How are Broadway shows capitalized?
Let us first realize what this basically entails: A Broadway show must be funded so that four weeks (five weeks for a musical) of rehearsals may be conducted. This is a period in which money is being paid out in abundance, but in which virtually no money is being taken in. The money for this period is called the "nut"
Then the show will open. In today's world of Broadway, tickets will be sold far in advance. A Broadway production is now a rather intricate piece of machinery--at least as far as selling tickets is concerned. Airlines, travel bureaus, hotels, and you name it are instruments for selling tickets to Broadway shows.
The "nut" referred to, though, is usually several million dollars. This is principally why so many Broadway shows run so long on the Main Stem (i.e., Broadway). Another reason is the fact that tourists from many countries are today the major audience for Broadway shows. A third one is that creative people (including producers) have developed a means of getting money all through the run of the show. This is in the form of "royalty points." In other words, the weekly grosses are dispersed as follows:
(1) Operating expenses (including, but not limited to) the salaries of all cast members. This also will include the theatre rental.
(2) Taxes
(3) Royalty Points
(4) Paying Off The Nut
in that order!
Now, let's finally get to the issue of how Broadway shows are capitalized . . .
The way(s) in which Broadway shows are capitalized has changed and changed and changed since the start of what might be called the Broadway theatre in the 1880s.
(1) At first--and this continued into the 1920s--shows were capitalized by the people who produced them. When one produced a Broadway show, one simply made sure that he (or she), together with some trusted wealthy friends, had the money necessary to mount the show. This was possible because the cost of producing shows was not astronomical, given the cost of living. Also, many producers owned or had access to one or more Broadway theatres.
(2) There was inflation in the 1920s. Broadway shows had, in the meantime, become more elaborate and therefore much more costly. The country, though, was very prosperous, and a good number of people knew who to go to in the Wall Street area if they had two or more top name performers for the show.
(3) We now come to the 1930s. The Depression. A number of top criminals who had made their fortunes in the prohibition laden 1920s had the money to fund Broadway shows. They might insist that one or more of their girlfriends have parts in the show, but that was simply part of doing business. Broadway survived.
(4) The 1950s was the epitome of Broadway shows financed by "small" investors who would contribute $10,000 or more to the show after viewing a "backer's audition." Ten or more of these investors, and your show was in rehearsals. Limited Partnerships was the legal term for this method of financing.
(5) Since the 1970s, Broadway shows have been capitalized by major companies, welded together by a managing director. Sometimes, Broadway theatre owning companies such as Jujamcyn have come in with money and a theatre.
Any enterprise that relies upon people and must pay those people a weekly salary is going to need a lot of money for capitalization, to keep running, and for profit. The ticket prices are out this world, but they are paid by upscale people--tourists, mostly, whether from inside the U.S. or from many other countries in different parts of the world.
And that is about it.
#americantheatrenetwork
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Sunday, November 19, 2017
THE REAL "TONY"
"Tony" was the way that intimates addressed Antoinette Perry, actress, director, and guiding spirit of the American Theatre Wing, an organization of theatre professionals World War II.
Mary Antoinette Perry was born in Denver, Colo., in 1888. Wishing to emulate the theatre successes of her aunts, she made her stage debut at sixteen. In 1906, when she was eighteen, "Tony" played opposite David Warfield in the latter's stage success, The Music Master.
In 1909, she married Frank Frueauff and retired at the age of twenty-one. Following her husband's death in 1922, she returned to the stage, appearing on Broadway in Mister Pitt, Minick by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, The Dunce Boy, Engaged!, Caught, The Masque of Venice, The Ladder, and Electra.
At forty, she turned to directing, forming an alliance with Brock Pemberton, who had produced and directed the first American production of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1922. They co-directed Paul Osborn's Hotbed, which starred William Faversham. It was a flop, running only nineteen performances, but Pemberton and Perry had formed a very valuable alliance.
