Going to the Theatre in Omaha

A theatre is all about illusion.

Even from outside at night
its bright lights attract our curiosity
and invite us in to see something unique,
something stimulating, something amusing.
It might be in Paris or London or New York,
or even in Omaha, Nebraska,

but the promise is the same.
Come and be entertained.

This postcard of the
Empress Theatre by Night, Omaha, Neb
was addressed to
 Miss Ruth L. Phillips of Alliance, Nebraska,
 c/o  St. Agnes Academy.
The writer flipped her message and,
as is still the habit in modern times, ran out of space on the card.

Omaha, Mar 13

                                                             My Dear Ruth:-

                                                             How are you.  I am well

                                                             & hope you are the same

                                                             Mrs. A, Grandma, & Gusta

                                                       & little Florence &

                                                       I all went to the Empress

                                                       yesterday afternoon it

                                                       was real good, & to

                                                       day Grandma & I &

                                                       Mrs. Anderson are going

                                                       to the matinee at Brandies (sic)

                                                       to see Eva Tanguay.

                                                       They want me to come

                                                       after Gusta now

                                                       stay so I will go up

                                                       there for Papa may come

                                                       anytime so address

                                                       my letter to Gusta's

                                                       2420 Hamilton St.

                                                       love  your Mama

Omaha NE Daily Bee
8 March 1914

Mrs. Phillips and her little group first went to the Empress Theatre for it's vaudeville variety show. It was located at 15th Street and Douglas Street in Omaha, Nebraska. On the week they were there the show opened with the Metropole Four, classy harmony singers, followed by the Anker Brothers, a pair of gymnastic sailors; Wolf and Zadella, "Odd Antics"; the Grace and Rose Ayres Trio, novelty roller skaters; and "the best of photoplays, always first run."  There were four shows daily at 2:00, 3:, 7;30 and 9:00. Admission was 10¢, reserved seats, 10¢ extra. 

In March 1914 the Empress Theatre had been in business for only fourteen months, having opened in January 1913. The management boasted that its building's construction of reinforced concrete, steel, and brick with 17 exits made it absolutely fireproof. The  theater was also equipped with an elevator that could take patrons from the ground floor to the mezzanine and balcony floors. Tickets for all 1,492 seats were the same price, though for popular shows getting reserved seats was probably worth the extra premium. 

There was a "first class orchestra" that played "high grade music" and accompanied the "pictures", i.e. silent movies, as well as the vaudeville acts. The orchestra was augmented with a "Cathedral organ" too. During weekdays shows were continuous from noon until 11 at night, so patrons could enter at any time. The Empress management claimed, "Nothing but the cleanest of acts will be presented They will be of high quality and please the most fastidious. We guarantee the moral tone of our entertainment and cater especially to ladies and children."  

Just a month earlier in February 1914, the theater opened the Empress Gardens Cafe & Delicatessen located in an immense two-level space beneath the theatre ground floor. On the menu were "oysters, broiled and boiled lobster, Welsh rarebits, broiled spring chicken, macaroni Au Gratin, spaghetti Italienne, salads, sandwiches, cold meat" and "complete soda fountain service". A buffet luncheon cost 25¢. a Table d'Hote dinner was 50¢.

_ _ _

Omaha NE Daily Bee
15 February 1914

Omaha NE Daily News
8 March 1914

No doubt Mrs. Phillips and her company  heard about a thrilling mishap at the Empress that occurred just a week before. During an evening performance Peter Taylor, a lion tamer, was injured by one of his eight lions which suddenly leaped at him just as he was leaving the cage, slamming the door with such force that the man was nearly knocked unconscious. Evidently Taylor was accustomed to the risk and he returned the following afternoon, though he did not venture so close to his animals.  

_ _ _

Omaha is situated on the western side of the Missouri River which separates Nebraska from Iowa. In 1910 it was a sizable city with a population of 124,096 citizens. The Empress Theatre on Douglas St. was just two blocks away from a notorious area of the city called the "Sporting District" where various establishments offering gambling, drinking and prostitution were controlled by a racketeer and political boss named Tom Dennison. In 1910 it was estimated that this red-light district had over 100 "houses of questionable character" and by 1918 at least 1,600 prostitutes working there. 

