Musical Clubs

 

A musical instrument is a satisfying recreation
for anyone of any age to take up.
After all, it is called
playing music.
 

 

 

 

 

Joining a band or orchestra
offers an even more rewarding experience
of playing on a team.

 

 

 

 

But for the ultimate musical gratification
nothing beats playing your instrument
with other musicians who play the same instrument.
It's just pure fun.

 

When you read as many old newspapers as I do
it doesn't take long to discover
that in the late 19th and early 20th century
people loved to join clubs.
There were clubs for every kind
of political, fraternal, religious,
occupational, and recreational  interest,
and music was equally represented
by countless amateur choirs, bands, and orchestras.

 

One special type of social club
that became very popular in the 1900s
was designed specifically for enthusiasts
devoted to one particular musical instrument.


Today I present a small medley of these musical clubs
that featured unusual musical instruments.
 

 

 

My first photo is an instrumental club on a German postcard of 16 men and 2 women with various string instruments, but predominantly zithers. With nine zither players and only two violinists this is an ensemble that loves to strum. Of course I'm defining what I call a musical club very broadly as I suspect these musicians are probably a private club run by the man seated center, third from right, who is holding a conductor's baton. He is the music professor and these are his string students.

A zither belongs to the psaltery line of string instruments. It has many metal strings attached to a shallow box with four or five strings stretched over a fretted fingerboard and the other strings tuned in a scale like a harp. It is played either on the player's lap or on a table. There are two types pictured in this group. The concert zither has between 29 to 38 strings, with 34 or 35 being most typical. The Alpine zither has 42 strings with a curved extension that supports the longer lower bass strings. 

Alpine Zither
Source: Wikipedia

The postcard was mailed on 12 February 1915 from Remscheid, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, east of the Rhine River near Düsseldorf, Germany. We can only speculate how many of the men would be called up for military service in the next three years. Did they pack a zither in their soldier's kit?

 

 

 

 

 To demonstrate the beautiful sound of the zither
here is a quartet that performed at
the Saitenstrassen music festival in 2021.
This festival of traditional Germanic music
is held in the alpine communities
of Mittenwald, Krün and Wallgau
in the Upper Isar Valley of Bavaria.
The unusual instrument played by the man at the back right
is a Viennese contraguitar or Schrammel guitar
which has extra bass strings like the zither
which gives it a harp-like sound.

 

 

 * * *

 

 

 

The next group comes from a photo postcard that was never mailed but conveniently identifies the group and date on a printed caption. They are the Concertina "Edelweisss" zu Hormersdorf  1908.  As their name suggests this ensemble features six concertina players in what is otherwise a brass band. The 19 men are posed outdoors and wear a kind of formal Sunday best suit that suggests they are giving a concert. I think they look more like an amateur group than professional and again I'm stretching the definition of a club to include bands that promoted one type of instrument. Hormersdorf is a former municipality in the district Erzgebirgskreis, in Saxony, Germany now part of the town Zwönitz. One man seated center has no instrument, unless we count the beer keg in front of him, but he wears a broad sash which I think indicates he is a civic official of the town.  

 

The concertina is a free-reed musical instrument similar in sound to a harmonica but using bellows to provide the air that vibrates the reeds. It belongs to the accordion family and there are many different types of squeeze box instruments that were developed independently by English and German makers in the early 1800s. The English concertina is constructed as a six-sided "box" while the German design is a larger and made as a square "box". Both systems have buttons on both halves of the instrument that activate the reeds, but the arrangement of pitches is very different. 

 

The instrument used by the Edelweiss band are called Chemnitzer concertinas which were developed in Chemnitz, the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony, which is about 13 miles north of Hormersdorf. The reeds are made of steel instead of brass and there are two different notes, sometimes more, that sound independently when the bellows are compressed or extended. The Chemnitzer type concertina became popular in America too and is still found in Polka dance bands. 

 

 

For the past 44 years
concertina enthusiasts
from around the country
flock to Pulaski, Wisconsin
for the Pulaski Polka Days.
Here is a short video of about 50 concertina players
who participated in the 2021 concertina jam in Pulaski.
It captures the passion people have for their favorite instrument
and the great fun it provides to players of all ages.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

This  postcard features 40 men, all holding the same kind of string instrument. They are identified in the caption on the front as C. H. Böhm's Waldzither-Verein. The musicians are neatly arranged in some outdoor park or garden with a large banner that has the faint letters of Böhm and an image of a Waldzither. It resembles a mandolin but looks nothing like the tabletop zithers played by the first musical club. The name and location of the postcard publisher is printed along the bottom edge: Kunstverlags-Anstalt Roepke & Woortman, Hamburg. The postcard also has a postmark of 31 January 1903 from Hamburg, Germany.