Perry's first solo directing effort was Katherine Roberts' Divorce Me, Dear, produced by Sidney M. Biddell. Another flop--seven performances--but Tony's skill as a director was becoming more and more appreciated. Her next effort, Christopher Comes Across, a rather wild farce about Columbus, was another quick failure, but Broadwayites were quick to fault the author of the play, Hawthorne Hurst, rather than Miss Perry.
Then--success! Lawrence Riley's Personal Appearance, with Gladys George as a movie star making a personal appearance in Scranton, Pa., ran for 501 performances at the Henry Miller Theatre. The comedy was the first big hit of the 1934-35 season, and the published version of the play was dedicated to Pemberton and Perry--once again, the co-directors.
Pemberton produced Ceiling Zero, a comedy-drama about pilots, but this time, Perry received solo credit as director. The play, with brilliant special effects and a cast headed by Osgood Perkins, just made it over the "hit" line with 104 performances. Tony was beginning to hit her stride.
Antoinette Perry was getting better and better as a director. Kiss the Boys Good-Bye, by Clare Boothe, was at once a send-up of the current attempts to find someone to play Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of Gone With the Wind and an attack on what Miss Boothe called "southernism," which she claimed was a possible "inspiration or forerunner on Facism." Tony's direction was nothing short of first rate, and the comedy ran for 286 performances, one of the true hits of the 1938-39 theatrical season.
Lady in Waiting, which starred Gladys George, was Tony's next Pemberton assignment, and was "almost a hit," running for eighty-seven performances. Out From Under, with John Alexander, Ruth Weston, and Vivian Vance, was a quick flop, as was Glamour Preferred (eleven performances). Cuckoos on the Hearth ran only sixteen weeks, but Janie, a play about teenagers on the order of Junior Miss. was a hit, running for 642 performances. Pillar to Post was a wartime comedy that misfired, running only 31 performances.
Tony was, arguably, Broadway's only top female director not at the head of her own company (as opposed to Eva Le Gallienne). Almost all of her assignments were given her by producer Brock Pemberton, and the two were a familiar team to those familiar with the Broadway stage. It is, perhaps, ironic that their most emphatic success turned out to be the last play Perry ever directed. That was Harvey, which put Frank Fay back on top as a major name on Broadway.
Fay played Elwood P. Dowd, whose companion, seen only by himself, was a 6 ft. 3-1/2 in. tall rabbit (actually a pooka, a half animal-half human figure prominent in ancient Celtic mythology). Fay (unlike James Stewart in the film version) played Dowd as an alcoholic--a drunk. Unlike Fay himself, however, Elwood was a happy, pleasant drunk; Frank Fay, under Perry's smart direction, did not overplay it. The result was what many have called the greatest performance in the history of the Broadway stage.
When the U.S. entered World War II, The American Wing took the lead in organizing entertainments for American servicemen. Pemberton, while still in his twenties, had been one of the founders of The Wing in 1917, and Tony worked with superhuman energy for it during World War II. These were, in many ways, her finest hours.
When the war ended, Tony became ill. She died, of cancer, in 1948; she was not yet sixty years of age.
Her friends in the American Theatre Wing called for a series of awards to be made in her name and in her honor, to the plays, directors, actors, etc., of each season, in perpetuity. They were named the Antoinette Perry Awards--known by all as the Tony Awards.
This year, 2017, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the American Theatre Wing. The Wing was founded by seven suffragettes, but Brock Pemperton, then twenty-nine years old, was an important force in The Wing's early years.
It is hard to know the real Antoinette Perry. Her work for the American Theatre Wing, like her work as a director, was largely bound up with Brock Pemberton. That makes sense; the theatre is and always was a very social business. (Tony never remarried after the death of her husband.) What cannot be denied is that Antoinette Perry was greatly appreciated--one might even say beloved--by, not just those in the American Theatre Wing, but by all those in the theatre.
May the Antoinette Perry Awards continue to bring honor and notice to its many recipients--and, of course, to Tony.
