Chicago's Theater Industry: A Quest for World Class, #3

By Edward Sharp

The story of how Chicago won "the Vaudeville Wars" only to see its stage industry collapse. A history of the commercial stage industry in Chicago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Class Chicago Publishing LLC
• Release date: Dec 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991193288

Book preview

CHICAGO’S THEATER BUSINESS

A QUEST FOR WORLD-CLASS

Volume Three in a Series about Chicago’s Popular Culture

A History of Chicago’s Stage Entertainment Industry

By Edward Sharp

Published by World-Class Chicago Publishing LLC

www.chicagoworldclass.com

© Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9911932-8-8

Contents

PRELUDE

A History of the Chicago Theater Industry

1830’s-1860’s First Chicago theater company taxed out of existence-John Rice & James McVicker establish theaters-First Chicago playwright-First Chicago theater palace & first theater manager in bankruptcy

1870’s-1880’s Great Fire destroys downtown theater district-A Chicago producer suborns New York’s critics-Stock companies decline-Gilbert & Sullivan impacts Chicago theater-The American musical extravaganza starts in Chicago

1890’s American comic opera debuts in Chicago-A Chicago producer launches the blood and thunder melodrama-Depression sends Chicago producers into bankruptcy-The Theater Trust seizes the industry-Chicago independents have a major hit drama and helps establish the Shuberts

1900’s A Boston producer creates musicals in the Studebaker-Wizard Oil makes possible the Wizard of Oz-Fire plagues Chicago theater-Chicago becomes a theater battleground-Vaudeville business model developed in Chicago-First American endowed theater fails in Chicago-Tap dance starts in a Chicago theater

1910’s A Chicago Vaudeville Mogul dies and a widow becomes a Midwestern power-Another theater war commences-Local musical theater ends in 1913-The Little Theater starts a national movement-A European war ends the Theater Trust-Small-time Vaudeville challenges the Big Time Circuits

1920’s The Orpheum Circuit becomes a Chicago company-A theater palace building boom commences-State Street becomes that Great Street-New Chicago variety companies challenges Vaudeville-Grand Opera gets a new palace & a new professional Shakespeare company is endowed-The Art Institute gets an endowed theater-

1930’s Great Depression shuts off the lights on theater marquees-Another World’s Fair brings life to the stage-The Federal Government becomes a theater producer and has a hit musical in Chicago-A Chicago production company helps revive the Shuberts-

1940’s Chicago theater revives but only as a road stop-The inglorious end to the Hamlins-Chicago in decline as an entertainment destination-Television arrives-

1950’s The Federal Government goes after the Shuberts-Chicago declines even as a road city-Rise of the tent theaters-Government forces Shuberts to sell theaters while Government demolishes theaters-Grand opera revives but professional theater companies fail-

1960’s-1970’s Suburban dinner theater prospers as Chicago declines as a road stop-Theater demolition increases to stop adult entertainment-A theater revival starts in small storefronts-A Chicago musical becomes a big hit in New York-

1980’s-2000’s Lights go dark in the Loop while theater demolition continues-The suburban dinner theaters go into decline-A Canadian revives theater in the Loop-The loop again becomes a theater district dominated by New York producers-

Lessons Learned from History

References and Sources

PRELUDE

It is embarrassing to have a road company Hello, Dolly! Booked into the Minskoff for six weeks. Such productions are the reasons they invented Chicago.

The theater critic of the New York Post, 1975

The last week of February, 1973 was supposed to be a time of glory and achievement for Chicago and its resurgent theater community. At the time the longest running hit musical on Broadway was a Chicago import called Grease, a musical reprise of youth culture in the 1950’s. Now, during the last week of February, by coincidence not one but two new Chicago-originated plays were premiering on Broadway: Warp and Status Quo Vadis. If just one could equal the success of Grease, it would be evincive that Chicago had emerged as a major national theatrical production center, not just another cross-country stop for New York road shows. Certainly there had always been Chicago residents with an active participation in national theater. Only the previous decade Michael Butler, the scion of a wealthy Oak Brook family, had financed one of Broadway’s most popular musicals: Hair. But Chicago theater itself in the mid-20th century years had been limited to road shows and suburban dinner theater that starred aging celebrities of television or motion pictures. As a national production center of theater, Chicago had been dead for decades but a renaissance seemed to be aborning.

What was supposed to be validation of the renaissance turned from expected celebration to abject disappointment. Warp was panned and closed after one week while the fate of Status Quo Vadis was even more dismal closing after but one single performance after being similarly panned by New York theater critics. Rather than emerge as a national theater production center, Chicago theater had laid the proverbial egg. The Organic Theater Company who had produced Warp returned to Chicago disappointed but not daunted. After Warp, the Organic Theater Company continued production of original and popular new plays in Chicago. Status Quo Vadis returned to the theater from hence it had come, the Ivanhoe in the Lakeview neighborhood, for many more weeks of full houses. Chicago’s disappointment was somewhat assuaged later in 1973 when a Broadway road company of "Chicago’s own Grease" opened in the Loop. Chicago’s veteran theatergoers could prove how avant-garde they were by claiming to have first seen Grease in its original production in a converted barn on Lincoln Avenue renamed the Kingston Mines.