Opened in 1905 the Gayety Theatre, "Omaha's Fun Center", was in this district and though it originally presented "advanced vaudeville" when it was first known as the Burwood Theatre, by 1914 it was booking mainly burlesque acts, "nudge nudge, know what I mean?" In the Gayety's ad under the Empress' notice, Gertrude Hayes and her four dancing Brick Tops was probably an unsuitable entertainment for refined women like Mrs. Phillips. 

Instead she planned to see something more outrageous at the Brandeis. 

Omaha NE Daily Bee
8 March 1914

The Brandeis Theater was a block away from the Empress at 17th Street and Douglas Street. It was part of a large development in Omaha made by the Brandeis Department Store. Founded in Omaha by Jonas L. Brandeis in 1881, his company eventually operated fifteen chain stores in Nebraska. The theater was just a small addition to its nearby headquarters building. With 1,500 seats and a very large stage, the Brandeis catered to more sophisticated acts.  

Patrons at the previous week's shows saw  Montgomery and Stone in the musical fantasy The Lady of the Slipper, a three-act operetta with music by Victor Herbert. This show was based on the fairytale of Cinderella  and had premiered on Broadway on 28 October 1912 closing after 232 performances on 17 May 1913. It starred two comic actors, David C. Montgomery (1870–1917) and Fred A. Stone (1873–1959) who had a partnership that lasted 22 years performing in minstrel shows, vaudeville, musicals and operettas. Their most famous work was in a 1902 production of The Wizard of Oz where Montgomery played the Tin Man and Stone was Scarecrow.

It was followed by a play entitled Kismet, an Arabian Night by Edward Knoblauch and starring Otis Skinner.  This three-act play first opened in London in April 1911 and ran for 330 performances. Like many theatrical productions that played well in London this show was staged in New York for later that year. It opened on Christmas Day 1911 with the American actor, Otis Skinner (1858–1942) as Hajj the beggar. Skinner had such success with this role that he played it many times on stage and made both a silent film in 1920 and a sound movie in 1930.    

Meanwhile for those people who liked classical music there was a recital by the young Ukrainian violin virtuoso, Mischa Elman (1891–1967).  Those tickets were 50¢ to $2.00.  Elman was a child prodigy and began his concert career at a young age. He  is considered one of the great masters of the violin. 

But Mrs. Phillips was looking forward to seeing "the greatest drawing card known to the amusement world", the "dynamic, cyclonic" Eva Tanguay and her own "volcanic vaudeville". Ticket prices for her shows, matinees and evenings, ranged from 25¢, to 50¢, 75¢, $1.00, and $1.50.

_ _ _

Fred A. Stone as Scarecrow
and David C. Montgomery as the Tin Woodman
in the 1902 stage extravaganza The Wizard of Oz
Source: Wikipedia

Elsie Janis as Cinderella
with David C. Montgomery (left) as Punks and Fred A. Stone (right) as Spooks,
in Victor Herbert’s musical play, The Lady of the Slipper,
produced at the Globe Theatre, New York, 28 October 1912
Source: Wikipedia

1915 portrait of Mischa Elman (1891–1967)
Source: Wikipedia

Despite what this postcard's caption says, the Brandeis Theatre was on the corner of Douglas and Seventeenth Streets in Omaha. In this illustration of the imposing building at night it seems to outshine the moon. The theatre was across the street from the Brandeis department store and an underground tunnel below the street connected the two buildings. The theatre only occupied a part of the building, the ground floor and other floors offered retail and office space. It opened on 3 March 1910 as a theater for large stage productions. In 1933 it was taken over by the RKO corporation and converted into a cinema for motion pictures. It closed in April 1959 and was demolished by the end of that year.

This postcard was has no postmark but is addressed to
Miss Mai Marsh of Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The reference to the theatre in the message
leads me to believe it was written in 1910.

                                                 This Theatre was opened

                                                        March 3rd.  It is not so very

                                                        large but the furnishings

                                                        are costly & elegant –its

                                                        the finest in this part of the

                                                        country.

J R McFaren
1120 No 17th
Omaha

Omaha NE Daily News
8 March 1914

Considering that its population in 1914 was only around 150,000 residents, Omaha had an astonishing number of newspapers, some publishing both a morning and evening edition. There was the Omaha Daily News; the Omaha Daily Bee; the Omaha World Herald; the Omaha Excelsior; the Bohemian Osveta Americka; the Danish Danske Pioneer; the Swedish Omaha Posten; and the German Tägliche Omaha Tribüne, just to name a few. Entertainment news sold newspapers so reports on Omaha's theaters often included splendid montages of photos of the stars like this example from the 8 March 1914 edition of the Omaha Daily News. Wearing a huge feathered hat Eva Tanguay is on the left; Otis Skinner in his costume for Kismet is on the right; a closeup of Gertrude Hayes is squeezed in between them; and at the lower center is Mae Phelps, the ingénue in a vaudeville skit at the Orpheum theatre. 