#americantheatrenetwork
Mary Antoinette Perry was born in Denver, Colo., in 1888. Wishing to emulate the theatre successes of her aunts, she made her stage debut at sixteen. In 1906, when she was eighteen, "Tony" played opposite David Warfield in the latter's stage success, The Music Master.
In 1909, she married Frank Frueauff and retired at the age of twenty-one. Following her husband's death in 1922, she returned to the stage, appearing on Broadway in Mister Pitt, Minick by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, The Dunce Boy, Engaged!, Caught, The Masque of Venice, The Ladder, and Electra.
At forty, she turned to directing, forming an alliance with Brock Pemberton, who had produced and directed the first American production of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1922. They co-directed Paul Osborn's Hotbed, which starred William Faversham. It was a flop, running only nineteen performances, but Pemberton and Perry had formed a very valuable alliance.
Perry's first solo directing effort was Katherine Roberts' Divorce Me, Dear, produced by Sidney M. Biddell. Another flop--seven performances--but Tony's skill as a director was becoming more and more appreciated. Her next effort, Christopher Comes Across, a rather wild farce about Columbus, was another quick failure, but Broadwayites were quick to fault the author of the play, Hawthorne Hurst, rather than Miss Perry.
Then--success! Lawrence Riley's Personal Appearance, with Gladys George as a movie star making a personal appearance in Scranton, Pa., ran for 501 performances at the Henry Miller Theatre. The comedy was the first big hit of the 1934-35 season, and the published version of the play was dedicated to Pemberton and Perry--once again, the co-directors.
Pemberton produced Ceiling Zero, a comedy-drama about pilots, but this time, Perry received solo credit as director. The play, with brilliant special effects and a cast headed by Osgood Perkins, just made it over the "hit" line with 104 performances. Tony was beginning to hit her stride.
Antoinette Perry was getting better and better as a director. Kiss the Boys Good-Bye, by Clare Boothe, was at once a send-up of the current attempts to find someone to play Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of Gone With the Wind and an attack on what Miss Boothe called "southernism," which she claimed was a possible "inspiration or forerunner on Facism." Tony's direction was nothing short of first rate, and the comedy ran for 286 performances, one of the true hits of the 1938-39 theatrical season.
Lady in Waiting, which starred Gladys George, was Tony's next Pemberton assignment, and was "almost a hit," running for eighty-seven performances. Out From Under, with John Alexander, Ruth Weston, and Vivian Vance, was a quick flop, as was Glamour Preferred (eleven performances). Cuckoos on the Hearth ran only sixteen weeks, but Janie, a play about teenagers on the order of Junior Miss. was a hit, running for 642 performances. Pillar to Post was a wartime comedy that misfired, running only 31 performances.
Tony was, arguably, Broadway's only top female director not at the head of her own company (as opposed to Eva Le Gallienne). Almost all of her assignments were given her by producer Brock Pemberton, and the two were a familiar team to those familiar with the Broadway stage. It is, perhaps, ironic that their most emphatic success turned out to be the last play Perry ever directed. That was Harvey, which put Frank Fay back on top as a major name on Broadway.
Fay played Elwood P. Dowd, whose companion, seen only by himself, was a 6 ft. 3-1/2 in. tall rabbit (actually a pooka, a half animal-half human figure prominent in ancient Celtic mythology). Fay (unlike James Stewart in the film version) played Dowd as an alcoholic--a drunk. Unlike Fay himself, however, Elwood was a happy, pleasant drunk; Frank Fay, under Perry's smart direction, did not overplay it. The result was what many have called the greatest performance in the history of the Broadway stage.
When the U.S. entered World War II, The American Wing took the lead in organizing entertainments for American servicemen. Pemberton, while still in his twenties, had been one of the founders of The Wing in 1917, and Tony worked with superhuman energy for it during World War II. These were, in many ways, her finest hours.
When the war ended, Tony became ill. She died, of cancer, in 1948; she was not yet sixty years of age.