The theater debacle of February 1973 was a clarion commentary on the state of Chicago theater. For years thereafter, whenever a new original play opened in a local neighborhood theater to good reviews, the phrase "this could be the next Grease was reiterated. The very best theater productions of Chicago don’t progress from off-Loop to Loop as New York’s progression of off-Broadway to Broadway or tryout city (often Chicago) to Broadway; rather a Chicago production must first be proffered to New York for the imprimatur a Broadway hit" before the play moves into a Loop theater. The result is to make Chicago theater dependent on New York opinion makers, both critics and producers. In a final irony, if a New York road company of a Chicago originated production does return for a Loop engagement, an acrimonious debate will ensue as to how the local theater community can prosper if New York talent is used in Chicago. In theater, Chicago’s internal conflict between provincial self-interest verses personal preference is often manifest.

After several decades of impressive growth in local neighborhood theater, the business of commercial theater production in Chicago is still minuscule. The large downtown theaters are still near totally dependent on New York producers for product. Most of these theaters are owned or controlled by New York corporations. The last time a downtown theater was owned or controlled by a Chicago-based commercial theater producer, the Chicago Cubs were routinely playing in and winning the World Series. Chicago theater has gained national admiration for its quality, variety and sophistication. Yet Chicago is still viewed as a place to start and learn only. Anyone aspiring to a career in major theater must still move to New York. A century ago, theater in Chicago was very different. Chicago playwrights had the stature to premiere their plays in a Loop theater and if a success, then a Chicago road company would be sent to New York. New York has always sent road companies across the country but a century ago, New York’s shadow didn’t cover Chicago. The theater community prospered here and augmented the development of other arts especially in the literary and music communities.

A History of the Chicago Theater Industry

1830’s-1860’s First Chicago theater company taxed out of existence-John Rice & James McVicker establish theaters-First Chicago playwright-First Chicago theater palace & first theater manager in bankruptcy

Chicago theater is as old as the city itself. The first theater to successfully establish in Chicago auspicated production the same year Chicago was chartered as a city: 1837. The pioneer producers of Chicago’s inaugural theater were two New Yorkers, Harry Isherwood and Alexander McKenzie, who held the belief that frontier Chicago was ready for the dramatic arts. For a theater edifice, Isherwood and McKenzie rented a vacant tavern on the young city’s periphery, the Sauganash. The dining room was filled with benches and chairs, while candles served as the only source of lighting.  Still, the austere theater structure was hardly Isherwood and McKenzies’ biggest obstacle. When the young theater producers petitioned the Chicago City Council for a license, they were not viewed as the parents of a new cultural institution but as a potential new source of municipal revenue. The license fee was set at a steep $125.00 for a three month season. Theater production is risky enough but a large tax burden makes it near prohibitive. Indeed, earlier in the same year two other New Yorkers, a Mr. Dean and a Mr. McKinney, had intended to open a theater in Chicago but when the City Council demanded $100.00 for a license, the disillusioned young thespians abandoned Chicago forever.

Excessive taxation was not the only impediment Isherwood and McKenzie had to overcome to establish theater in Chicago. There was also the ignorance of a nation begot in the Puritan ethic. Following a successful first season, Isherwood and McKenzie rented larger facilities in the very center of the business district and petitioned the Council for a new license. As a significant portion of the populace believed theater was the work of Satan, himself, proposing a theater in the very center of the business district created a furor of controversy. One alderman, Grant Goodrich, argued against license renewal by claiming the establishment of a downtown theater would be a menace to the moral welfare of the city. Prejudice against theater on moral grounds was not unique to 19th century Chicago but rather was part of the national ethos that plagued theater for many years.

Despite Mr. Goodrich’s dire predictions of moral turpitude, Isherwood and McKenzie received another license and commenced theater in the heart of Chicago without any measurable increase in moral depravation anywhere in the city. In fact, the theater company’s second season seemed to be well-received considering all the forces against it. Isherwood and McKenzie named their theater company the Illinois Theatrical Company to gain popular support as actually none of the performers were from Chicago or even the Midwest. Nevertheless, the actors and actresses were tantamount to the best in the nation. One accomplished performer in the company of only nine years age, Joseph Jefferson, became one of the greatest and most popular actors in American theater. Following the second theater season, in 1839 Harry Isherwood and Alexander McKenzie disbanded their stock company and returned to New York. Chicago’s first theater company was a victim of insensitive government, prejudice and a depressed economy in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837. Isherwood and McKenzie presented Chicago with first-class dramatic productions and proved Chicagoans would support theater. But their experience also proved theater cannot thrive in the face of a hostile government. Following Isherwood and McKenzie’s departure, Chicago theater went into a seven year eclipse.

