71. The Crash

COPYRIGHT 2O24 Peter Schmitz - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Welcome to Adventures in Theater History! Here on this show we bring you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host Peter Schmitz, and our original theme music is composed by Christopher Mark Colucci.  Join us as as we cover the continuing story of our Season Three: Philadelphia, the Tryout Town

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We’ve covered the boom years of the 1920s in Philadelphia theater - and in our last episode, we heard Bradford Ropes’ fictionalized account of a typical Broadway musical out-of-town opening night in Philadelphia. This was set in the late 20s, which was fitting, because 1927 was the absolute peak in commercial theatrical production in the United States. There were 264 Broadway plays, musicals and revues produced in New York’s 70 legitimate theatrical houses that year - a high-water that has never been surpassed. A majority of these shows had either come through Philadelphia on their way to Broadway, or were re-packaged and re-mounted for touring shows after their Broadway runs were complete (and came back again to the Quaker City).

1927 is also significant, of course, because was the year that Al Jolson, one of the absolute biggest stars of the musical theater world, appeared in the first motion picture with Vitaphone sound: The Jazz Singer - the sentimental story of the Jewish cantor’s son who makes it big as a black-faced soloist in a Broadway musical. The Jazz Singer, of course, had originally been a Broadway show itself, and  in April of 1927 a touring company of The Jazz Singer starring Georgie Jessel was just finishing its run at the Broad Street Theatre in Philadelphia. In November of 1927, The Jazz Singer was back in Philly, this time as Jolson’s movie version, for a ten week smash hit run at the Fox Locust Theatre, a newly-built house at the base of new 22-story office tower directly across the street to the north of the venerable old Academy of Music. Originally intended as a legitimate house, the Locust was converted instead - immediately - into one of the first movie theaters in the city - one of the first, that is, ready to host movies with sound. Keep your eye on that Locust Street Theatre, because it's going to come up again and again in our coming episodes . . .   

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February 28, 1929: The Mastbaum Theatre - the most luxurious and expensive theater building ever constructed in Philadelphia - had its Grand Opening. Billed as a "playhouse," it was fully equipped to handle both major motion pictures and stage shows. Nothing about the Mastbaum was on a small scale. It had an orchestra pit that could accommodate a hundred musicians.

Al Jolson himself, in fact, was on hand to be the Master of Ceremonies of a concert and stage show that lasted all afternoon. And a new Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone sound motion picture Sonny Boy was then shown. The Philadelphia Inquirer released a “Special Mastbaum Edition” for the occasion.

The combined movie and stage show palace was constructed by the Stanley Corporation at 20th and Market Streets, as a memorial to its late founder, Jules Mastbaum. Mastbaum, a Philadelphia department store magnate who had turned to the movie business, had suddenly died the year before, at the age of only 58.

Following Mastbaum's death, the Stanley Corporation had pulled out of their investment in the former Hammerstein Opera House on North Broad, which it had attempted to turn into a movie palace. But now they seemed to want to replicate much of the design and amenities of that North Broad theater project, except this time in a more central location, along the stretch of city blocks where the enormous "Chinese Wall", a railway embankment that had led to the old Broad Street Station had recently been cleared away.

The Mastbaum Theatre was a massive investment, costing five million dollars. Designed by Hoffman-Henon, the 4738-seat mammoth theater resembled in its exterior a Greek temple, with street frontage on all four sides. There was a complete secondary theater and rehearsal hall on the upper level. Twenty-five dressing rooms were in a separate wing. A huge illuminated sign on the roof, visible for miles around, broadcast its presence to the entire Delaware Valley.

The audience areas were even more lavish, even surpassing those of the nearby Erlanger Theatre built only two years earlier down the street. Like the Erlanger, the interior of the Mastbaum’s auditorium offered  promenades, lobbies and lounges - all decorated with oil paintings, rare tapestries, marble statuary and gilt furniture. The auditorium was bedecked with glittering chandeliers and glowing murals. And for additional entertainment, if the stage and movie shows weren’t enough, there was a 27-rank Wurllitzer organ whose console could be raised and lowered into the basement. A huge staff of ushers, musicians, projectionists and stagehands - and they were on hand to cater to every need of both performers and audiences.

Although the Mastbaum was fairly successful at first, its location on West Market Street was awkward to access - but most of all it was the timing of its construction, well that was terrible.