Otis Skinner as Hajj in Kismet, 1912
Source: Library of Congress

Otis Skinner (1858–1942) was one of the great American stage actors of his era, appearing in Shakespearean roles like Shylock, Hamlet, Richard III and Romeo as well as playing numerous dramatic and comic roles in American plays. However it was his portrayal of Hajj the beggar in Kismet that made brought him the most acclaim. Otis Skinner appeared in a silent film version of Kismet in 1920, available on YouTube, where from the opening scene he commands attention to the story. In many ways this 1911 play became America's first introduction to Islamic culture. I think it is responsible for many of the romantic cliches of the Middle East which still persist in the 21st century.

Eva Tanguay (1878–1947)
in The Wild Girl, 1919
Source: The Internet

In 1914, Eva Tanguay (1878–1947) was a theatrical superstar like no other of her era. This Canadian singer with ginger hair became "The Queen of Vaudeville" attaining a level of popularity that made her one of the best known and highest paid entertainers in the 1900s. Born in Quebec but raised in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Eva began her stage career as a child actor in a touring production of Frances Hodgson Burnett's popular novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. Though her voice was of only average quality, it was her enthusiastic over-the-top style that caught audiences' attention. She developed a solo act that used brash suggestive songs that became great hits in this age when American music was evolving from sentimental romance to ragtime and eventually jazz.

Her celebrated song titles included "It's All Been Done Before but Not the Way I Do It", "I Want Someone to Go Wild with Me", "Go as Far as You Like", "That's Why They Call Me Tabasco", and her signature song from 1904, "I Don't Care". Eva Tanguay appeared as the headliner in Ziegfeld Follies and at the height of her career was earning $3,500 a week ($109,925 in 2022 dollars).  

Omaha NE World Herald
12 March 1914

As the result of business disputes with theater agencies, Tanguay set up her own company which is what she brought to Omaha. She took out a half-page advert for her variety show which had nine "Big Acts" which included comic dancer Johnny Ford who had recently become her husband in 1913. (The marriage did not last as they divorced in 1917.) 

In this show Eva came out three times singing and dancing in "The Waltz", a "Tango a-la-Tanguay" and, most audacious, an  interpretation of "Salome". This biblical character was made famous, or notorious, in Oscar Wilde's play and Richard Strauss's 1905 opera of the same name. I wrote about Strauss's Salome in my story from April 2022, Souvenirs of a Great Artist - Richard Strauss. Since then, Salome's infamous "Dance of the Seven Veils"  had been imitated by many burlesque dancers, though presumably never with Strauss' music. Tanguay's version was perhaps not as revealing as some, but still more titillating than anything the people of Omaha had seen in Otis Skinner's Kismet.

Eva Tanguay (1878–1947)
as Salome, 1913
Source: New York Public Library

A reviewer in the Omaha World-Herald wrote of Tanguay's show:
   "It was Eva's own particular vaudeville company, and it had a dash of her ginger vim all through it.  But even Johnny Ford couldn't turn out the super-abundance of energy—nervous, physical and every other kind—that Eva Tanguay managed to put over the footlights.  Age may have made Eva slightly less of a tireless jumping-jack, but the accent is on the "slightly", it isn't enough to be noticed.  She dance, she kicks, she sings, she shouts, she waves her arms and her feet and all the rest of her with a riotous abandon that is her own specialty, and, apparently, there is no need of a copyright, for none are able to quite duplicate it. 
   "'It's all been done before, but not as I'll do it, and before I'm done you'll agree with me."  So she sang in her opening number, and so it proved.  For instance, she did "Salome." Shades of Mary Garden!  It was a "Salome" all right, but it was more Eva Tanguay than anything elece.  Also, she tangoed.  The steps were the steps of the tango, but the ginger was Eva Tanguay's own, and none other's.
   "...Just what makes her funny is an unanswered question; it's too much of a conglomerate combination to enable exact analysis.  It is partly her smile, partly the toss of her head, partly the kick of her feet, partly her waving arms, partly her supple twisting body, but somewhere, back of it all, there is a suspicion that the actress really enjoys being foolish.  She doesn't take herself too seriously, and therefore it comes natural that other should do likewise."   