Her friends in the American Theatre Wing called for a series of awards to be made in her name and in her honor, to the plays, directors, actors, etc., of each season, in perpetuity. They were named the Antoinette Perry Awards--known by all as the Tony Awards.
This year, 2017, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the American Theatre Wing. The Wing was founded by seven suffragettes, but Brock Pemperton, then twenty-nine years old, was an important force in The Wing's early years.
It is hard to know the real Antoinette Perry. Her work for the American Theatre Wing, like her work as a director, was largely bound up with Brock Pemberton. That makes sense; the theatre is and always was a very social business. (Tony never remarried after the death of her husband.) What cannot be denied is that Antoinette Perry was greatly appreciated--one might even say beloved--by, not just those in the American Theatre Wing, but by all those in the theatre.
May the Antoinette Perry Awards continue to bring honor and notice to its many recipients--and, of course, to Tony.
#americantheatrenetwork
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
TWO GREAT PRODUCERS
Morosco
Producer Oliver Morosco got rich quick with the play, The Bird of Paradise, in 1911. This play was written by Richard Walton Tully, and Morosco first produced it with Bessie Barriscale in the lead role in Los Angeles. The next step was New York, where Laurette Taylor played the lead--her biggest success until Peg O' My Heart (another Morosco production) the following year.
Morosco sent a company--sometimes two companies--of The Bird of Paradise on tour every year from 1912 through 1922,
The Bird of Paradise was the subject of the longest legal battle in the history of the American theatre when Mrs. Grace A. Fendler sued Morosco and Tully for alleged plagiarism shortly after the play was produced on Broadway. The suit was eventually decided in favor of the latter when the mother of William Randolph Hearst declared that Tully had written the first draft of the play in her California hacienda. The suit, however, was financially draining.
"And a typical Morosco cast" was the line that many advertisements for Morosco produced plays and shows bore in the 1910s and '20s. In 1917, the Shuberts named their newly built theatre on West 45th Street the "Morosco," who had helped them break the virtual monopoly of the Theatrical Syndicate. The opening show was Morosco's musical, Canary Cottage. (The theatre was torn down in 1982.)
He was one of the most consistently successful producers in the history of the American stage, equally at home with plays and musicals. Lombardi Ltd., Help Wanted, and One of Us, were among his many straight plays, while his musicals included Pretty Mrs. Smith, So Long Letty, Linger Longer Letty, and Love Dreams.
Morosco's fall began when he became involved with real estate deals like "Morosco Town," for which he purchased land in California. The idea was to produce plays and motion pictures on the land for about half the usual cost. Morosco wound up declaring personal bankruptcy in 1926, with liabilities of $1,033,000 and assets of $200.
Some of Morosco's other troubles centered around women; he was married four times and became a helpless alcoholic years before his death in 1945.
Morosco's story may be the greatest rise-and-fall story in the history of the American theatre.
Dillingham
Charles B. Dillingham is not a name most people--even theatre goers--know today. He was, however, one of Broadway's top producers in the 1920s.
He was an excellent producer, having been associated with Charles Frohman. (Frohman, a legendary producer and director, went down on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans in 1917, bringing the U.S. into the war in Europe.) Dillingham produced hit after hit on Broadway--The Little Princess, Miss Dolly Dollars, Miss 1917, A Bill of Divorcement, Good Times, Marilyn Miller in Sunny, Fred Stone in Criss Cross, and many others.
Dillingham, like many others, fell from grace. In 1927, he produced a show titled Lucky, starring Mary Eaton (best known today for her role as "Polly Potter" in the Paramount film version of The Cocoanuts, starring the Four Marx Brothers). Dillingham reportedly invested $250,000 of his own money in that show--a great amount of money to invest in any one show at that time . Lucky was a bomb. Dillingham went on; New Faces of 1934, the first of Leonard Sillman's series of New Faces, was co-produced by Dillingham. It was not commercially successful, and Dillingham died shortly after the show opened.
