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.