Because we are about to enter the infamous October of 1929, which was to see The Crash. [MUSIC STING]

October 29th, Black Tuesday, the day the music stopped, and the Wall Street stock market bubble popped. It marked the end of the Roaring Twenties all over the nation - and soon the entire world. But in truth, Philadelphia, the third-largest city in America, had already been sounding a warning, a bellwether of the trouble to come, if anybody had cared to pay attention. Philadelphia had never truly recovered from the economic shocks of the First World War, and was already not doing too well economically. Local industry, especially the textile manufacturers, had been shedding jobs as mills moved to the non-unionized Southern states. In the fall of 1929, the city’s unemployment rate was already at 10 percent. Local theaters were just starting to feel the falloff in business. Audiences were looking for entertainment at the movies instead of live theater, because movies had ticket prices that were much cheaper. The Erlanger Theatre, which had opened as a pre-Broadway tryout house in 1927, was to host Early Carroll’s extravaganza operetta Fioretta in early 1928, bankrolled entirely by the fabulously wealthy, and extraordinarily foolish Philadelphia millionairess, Mrs. Anne Weightman Penfield. But that show was on its way to being one of the most famous and expensive flops ever when it reached New York, and there weren’t many other similarly spendthrift financial backers willing to take her place.  By the fall of 1929 the Erlanger had also just been converted to become yet another movie theater. This was all part of a wider trend. By this point almost every Philadelphia vaudeville theater had already been converted to showing mostly films, even the mighty flagship Keith Theater on Chestnut Street was soon to follow. All the main Market Street, the theaters were now showing only movies - sometimes interspersed with the occasional concert or live acts. Only the big theaters that the Shuberts owned or controlled, the Broad, the Forrest, the Adelphi, the Lyric, the Chestnut Street Opera House, and of course the Shubert, were still booking shows. The Garrick and the Walnut, the only two independent houses, were having trouble finding tenants. The Garrick was hosting a college musical for the University of Pennsylvania’s Mask and Wig Club in October of 1929. The Walnut was hosting a creaky old Victorian melodrama.

But on the whole, when the crash came, everybody just kept on doing what they had been doing. The music didn’t just suddenly come to a screeching halt. In fact for the next six months - for example, in our Episode 50, “Stop Those Swinging Girls,” we already noted how the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata was successfully staged at the Walnut, without even interference from censors, and that it went on to have a nice run in New York . Nobody realized right away how much worse things would get in America, and in American theater. When the banks started failing, people began to get the idea that this was going to be really bad. 

And then, of course, there was the Philly theater that blew up. This is an interesting story, and not very well known in Philadelphia, not even today.

On January 9, 1930 the Globe Theatre exploded and, you know. brought down the house. One man was killed, eight others were seriously wounded, and an uncounted number of people were injured by flying glass that rained down upon the streets east of Philadelphia City Hall.

The demolition of the formerly popular vaudeville venue at the corner of Market and Juniper Streets was already under way, admittedly, at the time of the explosion. The Globe had been closed in October of 1929 - not because of the stock market, but because it was slated to be replaced by a new 20-story skyscraper, the Market Street National Bank. What remained of the theater was mostly the steel framing, which needed to be cut apart and dismantled.

According to the newspaper reports the following day, the accident was caused by appalling carelessness during the demolition process. A workman cutting steel beams with an oxyacetylene torch was perched over a fifty-gallon drum of gasoline, and sparks rained down around it. This drum, amazingly, was in close proximity to both the acetylene and the oxygen tanks. When the fall sparks ignited a small puddle of spilled gasoline, both the drum and the nearby containers exploded in a massive blast. The worker who was holding the torch above all this was killed - horribly burned - and a policeman monitoring traffic around the site was struck by flying debris. A Philadelphia fireman responding to the blast also later died of injuries. Hundreds of passersby were struck by flying glass or brickwork.

"Ignorance or carelessness or both were responsible for death, injury and damage to property," scolded the Philadelphia Inquirer's editors the next day. "It seems a miracle that scores were not killed and hundreds injured."

It was an ominous way to begin the new decade of the 1930s.

