The Theater

Altlanta's early citizens had but little time for pleasure; work and sleep constituted a routine that was seldom broken. Cultural recreation, especially in the form of the theater, was not even remotely considered. By the early forties, however, the town had taken on some elements of permanency and citizens were beginning to have a few daily leisure hours. Word quickly spread along that grapevine system which has ever been the characteristic gossip medium of the show world and at once a stream of Punch-and-Judy shows and street performers were attracted to Atlanta. Local music clubs were organized and concerts of a sort were given. By 1850 a newspaper was already complaining that concerts and sleight-of-hand performances have become stale from the frequency of their occurrence.

In 1854 Parr's Hall, located on the third floor of a brick building at the corner of Whitehall and Alabama Streets, was opened for the accommodation of traveling shows. Here William H. Crisp and his talented family began their first attempts at portraying the drama. In the same year Crisp persuaded James E. Williams, later mayor of Atlanta, to remodel the second floor of his feed store, between Pryor and Peachtree Streets on Decatur, into a theater. The resulting auditorium was called the Athenaeum and was reached by a narrow flight of stairs, at the top of which was a little box office. There were enough rude chairs and benches in the "parquette" and gallery to seat 700 persons, although Williams advertised the capacity as being over 1,000. The rear of the hall was given over to a shallow stage, the sliding curtains of which stopped just short of the walls to afford a little "dressing room" privacy. There was no back door and it was often necessary for the hard-put actors to make precarious rear entrances and exits by means of a long ladder which barely reached one of the windows. Candles gave the only illumination, and patrons endured uncomplainingly the odors of the feed grains stored in the lower floor, the snorting of horses in adjacent stables, and the acute discomfort of sitting for hours on rough, uncushioned benches. Nevertheless, it held all the mystery and enchantment that is the theater, and at every performance the house was packed by citizens who wept over high tragedy and laughed uproariously at low comedy. The Athenaeum became headquarters for Crisp and his family as well as for the traveling shows of the day.

William Choice, another amateur actor, organized the Murdock Dramatic Club in this same year and the company sprang into immediate popularity. Choice was an energetic and sensitive young man of exceptional talent who excelled in tragic roles. As gentlemen, he stated in speaking of the aims of the club, we promise we will not pander to perverted tastes, but the noblest thoughts of noblest men shall be presented. Typical plays were The Gladiator, Pizarro, and William Tell, all with strong male leading roles which provided Choice with excellent opportunities. The organization was exclusively male, but for such plays as Poca-hon-tas (The Gentle Savage) and The Wife professional actresses were employed. On occasion the Murdock Club supplemented the ranks of traveling companies which appeared in Atlanta. Among these were the companies of Maggie Mitchell who presented Mazeppa, and of the great tragedian Neafil, who appeared in The Corsican Brothers. Although he was immensely popular, Choice's career was brought to an untimely end when he murdered a creditor and was committed to the Milledgeville insane asylum in 1860.

Crisp and Choice followed the precedent established by traveling shows, that of presenting a serious drama followed by a short comedy, and drama or comedy alike carried explicit subtitles. Thus were combined such double features as Lucretia Borgia or The Female Poisoner and The Happy Man or Paddy Among the Orientals. So firmly entrenched was this pattern that the companies did not dare ignore the public expectations, but the comic relief was often cut to proportions which made it a mere sop to satisfy custom. Thus one billing of the day announced "Shakespeare's Beautiful Tragedy MACBETH in five acts, to conclude with minna, a Comic Song."

Comedy, however, was by no means eclipsed. On the contrary the Fulton Minstrels, the Campbell Minstrels ("The Campbells are Coming!"), or the Atlanta Amateurs could put on an entire evening's show of fun. Shortly after the disbanding of the Murdock Dramatic Club, William Barnes, who had played juvenile roles in Choice's company, founded the Atlanta Amateurs, an organization that seems to have been given more to musical extravaganzas than to plays, although short dramatic skits occasionally were given in the course of an evening's entertainment. Barnes' company became the most popular troupe of the era in Atlanta and, during the War between the States, almost completely dominated the stage of the city. Scarcely a week went by without a benefit performance for the soldiers, and the fame of the Amateurs spread throughout Georgia and neighboring States. So popular was the troupe that newspapers fairly gushed their praises, and one enthusiastic critic overshot his meaning by declaring that these exhibitions are in every way unexceptional.