 

The Waldzither (which translates as "forest zither") was a late 19th century German improvement on the medieval cittern. It has 9 metal strings set in five courses with the lowest pitch on a single string. The bridge of a Waldzither is made of glass or metal and I believe the neck is hollow to give it more resonance. The tuning mechanism at the head of the neck uses a fine screw adjustment rather than traditional pegs.

 

 

The Boehm Waldzithers were made beginning with the founding of the factory in 1897 until it closed in 1942 during the war. I suspect that membership in Herr Böhm's club included a number of his workers, but evidently the Waldzither became such a popular instrument in Germany that there were efforts, (probably supported by Böhm) to make it the "national instrument" of Germany. Sadly the Waldzither never achieved that kind of status as it has largely disappeared except for a few preserved instruments. In fact I would not have been able to learn about the Böhm company until I found this short demonstration video on YouTube this week.

Here is a video of Björn Kaidel
playing a beautiful melody on a Waldzither that was made
around 1925 by the same "C.H. Böhm Company" of Hamburg, Germany
whose instruments are pictured on my postcard.

* * *

 

 

 

 Since last weekend's story,
The Turner Clubs of Old Wien,
was about Austrian Turn-Verein or Gymnast Clubs.

I can't resist including this next postcard
of a Club of Clubs.
Indian clubs to be precise.

 

 

This group of 43 young women and two men are all dressed in matching uniforms (the girls not the men) that make them look like students or a church choir. But this is what passed for women's athletic wear in 1900. At the top is a caption: Dámský Odbor Sokola Domažlického or the Domazlice  Women's Sokal Union. The language is Czech and the place Domazlice, is a small town that is now in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic, but in July 1902 when this postcard was mailed, it was in Austria. 

The young ladies belong to the Czech equivalent of a German or Austria Turnverein or gymnast club. Along the floor in front of the women are various wooden clubs used in pairs for rhythmic calesthetic exercises. These Indian clubs originated on the India subcontinent, hence their name, and were once a common strength conditioning equipment used in gym clubs by both men and women. In researching this card I was surprised to find many videos on YouTube of modern practitioners of this discipline with a large number from India.

The group is called a Sokola which in Czech means "Falcon" for it's patriotic connotation. Though these Czech gyms followed the same idea for physical training, the Czech Sokol movement, which was founded in Prague in 1862, included more intellectual and moral guidance through lectures, discussions and even military training in support of Czech nationalism. Membership was open to all ages and eventually, as evident in this postcard, women were admitted too. The Sokol training centered on marching drills, fencing, weightlifting and large mass team exercises like this group of women. 

 

The movement's emphasis on national pride led to other Slavic cultures in the Austrian empire starting their own gym clubs. By the 1900s there were Sokols in Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, and other ethnic  areas of Central Europe that were ruled by monarchs of a different historic culture. The Czech Sokols, like the German Turnverein movement, was brought to America by immigrants who established gym clubs and used them to sustain their national traditions. The political power of the Sokol gym clubs was a serious concern for both monarchs and fascists. During the rise of Hitler, the Sokols were shut down, and later in the communist era they were banned too.

 

 

 I can't find any reference to this
but I feel sure that
Indian club exercises at the Czech Sokol
included music
since music has always been a Czech tradition.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

 

 

 

 

Here is a delightful short film
from the Library of Congress archives
entitled: "Hyde Park School, room 2".
It shows a group of American school children
performing an exercise with Indian clubs.
It was filmed in Kansas City, Missouri on April 18, 1904
by cameraman, A. E. Weed for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

 

 

This next clip is too good to pass up.
It is a short film made in 1952
of Phoebe Pegram Swinging Indian Clubs.
The details on this YouTube video explain it best.