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What really strikes me now about the commercial shows coming through Philadelphia in this interim period after the stock market crash of 1929, is how much the theater was living in the shadow of the movies. It’s a well-known story, but of course, now that movies needed actors who could actually, you know, speak, and everyone - I mean, everyone - began moving out to California - like George Arliss, our old friend from the Green Goddess, who was already making a hit movie of that play that had its world premiere at the Walnut. It amazing how many future Hollywood movie stars - like Sydney Greenstreet, who had been in that production of Lysistrata at the Walnut - made notable if brief, appearances in Philadelphia right before they made the trek out West:

Here’s some other stories about Stars on the Rise. [MUSIC , UNDER):

November 18, 1929: Maggie, the Magnificent was not a hit. By the time the new play of Philadelphia's own Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, George S. Kelly, arrived for a post-Broadway stint at the Walnut Street Theatre, that much was clear. New York reviews of Maggie the Magnificent had been tepid.

Most agreed that its star Shirley Warde had been fine in the title role - but as they left the theater everyone was talking about the secondary leads: the actor playing the role of the tough guy brother, a guy named James Cagney, and a pert actress named Joan Blondell.

Wrote the Inquirer: "The dialogue, particularly in the last act, fairly sparkles. Joan Blondell as Etta and James Cagney as Elwood, a wise-cracking young couple, kept the house in constant roar during their final scene in the last act.”

Maggie the Magnificent actually ended its run after playing Philly, and Cagney and Blondell were cast together again in another show called Penny Arcade. Most critics panned Penny Arcade, too, but again they praised Cagney and Blondell.

And the star Al Jolson liked the show (here he comes again!), and bought the film rights. He sold the play to Warner Bros., with the stipulation that they cast Cagney and Blondell in the film version. Retitled "Sinners' Holiday," the movie would again attract good notices for Cagney and Blondell, and served to give both actors their start in their Hollywood careers.

December 8, 1929: The play Blind Window opened at the Broad Street Theatre.

Blind Window was a prison drama, originally written in Hungarian by the young playwright Elmer Boross, had been adapted into English, and staged by the theater impresario David Belasco, now in his sixth decade in show business. The star of the play was Beth Merrill, who had worked with Belasco previously on the plays Ladies of the Evening, Lily Sue, and Hidden. Blind Window had first opened its tryouts in Boston and Baltimore, and was now in Philadelphia with hopes of a Broadway run.

It's unclear exactly what the play was about. The Camden Courier-Journal wrote: "The story of the play . . deals with the meeting of a man and woman under the most terrible of circumstances. All the refining influences of civilization are gone, and in their place is but the primal urge of the beast. Then love comes, illuminating the blind window and bringing happiness at the moment when even the tiny comfort of undirected existence is about to be lost." 

So, you know, clearly not a drawing-room comedy.

Though his name was not featured in the publicity material, Clark Gable, of course, is the name that stands out to our eyes today in that cast list. Gable had made a name for himself in the play Machinal by Sophie Treadwell the previous year, but he was by no means yet a star, nor had he affected his famous mustache - he’s still clean-shaven in the publicity photos for the show. In late 1929 he was still trying to extricate himself from his first marriage to his wife and acting coach Josephine Dillon, 17 years his senior. He took the job with Belasco's company while waiting for the divorce to become final, so he could marry his current girlfriend, the Texas socialite Ria Langham.

Blind Window unfortunately, was not a success for David Belasco, and closed without ever reaching Broadway. Clark Gable joined the touring company of another prison drama entitled The Last Mile. When it played Los Angeles, he was quickly snapped up by Hollywood. The next time he played Philadelphia, he was not live on stage, his face was on the silver screen in the 1931 movie The Finger Points at the Stanley Theatre on East Market Street.

September 8, 1930: The actor Donald Meek was in Philadelphia, starring in a touring production of his recent Broadway hit comedy Broken Dishes, by Donald Flavin. Meek was playing Cyrus Bumstead, described by a local reviewer as "a long-suffering husband who cringes before his wife for years, but who finally rebels when he finds his love for his daughter a stronger influence than fear of his wife. . . . The most hilarious moment in the play comes when Bumstead gives his consent to the girl's marriage and the young couple are wedded by a deaf old clergyman while the mother is off at the 'movies.'"

The engagement at the Adelphi Theatre was a bit of a homecoming for Meek, a Scottish immigrant who had arrived in Philadelphia as a boy, and had gotten his start in the theater on the city’s stages forty years earlier. Donald Meek, of course, would go on to have his own successful Hollywood career as a reliable character man, appearing in such films as Stagecoach, State Fair, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and You Can't Take it With You. But although he was by 1930 a well-known Broadway character actor, Meek’s arrival in town was not what excited the Philadelphia press - they were much more interested in the prospects of the 19-year-old actress playing his daughter, a young lady from Boston named Bette Davis.