In his day, Charles B. Dillingham was a king, a charming man who cut a wide and most respectable swath in the Broadway theatre of his time.. Now he is forgotten, Alas, such is the case with almost everybody in that most ephemeral of glamour spots, the stage.
Here's to you, Mr. Dillingham.
#americantheatrenetwork
Producer Oliver Morosco got rich quick with the play, The Bird of Paradise, in 1911. This play was written by Richard Walton Tully, and Morosco first produced it with Bessie Barriscale in the lead role in Los Angeles. The next step was New York, where Laurette Taylor played the lead--her biggest success until Peg O' My Heart (another Morosco production) the following year.
Morosco sent a company--sometimes two companies--of The Bird of Paradise on tour every year from 1912 through 1922,
The Bird of Paradise was the subject of the longest legal battle in the history of the American theatre when Mrs. Grace A. Fendler sued Morosco and Tully for alleged plagiarism shortly after the play was produced on Broadway. The suit was eventually decided in favor of the latter when the mother of William Randolph Hearst declared that Tully had written the first draft of the play in her California hacienda. The suit, however, was financially draining.
"And a typical Morosco cast" was the line that many advertisements for Morosco produced plays and shows bore in the 1910s and '20s. In 1917, the Shuberts named their newly built theatre on West 45th Street the "Morosco," who had helped them break the virtual monopoly of the Theatrical Syndicate. The opening show was Morosco's musical, Canary Cottage. (The theatre was torn down in 1982.)
He was one of the most consistently successful producers in the history of the American stage, equally at home with plays and musicals. Lombardi Ltd., Help Wanted, and One of Us, were among his many straight plays, while his musicals included Pretty Mrs. Smith, So Long Letty, Linger Longer Letty, and Love Dreams.
Morosco's fall began when he became involved with real estate deals like "Morosco Town," for which he purchased land in California. The idea was to produce plays and motion pictures on the land for about half the usual cost. Morosco wound up declaring personal bankruptcy in 1926, with liabilities of $1,033,000 and assets of $200.
Some of Morosco's other troubles centered around women; he was married four times and became a helpless alcoholic years before his death in 1945.
Morosco's story may be the greatest rise-and-fall story in the history of the American theatre.
Dillingham
Charles B. Dillingham is not a name most people--even theatre goers--know today. He was, however, one of Broadway's top producers in the 1920s.
He was an excellent producer, having been associated with Charles Frohman. (Frohman, a legendary producer and director, went down on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans in 1917, bringing the U.S. into the war in Europe.) Dillingham produced hit after hit on Broadway--The Little Princess, Miss Dolly Dollars, Miss 1917, A Bill of Divorcement, Good Times, Marilyn Miller in Sunny, Fred Stone in Criss Cross, and many others.
Dillingham, like many others, fell from grace. In 1927, he produced a show titled Lucky, starring Mary Eaton (best known today for her role as "Polly Potter" in the Paramount film version of The Cocoanuts, starring the Four Marx Brothers). Dillingham reportedly invested $250,000 of his own money in that show--a great amount of money to invest in any one show at that time . Lucky was a bomb. Dillingham went on; New Faces of 1934, the first of Leonard Sillman's series of New Faces, was co-produced by Dillingham. It was not commercially successful, and Dillingham died shortly after the show opened.
In his day, Charles B. Dillingham was a king, a charming man who cut a wide and most respectable swath in the Broadway theatre of his time.. Now he is forgotten, Alas, such is the case with almost everybody in that most ephemeral of glamour spots, the stage.
Here's to you, Mr. Dillingham.
#americantheatrenetwork
Thursday, November 2, 2017
GABY DESLYS
Mlle. Gaby Deslys is today a footnote in the history of the commercial theatre--both in Europe and the U.S.A. She was certainly a big star. The Messrs. Shubert reportedly paid Mlle. Deslys $4,000 a week when they first brought her to this country in 1911. That may be the top mark made by anyone before 1928--if, of course, we put the Divine Sarah Bernhardt into a category all her own. Madame Sarah was purportedly paid $10,000 a week by Lee Shubert when he sent her out to tour the country with a circus tent in 1910.
