaking room, storeroom and morgue. A 1999 reprint of the Dreamland band's photo said the theater burned down in 1924. Today the block where the Dreamland theater once stood is a pedestrian shopping mall.

 

In 1931, Jane Olney returned to Redding in very poor health to seek care at her sister's home on Pine Street. She died there on 31 December 1931, just two weeks short of her 64th birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where there may be bad boys
but never any bad photos.

Dancing Violinists

 

 Playing the fiddle
is a very physical activity.
With a nimble movement of the bow
rasping over the strings
a violinist transform a hollow wooden box
into a brilliant musical instrument.

 

 

 

 

The fiddler's arm deftly guides
the bow across the violin's strings
imparting the rhythm of the music.

Their body moves in time
contorting hands and arms
to make the instrument sing.
It's sound in motion.

And sometimes a skillful player
can take fiddling to extremes
and send the music's beat
from their hands to their feet.

 

 

The first photo is of a young woman playing the violin while gracefully balancing on one foot. Her back is gently arched as her other leg bends backward. She's dressed in a kind of child's play suit that reveals quite a bit of her shapely legs. She's obviously a performer who knows when the spotlight is on as she directs her gaze to the upper balcony seats. 

 

This 8 x 10 inch promotional photo was taken by Bloom of Chicago. We've met their work before in my story from March 2019, All That Jazz.  The Bloom Photography Studio of Chicago was owned by David Hyman Bloom, along with his younger brother Samuel Bloom and sister Beatrice Bloom. They operated a studio in central Chicago from about 1910 to 1935 with a specialty in taking stylish photos of entertainers who worked in the nearby theater district. A quality photograph was a priceless key to success for any vaudeville artist to send to agents and theater managers. 

 

This young musician is identified on the back of the photo as Hilda Major, Dancing Violinist, and she was represented by the Ned Hasting Bureau of Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

 

 

Fortunately her unique name and occupation let me find her in the newspaper archives. However in the earliest report I could find from May 1917, Hilda Major was not a dancing but a skating violinist, which seems like a very risky musical gig.

 

Pittsburgh Daily Post
4 May 1917

She was a member of the "Hip, Hip, Hooray Girls" company that had first opened in New York City and was now touring the vaudeville theater circuit. The show included an act called "Winter Sports in the Frozen North" which featured "premier ice skaters, Dolly Smith, Hilda Major, the skating violinist, and others." It sounds like an ice show, but in the month of May, even Pittsburgh is not that cold. 

 

From what little history is available on the internet, the first ice shows started in 1915 at the Hippodrome theater in New York. In 1916 another troupe from Berlin brought over an ice ballet called "Flirting in St. Moritz." But the engineering and technology available in 1917 did not seem advanced enough to allow a traveling show to carry along portable refrigerated ice rink. Then I found a second notice on the Hip, Hip, Hooray Girls that explained real ice was not used but instead the performers skated on a newly invented composition. This material was not identified but it wasn't anything like Teflon, or Polytetrafluoroethylene, which was not discovered until 1938. So I'm not sure what Hilda skated on, but it was probably very slippery.

 

Little Rock Arkansas Gazette
10 September 1926

Over the next several years, Hilda Major's name appeared in a number of touring shows or as a featured act with a night club band. In 1926 at the Palace Theatre in Little Rock, Arkansas, she and a blues singer, Marion Kane, were listed as assisting Katz and his Kittens, "They're Hot." It was a mix of live acts with a silent film, The Plastic Age, starring Clara Bow and Donald Keith.  "As good a picture as the book. It flames with the spirit of youth."

 

 

Jackson MS Citizen Patriot
16 November 1926

 

Two months later, Hilda was billed as a dancing violinist for the Capitol Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi. She was an act in a "Meet the Gang" musical cocktail with another dancer, Legs Lamonte and a singer/dancer, Lorraine Hayes. This time the featured film was "We're in the Navy Now", with the two wonder stars of "Behind the Front", Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. There was also a Hal Roach "Our Gang" comedy entitled "The Fourth Alarm."