Davis had already, in fact, appeared on a Philadelphia stage. Only the year before, she had appeared with a distinguished company of actors led by Blanche Yurka, who brought two Henrik Ibsen plays to the Walnut Street Theatre. "Every character was drawn with vivid reality," enthused one Philadelphia reviewer, "but special honors must go to Bette Davis for the starkly tragic power of her enactment as the child [Hedwig], who is the real 'Wild Duck'."

"The Actors Theatre may be complimented for bringing forward such an actress," wrote the Camden Courier-Journal. " . . .  A potentially splendid actress had the good fortune to get with a repertory company where real work is accomplished."

" 'I'm a lucky girl,' said Miss Bette Davis, in an interview.

"You're great and will go far," the reporter replied, - a little gushingly, perhaps, but with some admirable powers of prediction.

September 29, 1930: Girl Crazy, the new musical by George and Ira Gershwin, premiered at the Shubert Theatre on Broad Street in Philadelphia, beginning a two-week pre-Broadway tryout run. With a thinly-plotted book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan, Girl Crazy was typical for musicals of the period: a New Yorker takes over a remote dude ranch in Nevada, and imports an entire Broadway chorus to liven things up. Nonetheless, he ends up falling in love with the local postmistress. Hilarity ensues and happiness prevails, and there are lots of excuses for singing and dancing

What distinguished Girl Crazy were all the great songs in the score, including "Biding my Time" and “But Not for Me.” (There were also more forgettable songs like "Cactus Time in Arizona" and "Land of the Gay Caballero", too.) For many nights of the run, George Gershwin himself conducted the orchestra.

Also in the score was the Gershwin tune “But Not For Me” and there to sing it was Ginger Rogers. Ginger Rogers was only 19 years old, and had been working the Orpheum Circuit in vaudeville since she was 14. She had already appeared in Philadelphia the previous December in her first real show, Top Speed, and on her return back to Philly she told the newspapers she was glad to be back again, because the city had been lucky for her last time. A guy with (let me check my notes here) named Fred Astaire showed up at one point to help choreographer George Hale with her dance numbers with co-star Allen Kearns. It was likely at some rehearsal for this show in Philadelphia, as he demonstrated a particular move, Astaire and Rogers danced together for the first time.

And I should mention the other star of the show: Ethel Merman, who was twenty-two. Merman was already a big deal on the nightclub and vaudeville stage, and in fact had already appeared with Ginger Rogers in an early pre-code movie musical Follow the Leader. But Girl Crazy was going to be her big Broadway debut. Playing the character "Frisco Kate" she got to sing not only Gershwin's songs "Sam and Delilah" and "Boy, What Love Has Done for Me", but also showed her amazing vocal power by belting out "I Got Rhythm" and holding a single note for so long, and at such volume, that every night it brought down the house.

"The play gets a snap and a bang from the start," raved the reviewer in the Inquirer. "The applause for one number is still ringing when the next one is on its way. . . With tuneful music, with splendid dancing, and a beautiful, hard-working chorus, and exquisite settings, it is not surprising that Girl Crazy should have such an instant and emphatic hit." That was a correct prediction, because after its Philly tryout engagement at the Shubert, the show went immediately to the Alvin Theatre in New York, where it had 272 more performances. Ginger Rogers left for Hollywood at the conclusion of the run - where soon she was being featured in our old friend, 42nd Street, as well as being featured in movies with . .  you know, that guy, Fred.

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There are other bold-faced names I could talk about - for example  in January 1931, a young actor named Cesar Romero was in town at the Broad Street Theatre in a play called Strictly Dishonorable, but what I’d really like to talk about is one of my favorite Philly origin stories: The Nicholas Brothers.

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Fayard and Harold Nicholas were born in the South to two musicians, Viola and Ulysses Nicholas, along with their sister, Dorothy. The Nicholas family moved to Philadelphia in 1926, to an apartment building directly across from the Standard Theatre on the 1100 block of South Street. There the parents became fixtures in the theater’s house orchestra, which went by the name "Nicholas' Collegians."