During the course of the war, William Crisp, then a major in the Confederate Army, became lessee and manager of the Athenaeum as well as operator of theaters in Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama. His company, headed by his wife, continued to present plays, and Major Crisp himself occasionally enacted roles while home on furlough. Once during his absence the city council threatened to close the theater as a precautionary measure when the opposing armies approached too close to Atlanta and stray shells were falling in the city. Mrs. Crisp, with ready acumen, immediately announced that henceforth every performance would be a benefit for the soldiers, a move which so appealed to the patriotism of the citizens that council dared riot carry through the proposal.

During the war traveling companies seldom appeared in Atlanta, but individual entertainers often contrived to get into the city. Thus the Athenaeum billed such performers as "Mr. Nash Butler, in his inimitable Comic Song" Mr. Dan May, The Ethiopian Delineator'"; "Madame Amelia Celeste, Rope Ascentioniste and Danseuse"; and "Wm. E. Yeaman, Blind Slack Wire Performer." The war aided the growth of the theater in Atlanta rather than seriously deterring it, and every company or individual was hard put to supply the demand for entertainment. If, as rarely happened, one of the professional groups was not putting on a nightly show, churches, social clubs, and relief organizations would take advantage of the opportunity to call on everyone who could sing or recite and put on a benefit. Many a shy maiden was thrust upon a stage on these occasions by ambitious "mammas" and made to sing:

Here's to the boys in Confederate gray,
Vive la Compagnie
Who never their country nor sweethearts betray,
Vive la Compagnie. . .

and so on for as many verses as fond relatives and friends could improvise. In those war-mad years the inevitable result was wild indiscriminate acclaim, and it is not surprising that numbers of these susceptible girls were dazzled by their easy success and believed themselves stars. Ten years after the war many of these Sweethearts of the South" or "Dixie Darlings" could be found traveling the cheap vaudeville circuits with little change 111 their routine, still singing "Vive la Compagnie" and "The Girl I Left Behind Me," still trying to establish themselves by appealing to a fast-fading pseudo-patriotic emotionalism, still goaded on by stage-mothers who refused to recognize the fact that their daughters never had had, nor ever would have, any talent.

The behavior of the audiences during the latter years of the conflict hastened the closing of the Athenaeum. Soldiers on furlough, deserters, exchange prisoners, sports, and hoodlums filled the gallery at the Athenaeum and dictated the manner in which the shows should be run. They hissed, hooted, swore, hurled insulting remarks to the players, and generally upset the house. One of their favorite diversions was reaching out and tilting the candle chandeliers so that hot tallow poured down upon the heads of the parquet audience. For a while the Crisp family, the Waldron family, and such old experienced players as Edwin R. Dalton were able to carry on in the face of such rudeness. The papers took up the issue and council placed policemen on duty at each performance. The audiences, however, went from bad to worse, the police were hopelessly outnumbered, and arrests often led to bloody rows. The billing degenerated into cheap vaudeville catering to the vulgar audiences, and the theater was finally closed by order of the mayor, who called the place a den of vice. The building was ultimately destroyed in the burning of Atlanta.

"Within a year after the close of the war, Davis Mall was opened on Broad Street between Hunter and Mitchell. The stage of the hall had drop curtains and kerosene footlights, and the seating capacity of the auditorium was more than 4,000- For an entire summer the hall was managed by John Templeton, who played leading roles in his own stock company. Templeton's talents extended over a wide field from tragedy to broad comedy and it was nothing for him to step from the melancholy role of Hamlet to the slapstick character of Toodles, a comic afterpiece, in the course of an evening.

The popularity of Davis Hall was overshadowed in 1867 by the opening of the Bell-Johnson Hall on the northeast corner of Broad and Alabama Streets. This hall was used by various amateur groups, church societies, and fraternal organizations, as well as occasional professional troupes. One amateur group which often put on plays in this hall was the Concordia Association, composed of Jewish citizens who raised money for their many charities through these performances.

Various other little halls were opened in the town during the next few years, but all were completely eclipsed by the grandeur of the DeGive Theater, built by Laurent DeGive and opened in 1870 on the northeast corner of Broad and Marietta Streets. It was the first building to be constructed specifically for theatrical purposes and immediately became a show place of the city. The facade featured tall iron columns placed flush with the edge of the sidewalk and supporting a broad iron balustraded veranda in the French manner, upon which the theater's patrons gathered between acts for refreshments. The management brought all of the currently popular plays and operas to the theater, and many famous actors and actresses appeared in response to Atlanta's demand for a higher type of entertainment. Sarah Bernhardt played La Tosca here, Fanny Davenport starred in Cleopatra, and Joe Jefferson performed his famed Rip Van Winkle. Edwin Booth, Richard Mansfield, Julia Marlowe, the famed Polish tragedienne Modjeska, and the comedians Al G. Fields and Lew Dock-stader were among other celebrities who walked the DeGive boards.

