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 episode is mostly about the various theaters the Shuberts constructed in Philadelphia, we'll concentrate on those. Of course, we've already shared mages of the exteriors of the Lyric, Adelphi, and (first) Forrest Theatres in an earlier blog post, "The Beauties of Society," when were discussing another great theater-building impresario of the day, Oscar Hammerstein (the link is here).
But here are some additional photos of these long-gone commercial theaters, and some views of their interiors. First, the Lyric, in a picture postcard from around 1910:
Next, in a photo looking south along Broad Street, the Lyric together with its immediate neighbor and twin - suitably named the Adelphi (which means 'the brother') along with a shot of the Adelphi's boxes, to the left of the stage.
As we can see from this photo, dated 1924, the neighborhood along this stretch of N. Broad Street was not particularly attractive or glamorous, which is why these two theaters did not survive the rough years of the Depression.
From another 1910 postcard, here is Horticultural Hall, in all its Florentine Renaissance glory, before it was sold to the Shuberts, and torn down:
After the new Sam S. Shubert Memorial Theater had replaced Horticultural Hall, a page from the Philadelphia Inquirer superimposed photos of the three Shubert brothers - including Sam, who had been dead for thirteen years at that point.
Other ads and photos in the Inquirer showed the Philadelphia public what they could expect from Chu Chin Chow.
Skipping ahead to November of 1927, the Inquirer's rendering of the facade of the New Forrest Theatre, which was then rising on Walnut Street:
Below, architect Herbert Krapp's rendering of the interior of the Forrest, alongside a recent photo of how it looks today. Really, the modern day Shubert Organization is to be highly praised for how well it has taken care of this beautiful and historic theater building.
Finally, a Philadelphia newspaper social item from the summer of 1923, showing Lee Shubert on the beach in Florida (he always worked hard on his sun tan), along with his nephew, Lawrence Shubert Lawrence.
Selected Bibliography:
Barrymore, Lionel (as told to Cameron Shiff), We Barrymores. Grosset & Dunlap, 1951.
Glazer, Irving R., Philadelphia Theatres, A-Z: a Comprehensive, Descriptive Record of 813 Theatres Constructed Since 1724. Greenwood Press, 1986.
Hirsch, Foster, The Boys From Syracuse: The Shuberts' Theatrical Empire. Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.
Stagg, Jerry, The Brothers Shubert. Random House, 1968.
Westover, Jonas, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows. Oxford University Press, 2016