 

  

Cincinnati Enquirer
26 June 1927

The next summer in June 1927, Hilda Major, the dancing violinist, got her picture added to a notice for the Castle Farm playhouse in Cincinnati. This photo shows her wearing a similar outfit as in my photo, though she may be in a skirt rather than shorts. She was described as a popular Keith vaudeville star meaning that she played the B. F. Keith Theatre circuit. A year later in 1928 Keith Theatre merged with Martin Beck's Orpheum Circuit to form the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit. At its height this combined theater chain managed over 700 theaters in the United States and Canada, with a combined seating capacity of 1.5 million. The company contracted with 15,000 vaudeville entertainers like Hilda Major who traveled the country to perform exclusively at their theaters.

 

 

 

Milwaukee Journal
11 December 1927

Hilda was in Milwaukee in December 1927 where she was presented by the Eagles Million Dollar Ballroom. The show also included a "fur fashion style frolic" parading the latest gorgeous furs. In this grainy photo Hilda is seated and without a fur, but her dancing legs, and her shoes too, are the same.

As she finished the year 1927, Hilda surely took notice that show business was about to change. The hundreds of vaudeville theaters that booked live acts like a dancing violinist and maintained full orchestras and bands to accompany silent films were soon forced to convert into silver screen cinemas that featured "talkies". The age of films with synchronized dialogue, sound, and music was just beginning while the age of vaudeville was coming to an end.

 

 

 * * *

 

 

 

 

My second photo is from a postcard showing a very limber young man with legs splayed and a violin under his chin. He's dressed in a conventional men's suit with a velvet jacket. The caption reads:

 

Eric Percival, Dancing Violinist

 

 

 

The postcard was never sent through the mail, but fortunately the back very proudly says: British Made, which conveniently narrowed my search for Eric to just the United Kingdom.

 

 

Hillingdon Advertiser & Gazette
8 June 1928

Like Hilda, Eric also played at a Palace Theatre, only this one was in Hillingdon in West London. There were two shows on Saturday at 7 and 9 o'clock with "first class singing and dancing." The headline act was Thorn & Lee in a screamingly funny sketch. Then followed by Tubby Phillips, the well-known film star, in song and story. Also appearing was Cissy Madele, chorus comedienne; Gorden Henson, comedian; Delany & Stephen, Lady and 'Gent; and Eric Percival, acrobatic violinist and dancer.

 

Derby Daily Telegraph
10 July 1928

 

A month later in July 1928, the reviewer for the Derby Daily Telegraph made note that in the latest show at the Pavilion Theatre in Derby, Eric Percival was "not only a light comedian but also a dancing violinist with a keen sense of rhythm and technique". "Clever dancing" was "also contributed by Edna Percival, whose suppleness—she can kick well over her head—is combined with grace."  

  

Edna Percival might be Eric's wife or even his mother, but my bet is that she was his sister, and that they came from a musical acrobatic family. It's just a hunch, but maybe one day I'll discover what the relationship was. Unfortunately, the UK census records list several men named Eric Percival which makes identification problematic. Without his middle initial or a place of residence in Britain, I've been unable to make any personal history for Eric. All we can know from the newspapers and his postcard is that he was a handsome young man who played British music halls as a dancing, acrobatic violinist from around 1926 to 1931. After that his name leaves the newspaper notices.

Finding Hilda Major had the same difficulty with official records in the United States. I don't know where she was born, or where she called home, or if she ever married. One newspaper notice from Richmond, Virginia promoted her in 1925 as partnering with her sister, who was not named. So again the best I can do is to present Hilda as a skating, dancing, and even singing, violinist with shapely legs who once performed at theaters and night clubs around America from 1917 to 1929. After that, Hilda disappears from the stage.

These photos of Hilda and Eric are like those of thousands of similar performers from the great age of vaudeville theater. I wish I could describe their dancing or the music that they played, but that kind of detail was never recorded in newspaper reports. Their acts were never considered high class culture. They were purely part of a popular entertainment designed to be consumed by millions of people at 25¢ a ticket. We may not know their personal stories but we can imagine what it was like for them to work in show business.