The Standard Theatre - which you may remember, way back in our earlier podcasts - was built in 1892, was then at the height of its success, featuring bills of premiere African American vaudeville acts. Fayard, the oldest son, would spend hours in the theater, and was fascinated by the skills of such dance acts that came through town, such as the Whitman Sisters, John W. Bubbles, and Bill Robinson that he saw on the Standard's stage. He seems to have also been tutored by a local tap dance teacher named Charlie White, by the way.

Fayard then taught his younger siblings, first performing as a duo with Dorothy, and then both of them were joined by tiny Harold. In 1930 the trio made their debut at the Standard, billing themselves as "The Nicholas Kids."

A dynamo on the stage, Harold idolized his older brother and learned to dance by copying his moves. The Nicholas trademark move – the jump, falling down on the stage, ending in a deep split – was lifted from a dancer named Jack Wiggins. Sister Dorothy eventually opted out of the act, and the Nicholas Kids became "The Nicholas Brothers." That there was a size difference between the two brothers at first - Fayard was tall and Harold was quite short - and yet no discernible difference in their dancing talent, was part of the charm of the act.

As their fame spread in Philadelphia's clubs along South Street, the duo was first hired by a local radio show, "The Horn & Hardart Kiddie Hour", and by 1932, doing film shorts for Warner Brothers, like the one we’re listening to now, Pie Pie Blackbird. Soon they were performing in New York's Cotton Club, and then in Hollywood movies and in Broadway shows, and London's West End shows. By 1940, well the family had moved to Los Angeles together.

The Standard Theatre, however, fell on hard times in the Depression. In 1931 it was sold when its owner, banker John T. Gibson, went bust. Just like the other historically Black Theatre nearby, the Lincoln Theatre, the new management of the Standard converted it into a movie theater. Two decades later, both the Lincoln and the Standard would be torn down.

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February 16, 1933: It was the absolute depths of the Great Depression in America, as the nation waited impatiently for the final weeks of Herbert Hoover's failed presidency to expire and that of the new guy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to begin.

Economics were very bad in Philadelphia show biz, as well. Local civic-minded organizations, like The Theatre Guild, or the Professional Players, had done what they could to bring in plays of interest to the local crowd. The local stock company star,  Mae Desmond, had taken over the Locust Theatre - now again converted to a legit stage - for a while, until being forced to give up. The Garrick, the Shubert, the Chestnut Street Opera House, the Walnut Street Theatre were all dark. The Arch Street Theatre was offering Yiddish drama, but at much reduced prices.

In late February 1933, Only one major production was showing in all of Philadelphia. The Forrest Theatre on Walnut Street, alone, had a gayly lit marquee advertising tickets for sale. And maybe, just maybe, happy days were here again. The show just arriving at the Forrest was Of Thee I Sing!, the George and Ira Gershwin musical. A satire of American presidential politics, it featured the Gershwin songs "Love is Sweeping the Country", "Who Cares?", and a reworking of "Who Could Ask for Anything More (I Got Rhythm)". It had already run for 55 straight weeks in New York. 

There were pointed satirical songs in the peppy show as well, including "Wintergreen for President", "The (Senatorial) Roll Call", and "We'll Impeach Him"! The book of the show, about the candidate John P. Wintergreen who runs on the Love Platform (and who finds it along the way, of course) was by the team of George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who had already won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Gershwin and his creative team might have been a bit leery of doing a satirical show in Philadelphia, since as we mentioned in Episode 68, their 1927 musical Strike Up the Band had closed there after a brief run at the Shubert.

But in 1933 there was literally no competition for their satirical musical, and this was one of the very few Broadway shows to do a national tour that entire season. Indeed, work was so scarce for Broadway actors that the entire original cast gladly stayed with the show which was quite rare, including William Gaxton as John P. Wintergreen, Lois Moran as his love interest (and eventual First Lady) Mary Turner, and Victor Moore as Vice President Alexander Throttlebottom.

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Now I’m not going to go through every show that came through Philadelphia in the 1930s. But they were few and far between - much less than in boom times. And then, perhaps inevitably, theaters started being torn down. They were being knocked down as useless old buildings, relics whose moments had passed. And most of all, they were being down to make parking lots. Now, at the beginning of the decade, in 1930, 80 percent of all intercity traffic in and out of Philadelphia had been by rail. But despite the ongoing Depression, as the 1930s went on, it was cars that increasingly became the preferred method of transportation for people coming into town for the day, and there was a demand for places to put the cars. No single factor was going to change the landscape of Philadelphia more.