Phoebe Pegram arrived at the State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG) in 1892. She studied "physical culture" (now physical education or kinesiology). By her fourth year, she had mastered the Indian clubs (it was said she was better than any of the instructors!) and was asked to join the teaching staff for the next two years.  When Phoebe came back to campus in 1952 for a class reunion, she was in her 80s but still willing to show off her mastery of the Indian clubs. She's wearing the black wool bloomers used in the physical culture classes when she was a student and teacher.

 

 

 

The clip was digitized from a film housed in the University Archives Film Collection, Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC.

 

 I think Phoebe Pegram understood
that when you learn a skill well
you gain a lifetime of fun.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where there are always lessons
to be learned in an old photo.

The Turner Clubs of Old Wien

There are moments in life
when you suddenly realize that
your body will no longer cooperate
for certain physical activities.

And yet you valiantly persist
despite the inevitable awkward distress. 

 

Today I present a set of postcards
from one of my favorite artists,
Fritz Schönpflug,
who playfully illustrates
those foolish moments we all know.

 

 

 

 

The first postcard shows a portly gentleman in midair as he trips up on the coming down part of his attempted pole vault. His companions gasp in alarm. Fritz Schönpflug (1873–1951) was a native of Wien (Vienna), Austria and was a self-taught artist who created thousands of caricatures like this that gently make fun of Viennese life during the last decades of the Hapsburg Empire.

 

This particular postcard was sent from Leiden, Netherlands on 30 May 1921, three years after the collapse and dissolution of the Austrian monarchy, but the illustration dates from at least 12 years earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

In this next card a group of men struggle with lifting weights in a gymnasium. One unbalanced fellow looks like the same stout man in the first card. The signature of Fritz Schönpflug in the lower right corner has a number 909 which signifies that he created it in 1909. But the card has two red stamps from the postal service of Česko-Slovensko or Czechoslovakia which not a nation then and only became one in 1918 following the breakup of the Austrian Empire at the end of World War One. 

 

The postmark is 13 March 1920. One the back the publisher B.K.W.I. provides a series number 705 – 1 which indicates that this card is the first in the series.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Here the ginger-hair man with Pince-nez glasses (called Zwicker in German or Kneifer or Klemmer in southern Germany and Austria) from the previous card has an unfortunate collision with a gymnastic horse. It's unclear if he will succeed. The postmark is unclear but the 5 heller stamp of Emperor Franz Joseph dates it before 1916 at least. On the front and back is a lengthy message written in a most curious script. It doesn't resemble German or any of the other languages of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that I know, so I believe it is a secret code that uses characters known only to the recipient. It must have puzzled the postman.

* * *

 

 

In this last postcard the big man returns on another gymnasium apparatus where he has become wedged between the parallel bars. His fellow gymnasts help to extricate him from a rather embarrassing predicament. The writer dates the card 26.6.14. which coincidentally was two days before the tragic assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Bosnian-Serb student Gavrilo Princip.

The back of the card has a short message and signatures of several people. Besides the common green stamp of the Emperor Franz Joseph there is an unusual extra stamp  that provides a perfect clue to explains the activity that Schönpflug was lampooning in this series. 

 

 

The stamp has a caption, Deutscher Turnerbund ~ German Gymnastics Federation and cost 2 heller. The patriarchal man with the long beard pictured on the gray stamp is Johann Friedrich Ludwig Christoph Jahn (1778–1852) the founder of the German gymnastics movement. This was likely a special stamp produced to benefit the organization. Perhaps the signatures are members.

 

A native of Brandenburg, Prussia, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, as he was commonly called, was an educator and nationalist in the early 1800s when Napoleon's French army was conquering much of Europe including many German principalities. After serving in the Prussian army he moved to Berlin in 1809 and became a teacher. His deep concern with Napoleon's harsh dictatorship inspired Jahn to create a gymnastics program to restore the physical and moral health of his countrymen. He started his first Turnverein ~ gymnastics club in Berlin in 1811. These clubs soon became popular all around the Germanic states for their liberal political ideas as well as physical culture. 

 

In 1813 Jahn rejoined a special volunteer unit of the Prussian army called the  Lützow Free Corps commanding a battalion and working in the Prussian secret service. After the defeat of Napoleon Jahn was appointed a state teacher of gymnastics, and he helped form the first student patriotic fraternities. His political activities advocating for principles of liberal democracy in the Turnverein associations led to his arrest and imprisonment by  Prussian authorities and a crackdown on the movement. When he was finally released in 1825 he was barred from Berlin and forbidden to teach gymnastics.