[Mary Garden (1874–1967) was a Scottish-American opera singer who performed Richard Strauss's Salome in Paris in its first French translation and sang it again in New York in 1909. During that performance she kissed the severed head of John the Baptist with such lust that it shocked the audience even more than her Dance of the Seven Veils which she performed in a bodystocking.]

Omaha NE Daily News
13 March 1914

The review in the Omaha Daily News came with a cartoon illustrating Eva Tanguay dancing and singing at the Brandeis Theatre along with her husband Johnny Ford (and another figure I'll get to in a minute.) The reviewer in this paper was a bit more critical.

   "If you don't like the Eva Tanguay brand of entertainment Eva doesn't care, for she has salted down a cool half million American dollars just to keep away the prowling wolf, and people are willing to pay more yearly to see her than they do to the chief executive of the country for holding down his job.
   "Miss Tanguay is not afraid of egotism, either.  The greater part of her songs consists in assuring you she is not as crazy as she appears to be, that she may have imitators, but they don' count, not to mention modest reference to the half million.  Miss Tanguay admits that her singing isn't musical, to which even her ardent admirers must agree.
   "But what matters it if she is in danger of rupturing a throat vessel or if she prances about the stage like the victim of the St. Vitus' dance? "there is method in my madness," sings Eva, and it all brings rapturous applause from audiences, Omaha providing its share on Thursday.
   "Outside of all idiosyncrasies, Miss Tanguay is plump and pretty, with a childlike and engaging smile.  She must also have the courage of her convictions, for she recently left the vaudeville stage because Ethel Barrymore was receiving a salary equal to hers, and the present tour under her own auspices is the result.
   "In addition to songs and a tango dance, Miss Tanguay does a  "Salome" scene with the head of John the Baptist that is as energetic as the rest of her work." 

[Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. She starred in stage, screen and radio productions in a career that spanned six decades. Ethel Barrymore was regarded as "The First Lady of the American Theatre"]

In another report of Eva Tanguay's "interpretation" of Salome, the reviewer revealed that there was a surprise, perhaps a direct reference to Mary Garden's performance in the opera, where the severed head of John the Baptist came alive, no doubt terrifying and hilarious at the same time.  

Eva tried acting in silent films, appearing in two short films, first in 1916 and then 1917, but without sound the movies could not convey her wild and irrepressible energy. In the Wall Street crash of 1929, she lost a fortune, around $2,000,000 and retired from show business shortly after that. She became ill and lost her sight to cataracts. Eva Tanguay died in Hollywood on January 11, 1947, aged 68. 

Eva may not be remembered now a century later, but readers can probably recognize several female entertainers of more recent time whose personal style resembles Eva Tanguay's. We take it for granted that some stage and screen artists are eccentric, wild and crazy people, but Eva was one of the first entertainers who used her natural excitement to became a household name in show business. 

And surely Mrs. Phillips came away with a story, if not a postcard too, to tell her family of that time she saw Eva Tanguay at the Brandeis Theatre in Omaha.

In 1922 Eva Tanguay made the only recording in her career
and it was of her hit song, "I Don't Care." 
Here is a YouTube video of the recording with pictures of Eva.

* * *

At the top of the Omaha Daily News cartoon is a sketch of one of the other cast members of Eva Tanguay's show. It shows a man blowing into a long horn with the caption: "M Gouget is certainly not wind broken." This attracted my attention because I have several French postcards of two instrumentalists, a husband and wife duo, that I featured in a story in September 2020 entitled, Les Gougets - The Fantastic Horn Duo. 

After searching for more reports on Eva Tanguay and the Gougets, I found enough references to them as a European act that I'm now convinced these unusual musical performers came to America in 1913-14 and joined Eva on her tour. Monsieur and Madam Gouget played a number of brass instruments, including several stretched out horns like the one in the sketch. M. Gouget was also adept at playing two trumpets or hunting horns simultaneously and could even play a long horn balanced vertically on his lips. This chance discovery now makes me wonder if in August 1914 they stayed in America or returned to France at the onset of the Great War.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where the best stories are told after it's dark.