 

A violinist needs regular practice everyday to stay in musical shape. A dancer needs constant training to keep physically fit. To be a successful entertainer, you needed stamina, discipline and a good portion of talent. And for anyone who could simultaneously dance and play the violin on stage for two shows every night for weeks on end you needed a lot of endurance to keep a smile on your face. I think Hilda Major and Eric Percival were genuine "hoofers" and "fiddlers" in every sense of those words.

Of course I have to wonder,
did Hilda and Eric ever meet?
Did they trade steps,
exchange music,
compare bows? 

At least now
they can share the same webpage.

* * *

 

I conclude with a YouTube video of a modern day dancing violinist.
This is Hillary Klug, playing her own original fiddle tune
Le Petit Chat Gris. 
I think Eric and Hilda would approve 
of her old time clogging style.

 

 

 

 

 

"Uncle Frank", woodcarving by Mike Brubaker, 1986

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone has at least one leg to stand on.

Adventures in Ballooning

 Jagdabenteur
~
Hunting Adventure

 

A manned balloon careens through the air. Its anchor line has snared a man, dragging him through a marsh. A hunting party of stout gentlemen are suddenly alarmed that their hapless servant still holds onto baskets of  their victuals and wine as he is carried away. It is clearly not the hunting adventure they had planned. Their gun dogs swim out to retrieve the sausages. 

This humorous postcard was produced by Arthur Thiele (1860-1936), a prolific German artist that I have featured several times on my blog. In 1909 he created a series of cards illustrating the public excitement for Graf Zeppelin's giant airships which I wrote about in Zeppelin Kommt!. In early 1910 he followed up with a similar postcard series on Halley's Comet which I featured in December 2021 in Der Komet Kommt!. And earlier this year I showed off a series he did on the early automobiles, Das Auto. 

 

This postcard of a holiday mishap is part of a series Thiele did about another modern vehicle, the balloon. Like his other postcards, Thiele turns his eye to the way new things sometimes create new problems. It's a timeless observation that is no less clever a century later. This postcard's back has a stamp of the Deutsches Reich with a postmark of 18 October 1910 from Pforzheim, a city known for its watch-making and jewelry manufacturers, and located in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany.

 

Thiele had a genius for picking out the latest fads and then painting humorous cartoons that poked fun at people's wacky modern enthusiasms. And 1910 was an opportune year to do that as it was a time when every day seemed to bring reports on exciting new innovations. In 2022 the idea of someone flying in a balloon seems a quaint lighthearted recreation as today's advanced aviation technology can fly people around the world in super fast jets or even space ships. But in 1910 the idea of human flight was a very novel concept that was just beginning to catch the attention of the public. The giant airships of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, whose steerable airship designs first flew successfully in 1900, were now at a development stage as his company tried to figure out how to make air travel practical, safe, and economical for the public. It was not until late 1908 that the Wright brothers demonstrated their fantastic airplane to the general public, and though by 1910 Orville and Wilbur had many more competitors in the air, all of the pioneer inventors of heavier-than-air flying machines were still struggling to overcome thousands of technical obstacles.

 

On the other hand, balloons were actually the oldest proven aircraft. The first balloon flight was made in 1783 by the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier who amazed people in Annonay, France with their giant hot air balloon. But all the early aeronauts found it very difficult to make repeated flights and very easy to fail, often with tragic results. It was not until the late 19th century that science and engineering introduced better materials and machines that finally allowed aviation to really take off. By 1910 all three flying concepts—balloons, airships, and aeroplanes—were competing to master the laws of gravity and Arthur Thiele recognized that each machine had its comic potential.

To explain this mania for aircraft during the first decade of the 20th century, I used a marvelous invention of the 21st—the internet search engine. In the vast Newspapers.com archives, my favorite digital newspaper collection, the word "airship" shows up only 4,347 times in 1899, and then jumps to 6,417 for the year 1900 when Zeppelin's first airship took flight. By 1910 the number of occurrences increased to 110,678. In contrast the word "aeroplane", the original common spelling of "airplane", appeared in newspapers only 617 times in 1900, but rose to a height of 180,747 times in 1910. Since "balloon" can be a verb used in financial reports or a noun describing a child's circus treat, I searched instead for "balloonist". In 1900 it was used only 2,299 times in newspaper reports, but in 1910 the number climbed to 10,199. 