The theater hiatus ended in 1847 when a man for the occasion, named John B. Rice, settled in Chicago. If the appellation Father of Chicago Theater is to be bestowed, it is most deserved by John B. Rice. Rice seemed imbued with the same I can spirit that is used to describe young Chicago. In 1846 Rice, in the Horace Greeley tradition of Western migration, came to Chicago for the purpose of bringing theater to the West. Initially Rice was leery of risking all in Chicago, probably because of its reputation of inhospitable government and puritanical prejudices gratis the Isherwood and McKenzie experience. Ergo, Rice opened his first theater in Milwaukee. It was soon obvious that if theater was going to establish in the West, Chicago would have to be the place. So, Rice abandoned Milwaukee for Chicago and built a theater with $4000.00 of his own funds on Randolph Street near Dearborn. For his opening production, John Rice assembled a cast of the nation’s finest stage performers. There was Dan Marble, the nation’s premier stage comedian, and Mrs. John Drew who is noteworthy as the grandmother of the famous Barrymore theater family. The premiere performance at Rice’s Theater, The Four Sisters, was an auspicious success and theater was ever more a part of the Chicago cultural scene. In just the first year of production Rice received the plaudits of such patrons as Horace Greeley and Abraham Lincoln, both regular visitors to Chicago and Rice’s Theater.

John B. Rice was one of those rare men of an ilk who could not be defeated by adversity. In his theater’s third year a fire completely destroyed the wood-frame structure. Rice conveyed no overt leaden countenance of distress the night of the fire but remained optimistic, even whistling as he walked home. The destroyed wood-frame theater was soon replaced with a new even more elegant brick building. John B. Rice had the total respect of early Chicago. On one occasion a visiting actor, Barney Williams, insulted the Irish during his performance, never a wise thing to do in Chicago. Before the audience could exact some form of physical expiation on Mr. Williams, John B. Rice appeared on stage and promised never to engage Barney Williams again if the audience would allow him to finish his performance which they then did. In fact, Rice was held in such high esteem in Chicago that after his retirement from the theater, he was elected Mayor of Chicago twice and, just prior to his death, Congressman. John B. Rice has been the only man from the cultural sphere in Chicago to achieve high public office and political power.

One of John B. Rice’s most important contributions to Chicago theater was convincing a young traveling comedian, James McVicker, to join the Rice Theater stock company. James McVicker, after opening his own theater in 1857, became the most important figure in Chicago theater for the remainder of the 19th century. A theater bearing his name stood on the same location (Madison Street between State and Dearborn) from 1857 until being demolished in 1984. McVicker joined Rice’s stock company at the beginning of its second year, the middle of 1848. John Rice had by this time firmly enrooted his theater in Chicago’s culture; yet, as James McVicker would often reminisce in his later years, the Puritan prejudice still plagued Chicago’s theater people during this time. When he and other newly arrived actors tried to gain residence at a boardinghouse, the landladies often would react with fright when told prospective boarders worked in the theater. Still, McVicker’s three years with Rice in Chicago must have been pleasant and rewarding for when John Rice decided to retire from active theater production in 1857, James McVicker returned to Chicago from a successful international tour to build his own theater at an astronomical cost of $85,000, all the more impressive because the capital was raised during a national economic depression. Chicago theater maintained continuity with Rice’s departure and McVicker’s entrance.

To understand early Chicago theater requires some understanding of 19th century American theater. Modern theater is oriented to the play more than the performers. One production a night is presented in a theater while the success of a play is judged by the length of its continuous run. During a play’s run, if it is long, key members of the cast may be replaced. Further, it is the playwright or producer who usually owns the rights to the production, rarely a performer, while 19th century theater was oriented more towards the performers than the play or playwright. An actor of national stature would tour the country with his repertoire of various works. During a single night’s performance as many as four one-act plays or operas might be presented. Some performers wrote their own plays or commissioned a writer and, therefore, only they would use that material while the actual author remained unknown to the audience. Thus when Dan Marble, the reigning comedian of stage, died in 1851, James McVicker purchased Marble’s repertoire from his estate and went on an international tour. People as much went to the theater to see a star actor or actress as the theater patron might not even know what particular play would be performed beforehand.

