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.
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CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

Charlotte Cushman is, to date, the only actress ever elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.  Like many female stars of the American stage, she was a lesbian.

Who was Ms. Cushman?  She was born in Boston, Mass., July 23, 1816, an eighth generation descendant of Robert Cushman a Puritan who helped organize the Mayflower voyage and emigrated to the future United States in 1621.  Her father was a successful businessman who began to fall on hard times and died when Charlotte was thirteen.  She possessed an impressive contralto voice and was trained for the opera, making her debut as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; her singing voice failed after she was forced to essay a number of soprano roles.  Cushman switched to the dramatic stage, making her debut at the Tremont Theatre in Boston, April 8,1835.  One of her most notable successes came as Romeo, with her younger sister, Susan, playing Juliet.  Shylock and Cardinal Wolsey were among the other male parts that Charlotte played most notably.

She made her New York debut in Macbeth in 1836, but spent the next eight years with various stock companies.  Charlotte toured the U.S. with star William Macready in 1845 and made her London debut in classic repertory in 1854.  Her best roles were considered to be Lady Macbeth and Meg Merrilies in a dramatization of Scott's Guy Mannering.

Charlotte did not try to hide her homosexuality, and had a number of lesbian lovers.  Among them were Rosalie Sully, Matilda Hays, Harriet Hosmer, Emma Stebbins, and Emma Crow  She made her final stage appearance at Boston's Globe Theatre, May 15, 1875, and died of pneumonia, aged fifty-nine, February 18, 1876.
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LESBIANS, PETER PAN, AND OTHER LEADING WOMEN

Lesbians and bi-sexual women have been an important part of the American theatre for well over a hundred years.  Chief among them is Maude Adams--nothing to do with Maud Adams, the screen actress best remembered for her roles in the James Bond pictures, Octopussy and The Man With the Golden Gun.

Maude Adams may be the most popular and greatest actress in the history of the American stage.  Born in Salt Lake City, she became one-third of the great theatrical team of Charles Frohman (producer), James M. Barrie (playwright), and Maude Adams (star).  She became, in fact, the world's foremost interpreter of James M. Barrie's works, including The Little Minister, What Every Woman Knows, and Peter Pan, Barrie's most successful play and one of the most popular vehicles for women ever written--despite (or partially because) of the fact that Peter Pan, the lead role, is a boy.  Barrie, indeed, created the role to be played by a woman.

And it ever has.  The role was first played in London in 1904 by Nina Boucicault, niece of Dion Boucicault, one of the theatre's most respected writers and directors for many years.  It was a foregone conclusion that Maude Adams would play The Boy Who Never Grew Up when the the piece was first produced in the U.S. the following year.  She did, and the continued popularity of Maude Adams as Peter Pan practically forced her to periodically revive the play over the next ten years.

There is a particular charm in Peter Pan that precludes the title role from ever being played by a boy or man.  The Walt Disney animated Peter Pan is doubtless the most masculine Peter ever presented.  The Disney film was successful in its way.  It has not, however, been nearly as popular as the productions in which women have played Peter--ranging from Jean Arthur to Marilyn Miller to Eva Le Gallienne to Mary Martin, star of the musical production which has supplanted the original stage play as one of the most popular stage vehicles of all-time--performed by Sandy Duncan, Cathy Rigby, and other actresses who have managed the fey quality demanded by the role.

Le Gallienne (like Maude Adams, a lesbian), started her own acting school for girls and ran it quite successfully for many years.  As an actress, she excelled in plays like Not So Long Ago, Liliom (the play upon which the Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical, Carousel, was based), The Swan, and others.  (It was said that Joseph Schildkraut, who played opposite her in Liliom, flushed with the success of that play, asked Le Gallienne to marry him and that she declined, saying "Mr. Schildkraut, I would love to.  But I'm a lesbian.")  She founded and ran the Civic Repertory Theatre on Fourteenth Street in New York from 1916 to 1933.  Among her company ere J. Edward Bromberg, Paul Leyssac, Florida Friebus, and Leona Roberts.  (Friebus is remembered as the mother, Winnie, on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), a comedy on TV from 1959 to 1963).

