1.14 - Proctor's 23rd Street Theater in 1905
Astaires Would Have Seen Many Stars Just a Block from Their Boarding House
During the year the Astaires stayed in the boarding house on 23rd Street, there were only two busy theaters in what just 10 years earlier had been the theatrical center of Manhattan: Proctor’s 23rd Street and the Grand Opera House. By 1900 F.F. Proctor had four theaters in Manhattan and a growing national chain. Built in 1889 with a seating capacity of 1,550, the theater at 135 W. 23rd featured gilded railings, velvet draperies, red-toned walls, and a gray-blue ceiling. Embedded in the sidewalk were large brass letters spelling out PROCTOR’S. Starting as a legitimate theater, it switched to vaudeville in 1892, and Proctor soon began touting it as the “Ladies Club Theatre” with a daily list of 20 acts running continuously from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Proctor flooded the city with advertising placing cards in shop windows, trolley cars, hotel news-stands and elevated trains with the slogan “After Breakfast Go to Proctor’s / After Proctor’s Go to Bed.” Proctor’s press agent reportedly trained 200 parrots to repeat the words “After Breakfast Go to Proctor’s” and offered the birds as prizes at each performance (Marston and Feller 50).
By 1895 early moving pictures had become a standard part of each week’s bill. During 1905 when the Astaires were living in a boarding house and beginning their dancing lessons with Claude Alviene two blocks to the west, hundreds of different acts appeared on Proctor’s stage, which had gained a reputation as America’s leading vaudeville theater and the “Home of Novelty” for its varied and original programs (Marston and Feller 93).
Not only were the bills varied, but the theater’s reputation was family and child friendly. In a biography of Proctor, one of his managers recalled that mothers would send their children to Proctor’s after breakfast with a lunch bundle telling them to stay all day because “It’s safer for them in the theater than in the street.” Mothers might arrive later in the day seeking their children, and the manager would announce from the stage she was looking for her children. "We had a mighty good sprinkling of these children who stayed and stayed," the manager recalled. "But even though these kids saw three shows a day, it didn't work any hardship on us. These young 'guests' filled up only a certain small percentage of seats that the regular audience wouldn't have occupied. So we were glad to have them" (Marston and Feller 50).
A few months after the Astaires arrived on 23rd Street, Proctor’s changed its continuous vaudeville programs starting at 11 a.m. to two-a-day, starting at 12:30 p.m. and wrapping up by 10:45 p.m. Day prices were 25¢ or 50¢; night and reserved seats 75¢ (Theatres: Proctor's 29). Typically, there would be up to 10 acts plus a motion picture or stereopticon slide slow. The change most likely occurred because of Proctor’s increasing focus on “all-star vaudeville,” using famous artists who had previously been featured in legitimate theatres on Broadway and a growing scarcity of small-time “chasers,” who were relied upon to clear late stayers from the seats during the supper hours (“Proctor Abandons ‘Continuous’”).
In 1905, among the most popular acts were the Three Keatons, featuring the 9-year-old Buster Keaton, whose knock-about comedy act appeared in both early February and December. The longest run was by Carlotta the Marvel, a daredevil bicyclist who over the course of a nine-week appearance looped the loop 108 times without a mishap (“Last Weeks Bills” 18 March 1905).
During 1905 Proctor’s bills featured more than 50 different artists who would later appear with the Astaires during the next 12 years when they toured vaudeville or during their 15 years dancing on Broadway. These included acrobats (the Wilton Brothers, the Three Yoscarrys, Mazuz & Mazette, the Melvin Brothers), animal acts (Sammy Watson’s Farmyard), tramp jugglers (James Harrigan), minstrels (Lew Dockstader and Lew Hawkins), singers (Lydia Barry, Eckert & Berg, Clarice Vance), and a slew of comics, including Ben Welch, Allen Searle, Bert Leslie, Charley Grapewin, Al Raymond & Frank Caverly, Toto the Clown, and Al Shean, the uncle of the Marx Brothers.