In 1935, the massive castle-like Casino Theatre, a burlesque house, two doors down from the Walnut Street Theatre, was demolished to make a surface parking lot - a purpose for which it is dedicated to this day, almost nine full decades later.

Then in June 1936, the Arch Street Theatre, the oldest intact Victorian theater in the city, was torn down. And although of course I never personally knew this theater, from all the years I’ve spent researching it and talking about it, this one really hurts, I gotta admit.  "Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theatre" and had been the home of her famous stock company. Almost every member of the Drew family had performed there, and the little Barrymore children - Lionel, Ethel and John - had sat and watched them. And as the 20th Century began, the surrounding neighborhood had deteriorated, and the old theater now stood in what was known as "The Tenderloin" and very close to "Skid Row". But nonetheless it had been the vibrant home to many Yiddish Theatre companies, and had seen performances by both Boris Tomashefsky and the great Jacob Adler. In its very last years it had also hosted vaudeville shows, and then finally low burlesque.

By 1936, the theater was now disused and vacant, and developers quickly sprung. Nobody made much of a fuss that I can see. That summer of 1936 the city’s newspapers were full of stories about the Republican and Democratic National conventions who were both in Philadelphia that year. The Democrats of course re-nominated FDR, and the Republicans put up Alf Landon of Kansas to oppose him - I can’t remember how that one turned out. Joe Louis and Max Schmelling were about to fight. The St. Louis Cardinals were in town to play the Phillies - the Phillies mostly lost. The loss of an old theater, not a big deal.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, a notice is posted by the Integrity Wrecking Company, listing "All the Equipment and Materials for Sale Including Theatre Seats, Fire Extinguishers, Fans, Chandeliers, Drop Curtain, Asbestos Curtain, Plushes, Velours, Fire Hose, Etc." But as far as the demolition of a historic old theater, the Inquirer sent no reporters to cover the story - they were all over at the Convention Center. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and the Public Ledger at least dispatched photographers, who documented for the last time the details of the theater's lobby, dressing rooms and the domed ceiling over the audience. 

The Ledger’s Henry Murdock, a reporter who was assigned to write a long historical summation of the theater’s history, at least thought to poke around the soon-to-be-demolished building. Murdoch discovered that up to the very last minute before demolition its stage was being used by painters and craftsmen to create scenery for other local theaters. But even as these workers continued this final act of creative work in the old Arch Street Theatre, other men labored to dismantle it around them. It was a hard job, because it wasn’t like the place was falling down around them - it was a sturdy, beautiful old building. As he walked out the old stage door, wrote Murdock, “the theater’s old watchman, with glum emphasis remarked: ‘This old place could outlast a damn theater I could mention.’ But it won’t.” What theater that night watchman had in mind isn’t clear - maybe the nearby Trocadero or the Bijou, burlesque houses that had seen better days by that point. But those somewhat scandalous places weren't on anybody’s list to be destroyed. Not yet, anyway. Nor was, thankfully, the old Walnut Street Theatre, though it came very close. Only its rental by the WPA Theatre Project saved it or - you know the Walnut just wasn’t on attractive enough real estate to tear down and park cars on or build a new store.

Other great old Philly theaters weren’t so fortunate. In January 1937 the Garrick Theatre went down. Mrs. Anne Weightman Walker Penfield, the daughter of William Weightman and the backer of Fioretta, had owned the theater since her father's death in 1904, as part of her extensive real estate holdings in the city of Philadelphia. But she had passed away in 1932 - with most of her money intact - and the Penfield Estate was now selling off the property. It would soon become a Woolworth's store.

During its demolition, however, a “time capsule” placed in the Garrick's cornerstone in 1900 was uncovered. Photos in both the Evening Bulletin archives and that of the Inquirer documented its opening. Officiating was Townsend B. Young, a trustee for the Penfield Estate, and Louise Strawbridge, a niece of Mrs. Penfield. Also present was William C. Campbell, a superintendent of the estate, who recalled in fact, being present when the theater was first built and the time capsule hidden away.

In the strongbox of the time capsule were newspapers from that day: Dec. 20, 1900. A gold illuminated parchment signed by theater manager Frank Howe was in excellent condition.