So Arthur Thiele was not drawing on just his imagination to chose ballooning as a subject of mockery. It was a pretty popular topic in 1910 and it was not difficult to find examples of balloonists in the news. For instance in February 1910 a Mr. John Dunville crossed the Irish sea in a balloon traveling eastward from Ireland to England. While passing over Wales he encountered a heavy snowstorm and a temperature of 27° before reaching an altitude of 10,000 feet. The trip took him 4 hours and 45 minutes to cover 164 miles.

Manchester. England Courier
13 February 1910

 

* * *

 

 

 Das gestörte Picknik
~
The disturbed picnic

 

Hovering over a lake a pair of boorish aeronauts try to increase their balloon's buoyancy by releasing sandbags from their gondola. The rain of gravel and cinders upsets a group of young picnickers who did not expect this kind of precipitation.  

Driving a balloon is limited to following the direction of contrary winds and only rising or falling according to the subtle relationship of lift and ballast. Today most ballooning is done using hot air balloons, but the powerful burners and propane tanks used to heat the air did not exist in 1910. Instead most balloonists in this era used gas-filled envelope to provide lift, either with hydrogen or coal gas. One problem with hot air balloons is that they require a larger air bag in comparison to gas balloons which can be much smaller for the same lifting power. Also the air heaters used in the early hot air balloons used very heavy fuels like wood or charcoal which restricted the time aloft. Gas balloons were lighter and more feasible as they could stay up longer. However the gas, particularly hydrogen, was extremely flammable and forced aeronauts to be very conscientious about prohibiting anyone smoking on the balloon.

 

This postcard was sent from Konstanz, a university town situated at the western end of Lake Constance in southern Germany, the same lake where Graf Zeppelin tested his first airships. The postmark and message date is 15 January 1911.

 

 

 

 

The very nature of humans flight is, of course, inherently risky in the extreme. The newspapers regularly reported on aviation accidents like this one from Long Beach, California in March 1910. A young balloonist named Eugene Savage (or sometimes Henry Savage by more distant newspapers) was attempting to reach a record height and had filled his balloon to its capacity. As he ascended from a location near the amusement park along the Long Beach oceanfront the balloon suddenly burst at about 300 feet. 

 

Fortunately the balloonist was equipped with a parachute but as the balloon's envelope lost gas it entangled Savage and the parachute. Only in the last seconds did the chute open enough to slow his fall. He struck his head on a street curb and was momentarily unconscious but somehow escaped any serious injury. The crowd of people who had come to watch were so horrified that most turned away unable to watch the man's certain death. Other reports noted that this was not the young aeronaut's first accident as he had previously crash landed several times into the ocean, luckily escaping serious injury. Those saltwater dunkings likely contributed to the deterioration of the balloon's fabric envelope.

 

 

Long Beach CA Daily Times
21 March 1910

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 Ein fatale Situation
~
A fatal situation

 

A balloon has crashed into a tree leaving the gondola dangling from the branches as the limp balloon collapses over some telephone wires. Three passengers including a woman hold onto the balloon rigging as local folk look up at them in helpless concern, especially at the lady struggling to keep her skirt on. 

 

Because balloons lack steering, there were frequent collisions with trees, buildings, and other structures that endangered the balloonists. In 1910 parachutes were a relatively new ballooning accessory but were very unsophisticated, and sometimes terribly ineffective too. Much of this risk stemmed from a general ignorance of weather and the atmosphere. Even meteorologists of the time were unsure of wind and temperature conditions at high altitude or even of oxygen levels at the extreme heights that balloonist were attempting to reach.

 

This postcard was sent on 9 July 1910 from Ilsenburg, Germany, a small town at the foot of the Harz mountains between Hanover and Leipzig.