Many amusing incidents are told concerning the noted players of those days. On one occasion Richard Mansfield had been requested to present a double bill featuring parts of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Parisian Romance. Strong-willed genius that he was, Mansfield declared that he would not mutilate the plays but would present them both in full. He did, the curtain going up at eight in the evening and coming down at two in the morning. During a presentation of Richard III the act was disrupted by the appearance on the stage of an unexpected character in the person of a large Negro woman who waddled over to an amazed queen and announced, "Lady, here's yo wash!'

The name of the DeGive Theater was early changed to the more dignified one of DeGive Opera House. The building was the town's most popular show place for two decades, a period that old timers regard as the golden age of the theater in Atlanta. The city was in a strategic position, breaking the circuit from New York to New Orleans, and virtually every important company played the various theaters. The star system was becoming more the order and impresarios, such as Charles and Daniel Frohman, were taking leases on theaters throughout the country. Thus the DeGive Opera House and two newer but smaller houses, the Orpheum and the Edgewood Theaters, were assured of year-round bookings through their various lessees. The most popular plays of the 1880's were The Lady of Lyons, Toodles, Camille, The Spectre Bridegroom, East Lynne, Slasher and Crasher, Jenny Lind, Under the Gaslight, Ten Nights in a Barroom, and all of Shakespeare. French tragedies never failed to attract a full house and were surpassed in popularity only by American comedies. This, too, was the heyday of chautauqua and of the big tent shows or circuses, one of which, in 1882, brought to Atlanta the first electric light to be exhibited in the city.

The Crisp family had grown in local favor and was still holding forth after a most successful tour of the West. Several other amateur groups had come into being. Foremost of these was the AtlantaDramatic Club, which is still remembered for its unique presentation of Julius Caesar at DeGive's. After ninety rehearsals the actors still lacked much in stage presence and timing, and the audience was treated to such incidents as a belated clock striking the hour several seconds after one of the conspirators had remarked upon its chiming, the collapse of a section of scenery carrying to the floor with it a grief-striken supernumerary weeping for the dead Caesar, and another confused "supe" referring to Brutus as "a noble vessel full of beef" instead of grief. Cassius, in reply to his question "Am I not stayed for, Cinna?" received the answer, "You bet your sweet life!" Caesar himself seems to have suffered the most indignities, however, for an over-enthusiastic Anthony stepped on his stomach during the famed oration. A few minutes later when Anthony was broken-heartedly pointing out the wounds on Caesar's body to another character, he inadvertently touched Caesar's neck, whereupon that deceased gentleman, being posthumously ticklish, burst into laughter and convulsed an already hysterical audience.

In 1893, Laurent DeGive surprised Atlanta by building the Grand Theater on Peachtree Street. Despite predictions that the venture would bankrupt the DeGive fortunes and the objection that the building was too far from the center of town (then around Alabama Street), the theater was an immediate success and became the leading house for celebrities of the day. The galaxy of headliners included Sir Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Maude Adams, John Drew, Anna Held, Lillian Russell, Maxine Elliott, Otis Skinner, and William Faversham.

"With the opening of the Grand Theater the old DeGive house rapidly fell to second place. Jake Wells obtained control of it and renamed it the Bijou. There he brought Little Chip, Mary Marble, the Fanchonettis, Hoffman, and a host of others who afterwards became celebrities in the theatrical world. He also established a stock company that was very successful for a time. But the better patronage soon deserted the old theater for the attractions of the Grand, and the stock company gave way to cheap vaudeville and burlesque. Censorship stepped in and the house was often closed. Around the turn of the century an attempt was made to re-establish a stock company, but the venture failed, the property was sold, and finally the Bijou was torn down to make way for an office building.

Meanwhile Atlanta had grown to a town of more than 100,000 people. More and more shows were coming South on the New Orleans-Texas circuit, and new theaters for their accommodation were built. Two of the most important of these, the Lyric and the Forsyth Theaters, were "big time" vaudeville houses, presenting such "headliners" as Anna Held, Eddie Foy, and the young Buster Keaton. The Atlanta Theater, opened in 1911 was strictly a legitimate house, bringing to the city stars of the caliber of George Beban, Robert Man-tell, and Minnie Maddern Fiske.

