While it was most likely Macy’s, the New York Herald, and the Sixth Avenue El as well as the hotel’s moderate prices that attracted the Astaires to Herald Square, another lure for the theatrically minded family was the Savoy Theatre, adjoining the hotel at 112 W. 34th St. Originally named the Schley Music Hall, designed by Michael Bernstein, it opened on February 26, 1900, with 841 seats. Financed by “Big Tim” Sullivan, a Tammany Hall politician, the Schley was built within the walls of three town houses. Two on West 33rd Street were reshaped to hold the stage and auditorium, while the narrower house on 34th Street became the entrance. Less than eight months later (October 8, 1900), it reopened as the Savoy. Eventually it was leased to producer Charles Frohman, as the sixth of his playhouses in New York. After his interests moved farther uptown, the Savoy become a motion picture theater until it was demolished in 1952 (Morrison 32-33). Among the dozens of shows staged during its decade as a legitimate theater were musicals, comedies and serious dramas. In October 1900, a farce, The Military Maid, featured music by Alfred E. Aarons, and starred his wife, Josephine Hall. Their son Alex would eventually team with Vinton Freedley to produce three shows starring Fred and Adele Astaire: For Goodness Sake (1922), Lady, Be Good! (1924) and Funny Face (1927). In 1901, George M. Cohan’s first Broadway show, The Governor’s Son, played at the Savoy for just 32 performances (February 25-March 23). Dramas by W.B. Yeats. Lady Gregory, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edith Wharton also had brief runs at the theater.
Perhaps the biggest hit in the theater’s history was running when the Astaires had first arrived in Herald Square: Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (September 3, 1904 to January 1905). Included in the cast was Taylor Granville, who would appear on a vaudeville bill with the young Astaires in December 1909. Mrs. Wiggs was followed in mid-January 1905 by the comedy Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots, whose cast included Vincent Serrano, who appeared in an Actors Equity benefit with the Astaires in 1920, and Jay Wilson, who was in Fred and Adele’s last Broadway hit, The Band Wagon (1931). Augustus Thomas, one of the best-known writers of light comedy during this period, was the author of Mrs. Leffingwell’s Boots and would later be a fellow member of the Lambs Club with Fred and appear with him in the annual Lambs Gambol in 1925.
SOURCES
Morrison, William. Broadway Theatres: History and Architecture. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999.
Savoy Theatre. <https://www.ibdb.com/theatre/savoy-theatre-1494>.