 

 

Nonetheless Jahn wrote a number of works, one of which was a treatise on gymnastics where he promoted the use of parallel bars, rings and the high bar. This next illustration came from one of his books and shows what the first pommel horse looked like in international competitions. Note that it has no head but it does have a tail.

 

 

Illustrations of pommel horse exercises
from an English translation of Treatise on Gymnasticks
by Friedrick Ludwig Jahn, 1828
Source: Wikipedia

The Turnverein movement became very popular with German men in the 1840s and many Turners, as they were called, took part in the 1848 German Revolution.  Though the revolution failed, the ideals of the Turnverein unions were taken to America and other countries by German emigrants. German gymnastic clubs were established in many American cities with large populations of Germanic people.

 

One German Turner club was in Milwaukee and a photo of its gymnasium shows a group of men dressed very like Schönpflug's turners sitting astride various gymnastic equipment.

 

Gymnastics room in the National Gymnastics Hall at Milwaukee, ca. 1900
Source: Wikipedia

 

In the early 1900s, there were several Turnverein unions in Wien. One of the oldest was called the Floridsdorfer Turnverein which was established in 1865. On its 40th anniversary in 1905, a group of twenty strong and agile young men and women formed an impressive assemblage for a photograph. It's not impossible that Fritz Schönpflug saw them and was inspired to sketch a postcard series of them in action. 

 

 

40th anniversary of Floridsdorfer Turnverein, Wien, Austria in 1905
Source: ftv1865.clubdesk.com

 

What I enjoy about Fritz Schönpflug's colorful cartoons is the way he depicts the lively and colorful people of Wien. His pen and paintbrush captures motion, and emotions too, that were impossible in that era for a camera to pickup. He had a talent for observing human actions and imaging absurd situations that made people laugh then and now a century later.

 

 

 

The Turnverein movement was very progressive for its time and included women. Not surprisingly Schönpflug could not help creating a series on the female gymnasts too. Here is one postcard showing a poor woman entangled on the rings who has got her knickers in an uncomfortable twist. Her coach is not impressed.

This card was sent from Sainte-Maxime, a commune on the south coast of France, on Friday, 25 Novembre 1910. Though it has a canceled French stamp on the front, there is no address on the back but instead a very long message. The block letters allowed me to make a translation but it is not as interesting as it looks. Suffice to say it reads in part:

                                        My dear Suzanne,                                                                        
The time flies, here we are at the end of the year, because, in a month on the same date, we will celebrate Christmas tasting the goose, and here in Provence, the flat guinea fowl renowned and dear to the "Mocos."                        ....
.....Goodbye, waiting for your news, I send a thousand affectionate kisses,
                        Louis Valette                                                                                    

 

I can almost hear Suzanne giggle when she first opened the letter and saw the card. There are more postcards in this series that I have yet to find, so once I add them to my collection readers may expect a reprise on the silly Turners of old Wien. 

 

To finish here is a film
from the Oregon Historical Society
entitled Grunts and Groans
It is an amateur silent film produced by Herbert Miller in 1933
 of the Portland, Oregon Turnverein Gymnasium
of which Mr. Miller was a member.
This short mockumentary is pretty silly
but no doubt it would have made Fritz Schönpflug
laugh to see his characters come to life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where springtime has everyone jumping.

Musical Artists of Norway

 

To the casual observer
this ornate string instrument looks like a violin.
Many people might call it just a fiddle,
which is closer to the truth.
But a closer look
reveals some important differences
that are not part of classical violin construction.

The first thing to notice
is that the elongated string box on the end
has twice as many pegs as a violin.

 

 

 

 

The pair of cutout curves or F-holes
that center the bridge
are longer and straighter than a violin's.
And of course few violins are as embellished
with fancy geometric patterned inlay
on the fingerboard and tailpiece. 

 

Though this instrument is played with a bow
and fingered like other members of the string family,
it is actually a special Norwegian cousin of the violin.

It is the Hardanger fiddle
or in Norwegian, the Hardingfele.

