That Was Entertainment
Once framed and hung in a Prairie Village kitchen, this single
column of yellowed 1910 Kansas City Star newsprint
heralds last century’s theatrical amusements and serves as a testament
to a time before Kansas City theatergoers were primarily treated to
out-of-town talent of the faded-sitcom variety. The vaudeville era
brought us Eddie Foy, Fannie Brice, Jack Benny, Fred and Adele Astaire,
John Charles, Will Rogers, Ethel Barrymore, the Ziegfeld Follies, and
Chauncey Olcott singing “My Wild Irish Rose.” Here’s a peek back nearly
a century.
The Globe Theater,
1112 Walnut
The best evidence that these ads hail from 1910 comes from the Globe’s cheery announcement: “Now Open — Everything New.” In 1910, Kansas City’s Globe Theater reopened after a couple of years as the Majestic. A 1,000-seat theater in a converted firehouse, the new Globe offered vaudeville and movies until its demolition in 1913. Typical amusements included the Car Comedy Quartette, a bicycle act called the Lefevers, and “Billy Browning, the Patriotic Jew.” The original Globe became Klein’s department store. Just down the street at 13th Street and Walnut, now the spot for Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s Copaken Stage, a second Globe opened in 1913. In 1927, it screened Kansas City’s first “talking picture”: John Barrymore in Don Juan.
The Orpheum, Ninth Street and Main
The Orpheum that promised “Always the Best Show in Town” in 1910 was not long for this world. In 1914, a new Orpheum opened at 12th Street and Baltimore, a spectacular theater modeled after the Paris Opera House, while this Orpheum languished without a tenant until its razing in 1922. (The fancy, upgraded one is also gone, swallowed up by the Muehlebach Hotel.) Like the Gayety (see below), the 1910 Orpheum boasted its own orchestra, and like the Globe, it screened movies — or, in the Orpheum’s case, “The Latest Novelties in Moving Pictures” in its Kinodrome. Vaudeville offerings in 1910 also included Clown Zertho’s dogs and his “eight geisha girls,” an equestrian review, “dainty English singer” Lily Lena and blackface comedian Al Herman. Harry Truman served as an usher here.
The Gayety, 12th Street and Wyandotte
Al Reeves and his traveling burlesque show peddled the usual complement of singers,
comedians and whatnot, with an emphasis on the banjo skills of Reeves himself. (A Star reviewer also praised Almeda Fowler, one of Reeves’ Big Beauties, as “a neat toe dancer.”) In his song “Give Me Credit, Boys,” Reeves
famously claimed to hail from whatever town he happened to be playing. The Gayety management team — the same guys who had run the old Majestic — knew that it took more than Reeves or shows like Teddy in the Jungle to thrive in show business. Other 1910 ads proclaim, “No smoking allowed during summer; 15 degrees cooler than outside.” The Gayety opened in 1909 and closed in 1935. Like the Orpheum, it eventually gave way to a Muehlebach expansion.
The Grand, 704 Walnut
A classier joint that opened in 1891, the Grand offered shows that made Reeves’ Big Beauties look deeply innocent. In 1910, the Grand’s top ticket was “The Clansman,” the wildly popular pro-Klan romance based on Thomas F. Dixon’s bestselling novel. “The Clansman” featured a 75-person cast; its ads bragged that this was its first KC engagement at “reduced prices.” (Earlier productions cost $2, while this one topped out at a buck.) I’d much rather have caught “The Alaskan,” a musical comedy from summer 1910 that promised “A Regular Snowball Battle! Audience Vs. Chorus Girls!” The Grand became a garage in 1926.
The Shubert, 10th Street and Baltimore
A 1,600-seat house built in 1906, the Shubert hosted the theatrical event of 1907: Bertha Kalich’s turn in Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, which inspired lines around the block. As a 1951 letter writer to Landon Laird’s Star column “About Town” raves, “The ensuing burst of applause was the most vociferous ever before or since ever saw or heard in any kind of audience.” July 1910 featured less edifying fare such as Lyman H. Howe’s “Thrilling Motorboat Races” and a “Ride Up The Eiffel Tower.” An ad from later in the year promises: “The Midget Circus, Logging in Quebec, Making a Piano.” According to Felicia Hardison Londré’s invaluable history The Enchanted Years of the Stage, Al Jolson himself appeared in 11 musicals at the Shubert before its demolition in 1936.
The Century, 12th Street and Central
This Star ad seems demure compared with what the Century ran in The Post: “The Only Real Burlesque House in KC.” In April 1910, the Century presented Miner’s American Burlesquers and Lura Bennett, “Champion Woman Wrestler of the World.” This was immediately topped in May with the Lady Buccaneers, who are further described as “Naughty Nautical Brigands” and “Frolicsome Feminine Pirates.” Originally christened the Standard, the Century proper opened in 1902. Besides its frolics, it also offered vaudeville, prizefights and (upon its purchase by the Shubert brothers in the 1920s) what we might call legitimate theater. That couldn’t last, of course. By the time it was shuttered for good in the ’70s, a theater that once hosted Fanny Brice was reduced to strippers and porn.
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