In September 1905, the young brother and sister act Harry & Eva Puck (who were sometimes billed as the Two Little Pucks or Puck & Puck), appeared at Proctor’s for a week. In less than a year, Fred and Adele would be on the bill with them in June 1906 at Young’s Pier in Atlantic City. The two teams would share the bill again 10 years later at Morrison’s in Rockaway Beach. Harry and Eva would split up just a few years later, but the Astaires would continue to encounter them. On October 19, 1919, Eva would appear with the Astaires on a Sunday night benefit for the Bide-a-Wee Home for Friendless Animals. On December 21, 1924, Harry Puck would appear at an Apollo Theatre benefit in a scene from the Broadway show My Girl, while the Astaires would perform a routine from one of their biggest Broadway hits, Lady, Be Good! Eva would later join the vaudeville dance team of Sammy White & Lou Clayton, who would appear with the Astaires in vaudeville in 1915 and in their second Broadway revue The Passing Show of 1918. Eva married Sammy White in 1922, and together they appeared in Show Boat in the role of dancers Frank Schultz and Ellie May Chipley. Harry Puck went on to be a successful choreographer, composer, songwriter and music publisher. He would compose the music for the song “Where Did You Get That Girl?” which Fred Astaire would sing in the film Three Little Words (1950), dancing with Vera Ellen. Two years before the Astaires arrived in New York, the Pucks had been blocked from performing by enforcement of the child labor laws, an issue that would also keep the young Astaires from performing in Manhattan and other large cities until their late teens.
Other acts would have more tenuous future connections with the Astaires. Robert T. Haines, who played Proctor’s in July in a short play titled “The Ingrate,” would be on the bill of an Actors Equity Association benefit with the Astaires in 1922 and would have a bit part as a waiter in the film Easter Parade (1948). Nearly a dozen of the male stars who performed at Proctor’s in 1905 and would later appear on stage with the Astaires would also be fellow members of The Lambs Club with Fred, who was elected a member in 1922: Will Cressy of the comedy team Cressy & Dayne, Lew Dockstader, James Doyle (of Doyle & Dixon), Eddie Foy, Robert T. Haines, John Hyams (of McIntyre & Hyams), James T. Powers, J.C. Nugent, and James J. (“Gentleman Jim”) Corbett, the former heavyweight champion. Jack Norworth, another future Lamb, appeared at Proctors in December 1905 several years before he became famous with his songs “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” While Norworth would never appear on stage with the Astaires, they would share space on the cover of Variety on March 30, 1907, when the Astaires had been appearing on vaudeville stages for just over a year.
Three of the 1905 acts from Proctor’s 23rd Street would appear on stage with the Astaires three years later when they returned to Omaha: Violet Black, Ben Welch, and Foy & Clark. Four 1905 Proctor’s alumni would appear with the Astaires in a December engagement at Keith’s in Washington, D.C.: Walter C. Kelly, Valerie Berger, James Doyle & Harland Dixon, and Carter DeHaven. The Washington appearance with DeHaven led to an awkward situation for the Astaires: both acts planned to use the same song, Ted Snyder’s “Love Made Me a Wonderful Detective.” In his autobiography, Fred describes the song as “a special-material sort of thing that nobody was using, and it suited our purpose perfectly” (Astaire 52). It had become a showstopper for the Astaires, but since the DeHavens were the headliners, the Astaires had to cut the number from their act (Astaire 56).
Two other acts appearing at Proctor’s in 1905 had future connections with the Astaires. Ned Wayburn’s Minstrel Misses appeared there in December. Wayburn had already been making a name for himself as a choreographer for early musicals, but his greatest fame was yet to come when he staged dances for the Shuberts’ Passing Shows and Ziegfeld’s Follies. In November 1906, he would also open a dancing school at 115 W. 42nd St. (“Ned Wayburn's School”), which the Astaires would attend (both in late 1906 and in 1911). He would suggest adjustments to their “Wedding Cake” act and would create the baseball act, which the Astaires would use in their second vaudeville circuit. In 1930, he would be the choreographer for Smiles, the worst flop the Astaires ever experienced.