 

Hardangerfele, 1651
by Ola Jonson Jaastad (1621–1694)
University Museum of Bergen
Source: Wikimedia

The Hardanger fiddle is folk instrument that was first credited to Ole Jonsen Jaastad (1621–1694) of Hardanger, Norway who made one in 1651. His instrument is contemporary with those of the famous luthier, Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737), who was making violins in Cremona, Italy at the same time. Unlike the violin, a Hardanger has extra sympathetic strings running under the decorative fingerboard which add resonance to the fiddle's sound giving it a ringing quality. There are four principal strings to play the music but they are tuned differently from the violin as the Hardanger fiddle is a transposing instrument, meaning the written music for it is different from its sounding pitch. The strings are also tuned according to a Norwegian player's native region which could be one of several different combinations of pitches. 

 

But the most distinguishing feature of the Hardangerfele is the fine inlay work on the fingerboard and tailpiece. Though the patterns follow traditional Norwegian folk designs, each maker had their own style. The craftsmanship and artistry of the instrument are as much a part of the Hardanger fiddle's heritage as its music. This next images show the strings as they pass over and under the bridge of another fiddle with a closeup of the top's floral design.

 

 

Detail of a Hardanger fiddle made by Knut Gunnarsson Helland.
Source: Wikipedia

 

 

 

Here's a demonstration of the Hardanger fiddle
in an appropriate folk setting
at the Telemark museum in Norway.
The fiddler is Annika Westgård
playing the tune Fanitullen at the Brekkeparken.
She uses a special left hand technique of plucking the strings without the bow
and she is also tapping (stomping) her foot in time to the dance tune.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first Hardanger fiddle image came from a postcard that names the player in a printed caption. He is Sjur Larsson Helgeland (1858−1924), born at Voss in Hordaland, Norway. He was a celebrated fiddler and composer who won the first annual Norwegian folk music and dance competition in 1896 at Bergen. This postcard was sent to someone in Bergen on the day before Christmas, 24 December 1910.

 

 

 

Sjur Larsson Helgeland (1858−1924)
Norwegian hardingfele fiddler
Source: Wikipedia

The postcard was printed for the photographer, Hulda Marie Bentzen (1858–1930) who was an early professional female Norwegian photographer with studios in Bergen and Voss. The original image is on Helgeland's Wikipedia page. The ghostly background was likely painted on by a newspaper's print shop to isolate the image in order to make a half-tone copy. Sjur Helgeland came from Voss which is a district around the village of Vossevangen. Wikimedia provides several images of this picturesque place, and I chose one because it was taken in the 1890s, so this is Voss as Sjur Helgeland would have known it. It was also colorized and printed in Detroit.

 

Vossevangen, general view c. 1890
(Lake Vangsvatnet, Norway)
Source: Wikimedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voss is situated in the rugged landscape of western Norway and is one of nine traditional districts of the Vestland county. Voss lies in the center and is adjacent to the Hardanger district. But recently in 2019 a merger of Voss with another community required designing a new coat of arms. The result is an outline of a Hardanger fiddle on a bright red shield. It's a symbol of how Norwegian folk music heritage is still cherished in this part of the country.

Voss, Norway
Coat of Arms since 2020
Source: Wikipedia

* * *

 

 

 

The second image shows a young man dressed in his Sunday best and seated on a bench in a photographer's studio. He holds his Hardanger fiddle upright on his leg to show off its intricate inlay. I don't think he is smiling, but by Norwegian standards, maybe he is. 

 

The photo is mounted on a small carte de visite card, the same size as two other photos of Hardanger fiddlers which I featured in my story from January 2015, Isn't it good, Norwegian wood?. The photographer's name is Per Braaten of Gol, located about 150 miles east of Vossevangen. It's a very nice clear image that I initially mistook for an occupational or folk photo. Unfortunately there is nothing on the back to identify the young man or date the photo.

 

But as soon as I searched for the photographer's name, Google instantly directed me to a website with examples of the Braaten family's work. Embrik Torkjellson Braaten Braaten (1866–1906) and his wife, Henriette H. Olsgaard (née Kierulf), were photographers as was their son, Per Bratten (1893–1944), who took over his father's studio in Gol in 1909. And the photo used as an example of his work is an identical CdV of the same fiddler! But on this website he is named, "Master fiddler Olav Sataslåtten photographed at Per Braaten probably around 1914." And to my surprise this was no ordinary musician but another champion fiddler who went on to great success as a player and composer.

