Blog Posts: Commentary and Images for Every Episode

Above, a photo of the final tableaux of Act One, from the original 1948 production of Kiss Me, Kate. Below, Albert Drake and Patricia Morrison.Below, a cartoon by Jo Metzer from the Philadelphia Inquirer, showing Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne in th…

October 26, 1942: "Getting Ready for All-Soldier Show Opening" was the caption in the Inquirer. Two servicemen/stagehands prepare for Irving Berlin's patriotic show This is the Army at the Mastbaum Theatre.Below, while in town to appear at the openi…

Above, the Mastbaum Theatre during its demolition, 1958. The Mastbaum did not meet its end until two decades after the events we discuss in Episode 71. Still, I thought this image belonged here with the rest of the photos of Lost Philadelphia Theate…

Cartoon by Charles Bell, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 5, 1927, showing the "All-Star Company" of Trelawny of the "Wells."Below, photographs of John Drew, Jr., and Peggy Wood, taken during the 1920s.(Both from the online collection…

An image made by the architectural firm of Hoffman-Henon as publicity for the new  Erlanger Theatre on 21st and Market.Below, the newspaper ad for the first show ever done at the Erlanger, Jerome Kern's Criss Cross, next to a photo of the …

The Brothers Shubert - Jake, Sam and Lee. (Photos from the Shubert Archives, New York)First,  a photo of Lionel Barrymore as a struggling young actor, about the time he first got hired by Sam Shubert in The Brixton Burglary.But since the e…

The actor William Arliss, in a photo from Vanity Fair magazine (left), February 1923, and in 1921 as the Raja of Rukh (right), in The Green Goddess (collection of the City Museum of New York).Below, a newspaper advertisement for the World Premiere o…

  The ad in the Philadelphia newspapers for Hitchy-Koo, an Intimate Revue - December 1917. Raymond Hitchcock is shown playing a tuba in a sketch from the show.Here are images of events and people that we talk about in Episode 65, "Holiday Show…

Above, an advertising card for W.C. Fields, early in his career.You might note that this entry has rather less text than we usually share in our blog - but after all, we put so much into the episode itself! (It's the longest one we've ever released,…

Above, the cover for the sheet music for "The Philadelphia Drag," as it was performed by a chorus - including a young Mae West (left) at the Folies Bergere Revue in 1911. And here's the clipping from a Philly newspaper announcing her subsequent book…