Jean Arthur, best remembered for her roles in Frank Capra movies of the 1930s, had considerable success when she played Peter Pan for 321 performances on Broadway in 1950.  Called "boyish and engaging," she was aided by the newly composed music on Leonard Bernstein.  This was the last major revival of the play before Mary Martin starred in a Broadway musical version of Peter Pan in 1956.

The musical version of Peter Pan has entirely supplanted the straight play version that preceded it in London, New York, and (thanks to touring) numerous other cities.  The music was by Mark Charlap (the original California production) and Jule Styne (brought in for more songs prior to the opening on Broadway).  The title, Peter Pan, was retained, and Miss Martin's own performance, coupled with the score (and, of course, the play itself) allowed the show to run for nineteen weeks at New York's Winter Garden beginning October 20, 1954)--certainly not a long run by twenty-first century standards.  It proved more popular on TV, and the second annual presentation was filmed for posterity; it was annually shown years.  The musical was later revived on Broadway starring Sandy Duncan and then Cathy Rigby.

It would be interesting to see another revival of Peter Pan on Broadway.  Would it thrill a new audience comprised mostly of tourists, or is it, like so many other works of quality, now "dated"?  As for James M. Barrie's other plays . . . One might well imagine Emily Watson (whose performance in the film, Breaking the Waves, is one of the best in the entire history of film, rivaled perhaps only by that of Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve) in the lead role of What Every Woman Knows.  Who knows, indeed?
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SEX AND WOMEN IN THE THEATRE

George Bernard Shaw once wrote:  "An actress is more than a woman, and an actor is less than a man."

Women have been a part of the theatre for centuries.  This was not always the case in many countries. Japan did not allow women in Kabuki or No theatre.  Nor were there any actresses back in the days of William Shakespeare.  It may be difficult to picture Juliet played by a boy of twelve or so, but that was very much the case in the late sixteenth century.

Actresses have been part of western theatre since Great Britain's restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660.    They have been exploited, used, abused, promoted and demoted.  Some of these women were strong people; others were not.  Many were charming and/or charismatic.  Sex has been, with rare exception, part of their professional lives.

Eleanor (Nell) Gwyn, "Sweet Nell of Old Drury," was the antidote to puritanism in the 1670s.  She was the mistress of, successively, the actor Charles Hart, Lord Buckhurst, and King Charles II.  She was known for her wit, charm, physical beauty, singing and dancing; she had a flair for comedy, and was arguably the world's first great stage comedienne.  She bore King Charles two sons and died, aged 37, in November, 1687.

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., creator of the Ziegfeld Follies, was known for "Glorifying the American Girl."  He did more than glorify them.  His first marriage, to French star Anna Held, was a common law marriage.  The love of his life was Lillian Lorraine, a show girl who graced several editions of the Follies.  Lillian was beautiful but irresponsible and often senseless.  She married playboy Frederick M. Gresheimer (whom she stole away from Fanny Brice) in March 1912, divorced him after a few months, remarried him in 1913, and then had this, their second marriage, annulled, claiming he had "misrepresented himself."  Ziegfeld's wife, Billie Burke, once said that she was jealous of Lillian, but not Marilyn Miller, arguably her husband's greatest star.  Ziegfeld, said Billie, idolized Marilyn Miller; but he loved Lillian Lorraine.

Marilyn Miller, in fact, hated Ziegfeld.  Why?  She and her boyfriend, Frank Carter, were both in the Follies of 1919.  When the show was in rehearsals, she and Frank eloped and married.  Ziegfeld was furious when he received the news and promptly fired Carter.  Marilyn and Frank talked things over, and decided it was best that she stay in the Follies.  Carter got a part in a titled See-Saw, produced by Henry W. Savage.  When See-Saw closed in Wheeling, W. Va., at the end of the season, Frank called Marilyn and told her he was driving up to Philadelphia, where she was on tour with the Follies, and would see her in the morning.  Marilyn begged him to wait until the next day, as driving at night in those days was hazardous.  He drove that night, however, and lost his life when his car overturned. Carter was the love of Marilyn Miller's life, and she blamed Ziegfeld for his death. Those were, in certain ways, far gentler times, but Marilyn did not hesitate to call Ziegfeld a no-good son of a bitch and otherwise insult the man in front of his young daughter.