 

 

 

Olav Sataslåtten (1891–1971)
Norwegian fiddler
Source: Wikimedia

Olav Sataslåtten (1891–1971) was from Hallingdal, Norway, abut 8 miles south of Gol, and he began his musical career around 1904 by playing for dances. If the date for my photo's twin on the Braaten family website is correct then he would be age 23 and already a respected musician in his region. He is credited with being a major influence for later fiddlers and helping to preserve the old tradition tunes, which like most folk music, was rarely written down but instead learned by ear. From 1939 to 1971, the year of his death, he made over 366 recordings that have survived.

 

Courtesy of Orchard Enterprises, which has remastered his recordings,
we can still listen to Olav Sataslåtten on YouTube.
Here is his rendition of a Springar, a Norwegian folk dance,
called Krullafuru ~ Curlew Pine.

 

 

But to really appreciate
the sound of a Handanger fiddle
we should listen to one
in the context of a Norwegian dance.
Here's a short video of one from 2019
entitled Fela Flott - Hamborgar etter Sjur Helgeland,
which I believe is the band's cover of a tune
composed by Sjur Helgeland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone is on spring break.

Anita, the Dancing Violinist

 

 

The photographer took the measure of his client and paused in thought. What would make this petite young woman look like a star act? He held out his arm with upturned thumb as he squinted at one of his studio backdrops. "Okay, miss," he said, "Here's what I want you to do. Go over there and stand real close to that curtain." He swiveled the camera stand and spun the lever a few times to put it as low as it would go. Gesturing to his assistant, he pointed at the footlights. "Give me less top and more bottom, Joe. And maybe move the red gell a tiny bit to the left." 

 

He ducked under the camera's dark cloth to check the film plate. "Good. Much better."  He popped out and cocked his head at the young woman. She looked cold. "Now, miss, could you spread your arms like you're taking final bows?"

"That's it. And hold your fiddle so it faces the camera. Now give us a thousand dollar smile. Perfect!" He clicked the shutter. "Prints will be ready tomorrow afternoon. Hope your show does well."

 

That's how I imagine this photograph was taken when this young violinist went to the Van Art Co. studio in New York. She wears a shapely oriental costume with white pantaloons, tight bodice, and bare shoulders which the photographer has subtly linked to the curves of her violin. A standard violin measures 23 inches from its scroll to the tailpiece and she is approximately 2 ⅔ times that length from her heels to the top of her head (but under her frizzy hair), so I calculate that she stands about 5 foot 2 inches in her stocking feet. I believe that counts as petite. Also known as pint-size.  

 

This is a typical promotional 8"x10" photo of a vaudeville entertainer which was used to describe an act for a theater manager in a single glance. Pretty girl with violin; exotic outfit; big smile. That would keep the old fellows in the audience from falling asleep. 

But the best part of her photo is the note on the back.

 

 

To Jack and the Boys
wist (sic) best Wishes
From
Anita
with the
Crackerjacks
                       Dec 25. 1915

VAN ART CO
Photographers
1377 Broadway, N. Y.
N.W. Cor. of 37th St.

 

Though Anita's dedication provides only a few clues, it was just enough to find "The Cracker Jacks" in 1915. In September this show appeared at the Star Theater in Brooklyn, New York.

 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
28 September 1915

The Star Theater was a large playhouse of 1,410 seats in downtown Brooklyn. It first opened in 1890 but by 1915 it specialized in burlesque, sometimes spelled as "burlesk", which was a kind of low-brow vaudeville revue that always featured bevies of beautiful girls. And this show had dozens of them on stage as well as several comedians, acrobats, singers, and dancers arranged in a high spirited medley of musical skits staring the lead comic, Phil Ott. 

 

Unlike vaudeville shows which presented a weekly variety of different acts engaged by a theater, burlesque entertainers often worked together as a company and followed a scripted arrangement of theatrical skits and musical numbers. In this era it might have some crude bawdy humor but it wasn't lewd or indecent. That kind of scandalous burlesque entertainment came later, in more prurient decades. In 1915 a theater like the Star still pretended to offer decent, if not classy, amusements. For the Cracker Jacks it was "comedy galore" and "keep the audience in high spirits".  According to a review in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "During the action of the first act, Anita, a dainty little violinist, entertains with several selections and was picked a favorite."