Gaby was attractive, a strawberry blonde in a day before Hollywood blondes. She sang, cavorted in a sort of "naughty" way, and danced. The latter was her specialty. Gaby became the most famous musical comedy star in Europe when she began a love affair with King Manuel II of Portugal in 1909. Manuel (or, at least, a man who looked like him) once occupied a box seat and threw roses at Gaby during her performance. Gaby's star rose continually in 1910, and the Messrs. Shubert brought her to the U.S. the following yer.
Gaby was not a big hit with American audiences in her first show--The Revue of Revues. She fared little better, despite her improved English, in Vera Violetta, in which Al Jolson, in the part of a waiter named "Claude," stole the show. Gaby returned to Europe, came back to the U.S.. and opened in a tour of Vera Violetta (sans Jolson) in Trenton, N.J. on November 16, 1912. It was a disaster. J.J. Shubert, in attendance, closed the show summarily and sent the entire chorus--and almost all the principals--back to New York that same night. Gaby and her leading man, dancing partner, and off-stage paramour, Harry Pilcer, were sent to Baltimore, and that is where the facts become more interesting than most of the fiction.
J.J. also sent a wire to the company manager of "The Whirl of Society with Al Jolson," telling him to bypass Washington and have his company report to Baltimore's Auditorium Theatre on Monday morning. J.J. also had a Shubert staff librettist combine the scripts of Vera Violetta and The Whirl of Society, making them, effectively, one show. An all-day rehearsal in Baltimore was followed by the very first performance of the new hybrid show. It was, at least, a qualified success. The cast was allowed to rest the next day (although Fanny Brice, just twenty-one years old, elected to accept an invitation to the races, where she met, for the first time, Nick Arnstein), gave three additional performances, and moved to Washington, D.C. for the last half of the week.
The show played into January, with Gaby, Jolson, and several other principals rehearsing for their next Shubert show on the days in which there were no matinees. This next show, The Honeymoon Express, a musical version of The Turtle, opened at the Winter Garden on February 6. The American public, however, remained rather cool to Gaby. Jolson, once more, dominated the proceedings. Gaby was replaced by Grace LaRue on April 28.
The Shuberts tried again with Gaby the following season, giving her a starring tour in The Little Parisienne--a comparatively modest show for that day, with nine principals and a chorus of fifteen--which played everywhere from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Coast. The idea was to make her known in almost every part of the U.S. The Belle of Bond Street, which opened on Broadway in March, 1914, was nonetheless her last show for the Shuberts.
Stop! Look! Listen!, produced by Charles B. Dillingham, saw Gaby "On the Beach at Waikiki," in which she stripped while singing Irving Berlin's "Take Off a Little Bit." This has been cited as the first "striptease" on the American stage, the various women who had done versions of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils" notwithstanding.
Gaby returned to Paris in the spring of 1916, and reputedly became a spy for France in World War I--the Allies' version of Mata Hari. In 1919, Gaby continued to suffer from the effects of the Spanish Influenza--which had killed over twenty million people in the latter stages of the war. Several operations failed to restore her health; Gaby reputedly intimidated surgeons by insisting they not scar her neck. She died, aged thirty-eight, in Paris, on February 11, 1920.
Gaby Deslys is known today only to students of the popular musical theatre prior to World War I. What was her talent? She was attractive and a capable dancer, Songs like "The Gaby Glide" were written for her. Her very few recordings capture some of her stage charm. ("Oh . . . Naughty boy!") One could stretch a point and call her the first sex goddess of the theatre.
Gaby was a legend in an era quite remote from ours. She made a few silent pictures, none of which appear to have survived. A motion picture based on her life was once considered as a vehicle for Judy Garland; it was never made. Could such a film be made today, restoring Gaby's fame? Well, stranger things have happened.