Producers of those days, while known for their affairs with prominent stage beauties, had to be extremely careful.  A striking young woman once showed up in Ziegfeld's offices clad in a full-length mink coat.  "I know that if Mr. Ziegfeld sees me in the right way," she told his secretary, "he will put me in the Follies."  She thereupon walked into Ziegfeld's inner private office and dropped the mink coat to the floor.  She was stark naked.  Ziegfeld, flabbergasted, opened the door and yelled for his secretary to get the woman out of his office.  Why?  One never knew when one was being set up to be blackmailed.

There were other women, known to Ziegfeld, with whom he felt no real danger.  Victor Herbert, the legendary composer, had written several pieces for the Follies for which he had not been paid; Flo Ziegfeld was a notorious staller when it came to paying bills.  Herbert entered Ziegfeld's outer office and was told that Mr. Ziegfeld was not in that day.  Herbert's face grew red with anger.  He turned purple when the door to Ziegfeld's private office suddenly swung open.  There was Ziegfeld, performing the ultimate sexual act with a show girl on his desk.  Victor Herbert stormed out and, reportedly, suffered a stroke while waiting for the elevator.

There is no doubt that stars, directors, producers, and other powerful people of the stage have, at times, intimidated those of lower station into sexual affairs.  There have also been cases in which those of lower station have seduced their higher ups to gain advantage.  Much more common are the situations in which directors, stars, et. al., make sure that their paramours get jobs.

The theatre is a very social business; sex is an important part of life.  This is not about to disappear.
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THE HIGH COST OF TICKETS

The Broadway producers of 1974 decided that the key to producing shows on Broadway was to limit the cast for any given show or play to six characters.  This was due to the inflation that gripped Broadway at the time.  (Economists have since identified 1967 as the "culprit year" that kicked off this inflation.)  A producer, in fact, once "buttonholed" a friend of mine and me and told us he was in the market for a play of that size.
Needless to say, that did not stick.  It wasn't long before those same producers said, "Let's produce good shows.  If the public wants to see them, it will pay whatever the seats cost."  The producers were right--and the public has been talking of the high cost of tickets to shows ever since.
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HOLLYWOOD CLEANS UP

The 1920s broke new ground in many ways.  The notion that it had more work for actors and other performers than any other decade, however, is a fallacy.  The growth of the motion picture field, the beginnings of commercial radio, and the increasing use of automobiles to get to major cities (instead of being limited to those shows and plays that visited one's home town) knocked out a lot of work for performers of various kinds.  J.J. Shubert, in a letter, complained that motion pictures were "killing our business" (i.e., the live commercial stage) before the advent of the talkies.
This situation quickly worsened with the coming of sound films, network radio, and the Great Depression.  In 1928, E.F. Albee sold his controlling interest in the Keith-Orpheum vaudeville empire to Joseph P. Kennedy, who merged it with Radio Pictures and created R-K-O.  Warner Bros. purchased three major sheet music publishing companies that same year--Harms, Remick, and Witmark.  Vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley (i.e., the sheet music publishing industry) were thus effectively taken over by the Hollywood Motion Picture industry within a matter of months.
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THE AMERICAN THEATRE AND WORLD WAR I

In 1917, the United States Armed Forces took over a large percentage of the railroad tracks in the United States in order to move troops to and from training camps prior to deployment overseas.  This created an emergency in the American theatrical business.

This business relied on trains to get shows and performers to the huge amount of operating theatres in this country.  When shows and plays could not fulfill commitments, everyone suffered.  This included the producers of the shows, the actors in them, the theatre proprietors in hundreds of cities, their employees, and numerous others.

How did local theatre owners and managers deal with this crisis situation?  By obtaining films.  These films drew good houses--with far less expense and far less work required.

Many of these theatres never returned to the live stage; their owners simply stayed with running films and made, in many instances, more profit.  A good number of people who had worked in the live theatre lost their jobs; movie houses needed fewer employees.

This scenario took place in city after city.  And the trend continued after World War I was over.  The result was less employment for the actor as well as for house managers, gaffers, stagehands, et. al., as time went by.

The Great Depression, commercial radio, and sound films devastated the professional theatre in the early 1930s.  Of this there is no doubt.  But the American actor had lost much of his employment years before that.

It was always a rough business.
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