 

Click Images to Enlarge

 

Philadelphia Inquirer
17 November 1915

By November 1915 the show was playing in Philadelphia at the Gayety Burlesque. Anita, Oriental Dancing Violinist got top billing in the small advertisement at the bottom of the amusements page of the Inquirer, in between ads for concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with German conductor Dr. Karl Muck; the great operatic contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink; the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski performing music of Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky; the Doree Opera Company presenting "Big Moments from Famous Operas"; and  Baron Singer's 25 midgets with 11 ponies and 2 baby elephants.

 

Detroit Evening Times
27 November 1915

If a show was to gain success for its investors it had to go on a national tour. In late November the "Famous Cracker Jacks" were in Detroit headed by Phil Ott and Nellie Nelson. The show now had its own family of midgets, the 3 Kundles, as well as "Novelty Comedy Sensation, Anita", along with French's Aeroplane Girls.

  

In newspaper reports on this show Anita was sometimes described as an "Oriental violiniste", or a "Harum violinist", or even a "Gypsy violinist". She took part in some of the skits, dancing and sometimes singing as well as playing the violin. The Aeroplane Girls was a kind of aerobatic show involving trapeze type stunts in a mock aeroplane suspended over the stage.

Though I have no proof, its quite possible that "The Famous Cracker Jacks" were financed by the company that made the snack food, "Cracker Jack". Established as a national brand in 1896 by the Rueckheim Brothers of Chicago, this iconic American product was first celebrated in the 1908 Tin Pan Alley song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", with its line: "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack!" In fact this branding was purely for the purpose of a good rhyme. More interesting is that the song's lyricist, Jack Norworth, and composer, Albert Von Tilzer, had never actually seen a baseball game when they wrote this hit, and then didn't get taken out to a ball game until 32 and 20 years later, respectively.

 

Even so, I suspect that burlesque theatres did a pretty good business selling boxes of Cracker Jacks in the lobby. "The More You Eat The More You Want"®.

Minneapolis Journal
26 December 1915

At the end of the year, the Cracker Jacks were advertised for the Gayety Burlesque in Minneapolis with a special New Year's Eve "Midnight Frolic". Amazingly I also found a review of the show in Minneapolis' French language newspaper, Echo de L'ouest, from 24 December 1915 which had a mention of Anita la merveille musicale ~ Anita the musical wonder.  

 

This conveniently confirmed that my photograph of Anita, the oriental dancing violinist, was signed in Minneapolis on Christmas day, 1915. From reading other earlier reviews of the Cracker Jacks show, I learned that the writer and producer was identified as Jack Magee, so I believe he is the "Jack" in Anita's note.

 

That might have been the end of Anita's story, except that it was frustrating to not discover her full name or anything about her background. I felt there had to be more. It was the same feeling I had when researching another burlesque entertainer's photo that turned out to have a great story hidden within the picture, Mademoiselle Fifi.

 

 And then I found this short letter
sent to the editor of the
"I Remember Old Brooklyn" column
of the New York Daily News.
I was published in June 1963.

 

New York Daily News
27 June 1963

                TIGHT MOMENT
   Life was good in Brooklyn 50 years ago.  I was featured as Anita, the dancing violinist, in Al Reeves' Beauty Show at the Gaiety Theatre.
   My most embarrassing moment came when my violin teacher saw me in tights on stage. All he said was:  "Why didn't you play something good?"
   My mother would go to Manhattan Ave. and buy beads and spangles for my costumes.  All were homemade and looked fine from out front.  I started in the theatre at 15, on my own. Your column brings backs memories.
     MRS. ANNA SCHULER
     17 Willoughby St., West Islip

 

It's very exciting for me to hear the "voice" of a musician in a photograph over 100 years old. Anna's simple letter of remembrance of her musical career in Brooklyn offered so many good clues that in just a few minutes I found Anna Schuler in the census records. In 1930 Anna was living in a rented house at 553 Layfayette Ave. in Brooklyn with her mother and her daughter.

1930 US Census for Brooklyn, Kings County, New York
Schuler, Anna

The head of the household was her mother, Helen Koeberle, age 62 and a widow. Born in New York, her parents were German. Below Anna's name was her daughter, Helen's granddaughter, June Schuler, age 11, born in New York. Anna was age 36, married since age 25, and also born in New York. But the prize was learning her occupation: Musician, Orchestra. 