The rapid development of the cinema industry on a large scale between 1905 and 1915 resulted in the erection of many motion picture houses. Atlanta's first movie had been shown at the Cotton States Exposition in 1895, but the venture was a complete failure. With the turn of the century, however, the improved technique of making and projecting films captured the public interest, and several motion picture houses were opened. Many Atlantans remember the years Dave Love and his orchestra held forth at the Criterion Theater, during which time he introduced the playing of classic overtures between showings of the feature picture, an entertainment pattern that was copied by other Atlanta theaters and maintained for more than a decade. During this period, too, the Metropolitan Opera, which had made its first appearance in the city auditorium in 1910, was returning annually for a week's presentation of the greatest operas. Atlanta was becoming famed as the musical, as well as the theatrical, center of the South.

The Howard Theater, later known as the Paramount, was opened in 1920 as the first million dollar theater to be erected in the South. Though ornate, the decorative details were in good taste and exhibited but little of that rococo garishness which characterized later Atlanta theaters. For years the Howard orchestra, conducted by Enrico Leide, staged elaborate prologues and overtures with Virginia Futrelle as prima donna and danseuse.

During this decade the Atlanta Theater became the leading outlet for the legitimate stage in Atlanta. Virtually every theatrical celebrity of the day appeared here. In addition to occasional road shows presenting the current New York plays, there were several successive stock companies which kept the house open throughout the year. Louise Hunter appeared here for several summer seasons of light opera.

The Metropolitan, the Georgia (now the Roxy), and the Capitol were also erected during the 1920's, Atlanta's boom period. In 1926 the management of the Atlanta Theater built the Erlanger, which immediately became the city's leading legitimate theater and took over the presentation of the better road shows and stock companies. For several years virtually all the other theaters ran on a year-round schedule, featuring both stage and screen entertainment. DeGive's Grand was leased by the Marcus Loew interests as a house for that vaudeville chain, the old Forsyth featured big time Keith-Albee vaudeville which was later moved to the new Georgia Theater, while the Paramount presented the spectacular Fanchon-Marco shows. Every house maintained its own orchestra, playing not only in the pit but often as a part of the entertainment unit on the stage. Even the legitimate theaters were almost continually open.

Then came the depression with its disastrous effects upon the entertainment industries. All legitimate houses were dark, stage shows were discontinued and orchestras were dismissed, and the "canned music" of the talkies took their place in the few movie houses which remained open. The Metropolitan Opera discontinued its annual appearance at the auditorium and theater patronage reached an all-time low. For a time the Fox Theater, an elaborate house erected at the beginning of the depression, was able to maintain a fair imitation of the former spectacular stagings of the 1920's, but it quickly fell into the depression pattern and became solely a movie house.

Strangely enough, the lean years, which had drastically curtailed all other stage entertainment in Atlanta, gave new impetus to the amateur theatrical movement. Several of these groups had been organized prior to the depression. These included the Blackfriars Dramatic Club of Agnes Scott College organized in 1915' the Playcrafters and the Little Theater Guild in 1924, the Emory University Players and the Drama Guild of the Studio Club in 1928, the Atlanta University Players (Negro) in 1929, and the White Barn Theater in 1930. Of these, the Blackfriars, the Emory Players, and the Atlanta University Players were the most successful and are still producing. The Blackfriars won third place in competition with other university theaters in 1924 and, in 1928, won first prize in the International Little Theater Tournament of unpublished plays held in New York City. The group covered the field of drama from early Greek literature to plays with modern plots and backgrounds. The Emory Players, who have obtained an enviable position among local amateur groups, specialize in the presentation of contemporary plays. The Atlanta University Players have received national recognition through many favorable notices in stage publications. Their repertoire runs the gamut from Greek drama to modern plays of Negro life, spanning the gap with an occasional Shakespearean production.

Newer groups include the Atlanta Children's Theater Guild, organized in 1934 by the Junior League; the Children's League of the Studio Arts Club, founded in 1935; the Atlanta Players Club, formed in 1935; and the Atlanta Theater Guild, which staged its first production in 1936.

In January, 1937, the local unit of the Federal Theater Project presented its first play at the Atlanta Theater under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. In the fall of 1938 it moved to the Erlanger Theater. During the two and one-half years of its existence the Federal Theater Project offered a wide variety of playsranging from Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus to such contemporary drama as Boy Meets Girl and Excursion. From time to time professional actors were sent from the central casting office in New York to strengthen the presentations of the local unit.

In the past few years there has been a surprising increase in the number of neighborhood motion picture houses in the city and there are two open-air theaters for motorists who do not wish to leave their cars. Vaudeville has returned to a few houses, and even those theaters which seldom present stage shows are offering double-feature movie billings in an effort to stimulate patronage. The Erlanger is Atlanta's only legitimate house today. In the past two years many New York successes have been presented here, starring such celebrities as Katharine Cornell, Maurice Evans, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Katharine Hepburn, and Victor Moore.

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