Perhaps the longest connection for the Astaires from those 1905 Proctor’s alumni would be Victor Moore. He appeared at Proctor’s three different times during 1905 (April, July and September) before his break-through role in George M. Cohan’s 45 Minutes from Broadway in January 1906. Moore would be the comic star of the Astaires’ second big Gershwin hit, Funny Face. He, too, would be a member of The Lambs Club and would appear as Fred’s comic sidekick in the film Swing Time (1936).
At least two future superstars would appear at Proctor’s 23rd Street during 1905. In July there was Will Rogers, just a few months after garnering front-page publicity for lassoing a wild steer that had broken out of the arena and climbed into the viewing stands at Madison Square Garden on April 27, 1905. The New York Dramatic Mirror described his Proctor’s appearance as “a big hit … [he] does remarkable things with lassos. His finish, in which he keeps eighty feet of rope whirling while seated on a pony, without allowing any part of it to touch the floor, brought down the house” (“Last Week's Bills” 22 July 1905). In 10 years, he would take his vaudeville specialty to Broadway with shows such as Ned Wayburn’s Town Topics (September 1915 at the Century Theatre) and Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic (November 1915 on the roof of the New Amsterdam), followed by a half dozen appearances in Ziegfeld’s annual Follies. As a fellow Lambs Club member, he appeared with Fred in the April 1925 Lambs Spring Gambol, as well as the National Vaudeville Association benefit in May 1925 and a special tribute to Ziegfeld in 1933, the last stage show before the Ziegfeld Theatre on 54th Street became a movie house.
In May, a three-man team of 19-year-old, Asa Yoelson, his older brother Hirsch, and a wheelchair-bound singer named Joe Palmer were booked for Proctor’s, with a new name Jolson, Palmer, and Jolson. Having recently adopted blackface, Al Jolson and his compatriots performed a singing, dancing, and patter act. In just six years, Jolson would appear in his first Broadway show and begin his long association with the Shuberts and his career as a Broadway headliner. Eventually he would star in the first major sound film, The Jazz Singer (1927). He would appear on stage with the Astaires in a September 1918 Shubert Sunday concert and then with Fred in a Lambs Club gambol in 1925 and an Authors League Fund benefit in 1933.
During 1905 the biggest news in vaudeville and probably all along 23rd Street was the appearance of Lillian Russell at Proctor’s. Born in 1860, Russell had been singing in operettas and musicals since the early 1880s and was recognized as one of the era’s great beauties, performing in comic operas and musical plays on Broadway and London. By 1905 she had had three husbands, a notorious ongoing affair with financier “Diamond Jim” Brady, and a reputation for extravagance that helped define the Gilded Age. Her famous voice was beginning to weaken but not her ability to draw crowds. Proctor enticed her with a $3,000 per week contract and billed it as “Vaudeville’s Greatest Capture” (Marston and Feller 84). He announced plans to auction seats to the highest bidder for her October 2 debut (“Auction Sale of Seats”). Performing twice daily for five weeks to packed houses, she most likely staying at the Hotel Chelsea and dined at Cavanagh’s, both just a block away from the theater and another block or two from the Astaire’s boarding house. Fifteen years later at the beginning of their Broadway success, the Astaires would appear on stage with Russell at several special benefit concerts, including annual spring benefits for the Actors Equity Association from 1920 to 1922, the last taking place just a month before Russell died on June 6, 1922.
SOURCE
Astaire, Fred. Steps in Time. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959.
"Auction Sale of Seats." New York Clipper 23 September 1905: 16.
"Last Weeks Bills: Proctor's Twenty-Third Street." New York Dramatic Mirror 18 March 1905: 18.
"Last Week's Bills: Proctor's Twenty-Third Street." New York Dramatic Mirror 22 July 1905: 16.
Marston, William Moutlon, and Feller, John Henry. F.F. Proctor: Vaudeville Pioneer. New York: Richard R. Smith, 1943.
"Ned Wayburn's School." New York Dramatic Mirror 10 November 1906: 16.
"Proctor Abandons "Continuous"." New York Dramatic Mirror 29 April 1905: 18.
"Theatres: Proctor's." The Week in New York 2 July 1905: 29.