Ten years later in the 1940 census, Helen Koeberle was still living at the same address in Brooklyn but Anna and June Schuler turned up in Islip, New York, a small town on the Atlantic coast of Long Island about 50 miles east of Brooklyn, where they were listed as lodgers. In a decade Anna had gained 12 years, and listed her age as 48. June Schuler was now 21 but her birthplace had moved from New York to New Jersey. She worked as a waitress at a restaurant. Anna's occupation? Musician, Entertainer.

Buffalo NY Commercial
8 October 1912

Al Reeves's "Big Beauty Show" had a similar format to Phil Ott's Cracker Jacks revue. In October it played Buffalo, New York at the Garden Theatre. "Stunningly gowned soubrettes, many clever comedians and a host of pretty chorus girls combine to make this one of the best and most attractive shows at the Garden this season. From beginning to end there is not a dull moment in the play. The songs are catchy and tuneful and the ensemble numbers are right up-to-the-minute...Anita, the wizard of the violin, is the extra attraction with the company. She was received with much applause."

 

The theatre even added a special feature for the World Series which began on October 8th by erecting a large electric score board that would show every play on the diamond. {The Boston Red Sox faced the New York Giants and took the championship in eight games(!) beating the Giants four games to three (with one tied game!)}

Reeves's show seems to have opened in Brooklyn around the late summer of 1912 with Anita as a side act, but the company very quickly hit the burlesque circuit traveling to Kansas City, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; and other places in the Midwest before returning to New York. Though Anita got favorable mention in the show's brief reviews, they rarely described her act. Her music was hardly noted, except to say that people enjoyed it. This was the last era of sentimental American music before jazz scrambled everything up in the 1920s. In 1912, ragtime styles were already a bit old fashioned and had never really become as dominant influence on musicals and theater music as jazz would do, so I don't think Anita ever played anything resembling dixieland or ragtime. During her first tour a reviewer said she played a light opera selection followed by an encore of Robert Schumann's "Träumerei" (Reverie), in an arrangement for violin of a movement from his piano set "Scenes from Childhood".  It's a slow sentimental melody that I suppose could be interpreted in dance too. 

 

As for Anita's oriental dancing she was once reported as an "exceedingly graceful toe dancer" which I imagine as being more like ballet than tap dancing. This was the age when Isadora Duncan, (1877–1927), the American dancer, choreographer, and pioneer of modern contemporary dance introduced audiences to new terpsichore art forms. It was also a time when exotic foreign fashions were also changing our culture, even in places far removed from the "Orient". I suspect Anita's style was a variation on the traditional burlesque shimmy and shake moves.

 

Considering the frenetic energy exhibited in a burlesque show it's not impossible that Anita's purpose in the company was to provide wholesome cultivated charm to contrast with the comic slapstick and jaunty merriment of the other acts. But in any case Anita evidently caught the show business bug on this first tour with Al Reeves's company as she remained on the bill for a full season. In 1913 she joined George Auger's company, followed by Andy Lewis's show in 1914. 

 

So my photograph from December 1915 shows a seasoned entertainer, a veteran trouper, even though she was only age 21, (or 23 if the truth were known.) Her act was not especially unique, as longtime readers will remember my story from last October, Dancing Violinists, which featured two photos of dancing/skating violin players. But they started some years after Anita's start in 1912 which I think makes her the real pioneer of this kind of act.

Finding Anna—Anita Koeberle Schuler's letter from 1963 was a thrill but it was matched by finding her picture from 1912. She isn't holding her violin and her costume is less sparkly but she's got the same captivating gaze.

 

St Joseph MO Gazette
8 September 1912

 

After the 1916 season, Anita the dancing violinist, disappeared from burlesque theater notices. I have been unable to find Anna Koeberle Schuler in any documents or records except for the 1930 and 1940 censuses so I can't present a very definitive biography for her. I know nothing about her parents, her marriage, her children, or even when she died. Not everything can be uncovered in the newspaper archives.

 

I'm intrigued that she remained a musician and played in an orchestra. But what kind? Did she join a women's orchestra? A society dance orchestra?  A country music radio band? More research is required. Perhaps her violin teacher remembers.

 

But just being able to give Anita's photograph a full name and place her burlesque stage career in the context of her time is reward enough for me.

 

Smile for the camera. please.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone always tries to keep on their toes.