#americantheatrenetwork
Gaby was attractive, a strawberry blonde in a day before Hollywood blondes. She sang, cavorted in a sort of "naughty" way, and danced. The latter was her specialty. Gaby became the most famous musical comedy star in Europe when she began a love affair with King Manuel II of Portugal in 1909. Manuel (or, at least, a man who looked like him) once occupied a box seat and threw roses at Gaby during her performance. Gaby's star rose continually in 1910, and the Messrs. Shubert brought her to the U.S. the following yer.
Gaby was not a big hit with American audiences in her first show--The Revue of Revues. She fared little better, despite her improved English, in Vera Violetta, in which Al Jolson, in the part of a waiter named "Claude," stole the show. Gaby returned to Europe, came back to the U.S.. and opened in a tour of Vera Violetta (sans Jolson) in Trenton, N.J. on November 16, 1912. It was a disaster. J.J. Shubert, in attendance, closed the show summarily and sent the entire chorus--and almost all the principals--back to New York that same night. Gaby and her leading man, dancing partner, and off-stage paramour, Harry Pilcer, were sent to Baltimore, and that is where the facts become more interesting than most of the fiction.
J.J. also sent a wire to the company manager of "The Whirl of Society with Al Jolson," telling him to bypass Washington and have his company report to Baltimore's Auditorium Theatre on Monday morning. J.J. also had a Shubert staff librettist combine the scripts of Vera Violetta and The Whirl of Society, making them, effectively, one show. An all-day rehearsal in Baltimore was followed by the very first performance of the new hybrid show. It was, at least, a qualified success. The cast was allowed to rest the next day (although Fanny Brice, just twenty-one years old, elected to accept an invitation to the races, where she met, for the first time, Nick Arnstein), gave three additional performances, and moved to Washington, D.C. for the last half of the week.
The show played into January, with Gaby, Jolson, and several other principals rehearsing for their next Shubert show on the days in which there were no matinees. This next show, The Honeymoon Express, a musical version of The Turtle, opened at the Winter Garden on February 6. The American public, however, remained rather cool to Gaby. Jolson, once more, dominated the proceedings. Gaby was replaced by Grace LaRue on April 28.
The Shuberts tried again with Gaby the following season, giving her a starring tour in The Little Parisienne--a comparatively modest show for that day, with nine principals and a chorus of fifteen--which played everywhere from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Coast. The idea was to make her known in almost every part of the U.S. The Belle of Bond Street, which opened on Broadway in March, 1914, was nonetheless her last show for the Shuberts.
Stop! Look! Listen!, produced by Charles B. Dillingham, saw Gaby "On the Beach at Waikiki," in which she stripped while singing Irving Berlin's "Take Off a Little Bit." This has been cited as the first "striptease" on the American stage, the various women who had done versions of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils" notwithstanding.
Gaby returned to Paris in the spring of 1916, and reputedly became a spy for France in World War I--the Allies' version of Mata Hari. In 1919, Gaby continued to suffer from the effects of the Spanish Influenza--which had killed over twenty million people in the latter stages of the war. Several operations failed to restore her health; Gaby reputedly intimidated surgeons by insisting they not scar her neck. She died, aged thirty-eight, in Paris, on February 11, 1920.
Gaby Deslys is known today only to students of the popular musical theatre prior to World War I. What was her talent? She was attractive and a capable dancer, Songs like "The Gaby Glide" were written for her. Her very few recordings capture some of her stage charm. ("Oh . . . Naughty boy!") One could stretch a point and call her the first sex goddess of the theatre.
Gaby was a legend in an era quite remote from ours. She made a few silent pictures, none of which appear to have survived. A motion picture based on her life was once considered as a vehicle for Judy Garland; it was never made. Could such a film be made today, restoring Gaby's fame? Well, stranger things have happened.
#americantheatrenetwork
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