 

 

 

Once a balloon achieves its chosen cruising height the balloonists experience no sensation of wind as a balloon effectively moves only as fast as the air speed. To predict the weather at high altitude requires very different knowledge than what sailors learn from watching wind and clouds at sea level. Many balloonists lost their lives to storms like the four men in April 1910 who perished after their balloon was struck by lightning in a sudden thunderstorm near Berlin. When found it was evident from the bodies that the men had fallen from a great height. This report is not nearly as gruesome as others which often went into great detail about balloon disasters. The final paragraph recounts that the popularity of "flight fever" in Germany, where many towns now had balloon clubs, would undoubtedly lead to aviation accidents becoming as frequent as automobile accidents. Of course Arthur Thiele has another postcard series devoted to funny auto mishaps. I'll post that story when I acquire the complete set.

 

 

Sunbury PA American
18 April 1910

 

Cameras in 1910 were not very good at recording outdoor images against the bright background of the sky, so photos of balloons are not very clear or detailed. The early motion picture cameras had the same problem so it was not until the 1920s when photography was advanced enough to capture motion that balloons in flight appear on film. Here is a short newsreel of a 1926 balloon race, incorrectly labeled as Hot-air ballooners take off for cross-country race . It gives us an idea how exciting and challenging it was to see gas balloons soar off into the sky. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 Des Bauern Himmelfahrt
~
The farmer's ascension

 

A farmer's wife rushes out to the yard shouting for help as her poor husband is carried away in his privy by a balloon's anchor line. The geese and pigs find it all very amusing.

This postcard was sent from München, Bayern or Munich, Bavaria on 30 September 1910.  All of Arthur Thiele's cards were published by the Adolf Klauss & Co. of Leipzig, Germany and distributed to news agents and shops throughout Germany, Austria, and judging from postmarks probably Switzerland, Netherlands, and Belgium too.

 

 

Many early balloonists seemed intent on achieving a record altitude. This required careful planning and carrying precise barometric equipment. Obviously by 1910 no human had ever climbed much higher than the European Alps or American Rockies. Scientists were still uncertain what might happen to the human body beyond 20,000 feet. They expected a drop in temperature but could not predict how low it might go for a balloonist.  In 1908 the Graf Zeppelin's airship, the LZ4, reached an altitude of 2,600 feet (795M) but it was later destroyed in a windstorm while moored on the ground. For fixed wing aircraft 1910 was a record breaking year for altitude. It began in January with a new record of 4,164 feet and was followed by four more fliers each breaking the previous record until in December, Archibald Hoxsey flew a Wright Model B to an earth shattering 11,474 feet (3,497m). 

 

But this was nothing compared to what balloonists could do. The best record so far had been set in July 1901 by two German meteorologists, Arthur Berson and Reinhard Süring who piloted a hydrogen balloon to an astounding altitude of 35,433 feet. Their balloon, the Preußen, had an open basket and steel cylinders filled with oxygen. Their flight led to the discovery of the stratosphere. 

 

In May 1910 two American aeronauts, A. Holland Forbes and James Carrington Yates  took their balloon up to 20,600 feet setting a North American  record, but the attempt nearly cost them their lives. They were descending when an accident with the balloon's rip cord released the gas at about 300 feet. They were saved by a rubber air mattress stored on the bottom of the balloon's basket.      

Charlotte NC Evening Chronicle
12 May 1910

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 Landungsmanöver in der Kalkgrube
~
Landing maneuvers in the lime pit

 

Two aeronauts crash their balloon into a building worksite making an undignified landing into a pit of cement. The masons and workers flee for their lives.

This postcard was sent from Hamburg, Germany on 20 July 1910. The writer has one of the boldest penmanship styles I've ever seen, that would do credit to any doctor or attorney.

 

 

In October 1910 a Philadelphia physician and amateur balloonist, Dr. Thos. E, Eldridge, went up in a balloon at the Interstate Fair in Trenton, New Jersey and reached 2,000 feet when he realized something was wrong with his balloon. Fortunately his purpose had been to demonstrate a parachute, but on this occasion the emergency was real and his chute opened properly to the enthusiastic cheers of the people at the fairground.

Philadelphia Inquirer
1 October 1910

 

* * *

 

 

 Die abgerissene Kirchturmspitze
~
The broken church spire

 

A balloon has collided with a church spire, capturing its weather vane with the balloon's basket. A brave town watchman keeps a precarious hold of the vane while other town folk rush to help him before the balloon can escape into the sky. A fearless Dachshund throws his weight into the struggle. 