But missing from the box was something they expected to find,  a bottle of Jamaica rum, which by press accounts from 1900 had been carefully placed there as a good luck token. Well, so no rum. This was a disappointment, as everyone had expected to open the bottle and have a memorial toast to the old Garrick! There was no explanation for its absence. Somebody pocketed the bottle before the time capsule was buried. 

So, they were sorry about that bottle, but there was precious little sentimentality about the loss of the Garrick, though. Reported the Inquirer. Three large photos which adorned its lobby had been saved, as had photos of George M. Cohan, Maude Adams, Mitzi, Fred Stone, Cleo Mayfield, and other stars of bygone days. "They will be given to anyone asking for them," wrote the paper.

The Shubert Brothers - our old friends from Episode 67 - they were also consolidating their real estate holding. They had barely emerged from  a crisis in 1932, and Lee Shubert had ended up buying all the outstanding stock. He decided to sell off some of his real estate assets in Philadelphia. He kept the Shubert and Forrest Theatres, but others could go. This included the Broad Street Theatre, which had stood since the Centennial Exposition 1876. The Broad Street came down in August 1937 and the month after that, the twin theaters, the Lyric and the Adelphi north of City Hall, were sold and leveled. The Chestnut Street Opera House, another relic of the 1870s, soon followed. Some of its space, at least, was taken by a new building, the Mercantile Library. But where the auditorium of the theater, and some of the old library had been, just to the north? No not a parking lot - it eventually became that new blight on the landscape, an above-ground three story parking garage. Though it’s definitely showing its age, that parking garage is still there, too. I parked there myself, just the other day. I’m not really the hero of the story. Just like everybody else, folks wanted to drive, and needed a place to park there cars where the got there. 

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In March of 1937, as compared to October of 1927, the commercial theater situation of Philadelphia had drastically altered. There were literally no live plays being performed on commercial stages anywhere in Philadelphia. All the melodramas, musicals, and variety acts had gone to Hollywood. There were movies available everywhere in Philadelphia, delighting audiences with the spectacles and narratives that had once been the sole province of live theater. 

Some people noticed. "Drama Deserters" was the headline of “The Call Boy's Chat,” the weekly column of the stage in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Until almost the zero hour, drama diehards of this district had hoped, wistfully and wanly, that some hitherto unheralded hero of the Theatre would suddenly step forward to save the city from the sad situation of a week without a single stage show at this time of year. Nothing of the sort has happened, however.  . . For our quondam heroes and heroines of footlight fame are now almost all out in Hollywood, feasting on the fat of films." To the Call Boy, it seemed that only the wealthy and influential were still enjoying the fun of live shows - Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club was coming to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on Broad Street in April, noted the newspaper, with its musical review entitled Come Across.

However, if the Call Boy had just bothered to look elsewhere on the same page of his newspaper, he would have seen where the real heroes were. In small amateur theater groups at the YWHA and the Theater League, where in tiny basement halls and auditoriums, the next generation of theater practice was being shaped. Nine small local theater groups were sponsoring a contest for new plays. And out in Rose Valley, Jasper Deeter's Hedgerow Theatre, with its collectivist repertory spirit, was till offering a full slate of classic fare: a double bill of The Dark Lady of the Sonnets and Androcles and the Lion by GB Shaw, as well as an uncut version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

One Way to Heaven was scheduled for Saturday at the Hedgerow. In March of 1937, for Philadelphia area theaters, there was literally no way to go but Up.

[TRYOUT TOWN END THEME]

That’s our show for today. If you’ve been enjoying this season of the podcast, or have any thoughts or suggestions, drop us an email at AITHpodcast@gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you! To support our show and to get access to bonus material and special insider info about Philly theater history, our Patreon page is Patreon dot com/AITHpodcast. Or, another way to thank us, and again, I can’t repeat this ENOUGH - is to leave some stars and/or a review about the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify - or you can do that right on our website w w w dot, AITHpodcast.com that helps us out so much. That’s what you’re going to do as soon as I stop speaking right? Right. Yes? Yes you are. You are amazing. Thank you. 

This is Peter Schmitz, the chief cook and bottle washer, as well as being the Resident Know-it-all Smartypants in Chief. The Sound editing and engineering for this episode was all done by My Humble Self, here at our studios in our World Headquarters high atop the Tower of Theater History. 

Thank you for listening, and for coming along on another Adventure in Theatre History, Philadelphia.

[AITH END THEME]