This is my favorite of Arthur Thiele's six balloon theme postcards. I like the higher perspective and the frenetic movement conveyed by the balloon and the people below it. I suspect steeple collisions were probably a common accident with balloons. The postmark on the card is from Chemnitz, Germany and dated 27 April 1910. Chemnitz is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden.

 

 

 

 

The competitive instinct of earlier aviators to fly higher, longer, and farther motivated many patrons to sponsor air races, and ballooning had its share of wealthy enthusiasts. One of the first races for gas balloons was the Gordon Bennett Cup sponsored by James Gordon Bennett Jr., the millionaire sportsman and owner of the New York Herald newspaper. It opened in Paris in 1906 with a simple goal for contestants that they "fly the furthest distance from the launch site." In October 1910 its fifth annual event was held in St. Louis, Missouri. Entrants came from all over the world shipping their balloons and equipment to the center of the North American continent. St. Louis was already famous for its worlds fair exhibitions and had hosted this race in 1907. That event was won by a German team that traveled 1403.55 miles in 40 hours. This year the stacks were high as an American team hoped to win a back-to-back first prize, having taken the cup in 1909 when the contest was held in Zürich, Switzerland. 

 

 

Lancaster PA Examiner
29 October 1910

 

 

The balloon America II was manned by Alan Ramsay Hawley and Augustus Post who somehow caught a faster wind than their competitors by reaching an altitude of over 20,000 feet. Since there was no way to communicate with the balloonists, race officials counted on ground observers to locate each balloonist team but this was very unreliable. After all the other balloons had come down, the American aeronauts were still unaccounted for. Another day passed and race officials considered organizing search parties but still there were no sightings. Newspapers around the country anxiously awaited word on the fate of the America II. Since the wind direction was expected to take the balloons toward the Great Lakes, it was feared that the American balloon might have perished after landing in water. Finally after ten days Hawley and Post were discovered by hunters in a remote region of Canada. They were okay but exhausted from several days effort to walk out of the wilderness.

 

They recorded a flight time of 44 hours and 25 minutes from St. Louis until a storm forced them to land on a hillside 58 miles (93 km) north of Chicoutimi, Quebec. Initial reports claimed they had traveled 1,350 miles from St. Louis to Quebec, but it was later revised to 1,173 miles, nonetheless a record distance for a balloon in that era.

 

Every since I was a young boy I've been fascinated by lighter-than-air flight and have read many books on the early pioneers of aviation. I sometimes imagine that if I had not taken up music I might have tried a career in ballooning or maybe even dirigibles or blimps. This is partly to explain my interest in Arthur Thiele's mischievous illustrations of balloons. aeroplanes, and airships. But it was also because Thiele was observing an utterly new experience for mankind—the wonder of human flight. 

What was it like to see a balloon floating past the clouds for the very first time or watch a Zeppelin gracefully turn around in the sky? It's a level of astonishment that has few comparable examples in our time a century later. Thiele certainly knew what that amazement of human flight felt like, but as an artist he also took note of how common folk had the good sense to object to the new problems caused by new things. Only a talented artist with his gifts could combine those grand ideas into a picture and make you laugh at the same time.

 

 

This week I also discovered a different kind of ballooning that in another life I definitely would have taken up. It's called Balloon Jumping and it was popular around 1927. When I was growing up I dreamed up this exact same notion of a person harnessed to a small gas balloon with just enough buoyancy to lift about 3/4 of a person's mass. I imagined it would give me the power to leap over tall buildings like Superman. Until this week when I found this newsreel footage of it on YouTube, I did not know that it was once a real extreme sport. 

 

Maybe it will make a comeback! But I have to admit it looks a little bit risky to me now.

 

 

 

 

To finish with an ironic coda, I include this 1910 report on ballooning from the great state of Kansas, famous for its vast prairies, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and witches and wizards. The report in the Topeka newspaper extols the fun of ballooning, "safe as other sports." with "little danger in making ascensions." But as Dorothy, Toto, and the Wizard of Oz could attest, the real risk with ballooning was in the descent.

 

 

 

 

Topeka KS Daily Capital
18 September 1910

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where you can always find a good bargain.