Chicago after the arrival of Rice and McVicker was known as a good theater city. Both theater producers brought to Chicago the best national thespian and comedian talent for presentation. Most of their names are now pretty much forgotten except perhaps Joseph Jefferson, Edwin Forrest, the Drews and the famous Booth family including John Wilkes, the eventual Presidential assassin. The stock company Rice and McVicker assembled to support a visiting star and give performances when no star was present was considered with the best in the country and was amply supported by Chicago audiences. Chicago theater in the 19th century, as in the 20th and 21st centuries, depended upon imported talent and productions. Yet it is noteworthy that very early in Chicago theater history local production developed. As early as 1852, John Rice was presenting plays written by a local playwright whose identity today is not known. The plays, 180 Monroe Street and The Chicago Fireman, presented by Rice’s stock company in 1852 was obviously meant to appeal strictly to a local audience. Likewise, Rice would draw on local history as subject matter for dramatization. In December of 1856, Rice presented Chicago in 1812, a historical drama based on the Fort Dearborn massacre of 1812.

James McVicker also tried to encourage local aspiring playwrights. In March of 1859, McVicker produced a play called Pike’s Pike written by a Chicago newspaperman. The play was an adventure about the trials of gold crazed Chicagoans who had joined in the western rush for quick riches. Though the play did not seem to be well-received by Chicago theatergoers, McVicker let it run the standard week duration and not discourage the local playwright in his first effort. It was a judicious decision. Later in the year, McVicker produced two new comedies in Chicago by the same playwright, Speculation and Our Eastern Cousin, both proved to be popular productions. Speculation dealt with the idiocy of the Chicago land boom that caused men of usual sound mind to purchase land that was nothing more than a slough and Our Eastern Cousin mocked the visiting, civilized Eastern gentlemen who could not cope with the asperity of frontier Chicago.

An established first-rate theater in Chicago provided an opportunity for any latent theater talent in the city to manifest itself, for citizens to become involved in theater. Rice’s theater had been in production but a few months in 1847 when the passion of the boards had captured its first proselyte: George W. Ryer. George Ryer had been an accomplished fashion tailor in Chicago who became a frequent patron at Rice’s Theater once it had opened. Eventually Ryer gave up his tailor business to join John Rice’s theater company justifying his passion by claiming that sitting on a tailor bench gave him rheumatism. An unlikely excuse but still a propitious decision. In the later decades of the 19th century, Ryer would become a successful playwright and actor of national stature with twenty plays to his credit as an author. George Ryer was the first national playwright to launch from Chicago theater.

Chicagoans from various occupations and persuasions gave theater production a try. In the late 1850’s, McVicker presented an original drama by Solomon A. Willson, a prominent lawyer; also a temperance drama by a Mrs. M. Thayer, described as a leading figure in the local temperance movement. Much isn’t known now of Chicago’s pioneer playwrights. Perhaps they wanted some anonymity to avoid the animus of local puritans. Or perhaps the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that consumed much of the city’s earliest historical records only makes them seem anonymous now. Their plays were topical in content and local in appeal, which is likely to preclude passing the test of time. The salient consideration is that from the time of John Rice and James McVicker there was a theater production capability in Chicago that nurtured local talent, when present, while still offering audiences first-class theater productions.

The first Chicagoan to make a mark in national theater was Mary McVicker, the adopted stepdaughter of James. At the age of only ten, Mary was pressed into a role in her father’s theater when another child actress proved incapable. Mary became an immediate local star. She was cast in prestigious and challenging roles such as little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As her reputation in Chicago grew, theater producers across the nation took notice. Soon Mary McVicker was on a national tour starting from Boston; the national tour being the big apple during this era. At age twenty, Mary went to New York to open Booth’s Theater on Broadway playing Juliet across from Edwin Booth as Romeo. Mary McVicker married Booth soon after but, unfortunately, died ten years later before realizing the full potential of her theatrical talent.

As long as James McVicker was alive and active in theater production, his theater was the premier house in Chicago. For his first six years, McVicker’s theater was the only theater in downtown Chicago. But Chicago’s population was growing at an unprecedented rate and by the 1860’s the city was able to support more theaters even with much of the male population serving in the Union army. The second theater to successfully establish in Chicago was Colonel Wood’s Museum, opening August 17, 1863. Besides a theater, the Museum had exhibits of oddities and curiosities. Moreover, it was not unusual for theaters in 19th century America to be named Museum as for some reason there was no Puritan deprecation of museums just theaters. Colonel Wood’s Theater was immediately successful, in part, because of the fine stock company that had he assembled. The star actor in Colonel Wood’s company was Frank Aiken who soon was manager of Wood’s theater as well as lead actor. Aiken, an erstwhile national touring actor, remained in Chicago opening his own theater at various locations at different times and often presenting plays he wrote himself. Aiken exemplifies 19th century theater where actor, playwright, producer, manager and owner were often one and the same person.

The crowning achievement for Chicago theater before the Great Fire was the construction of the Crosby Opera House on Washington Street built by Uranus Crosby, a wealthy businessman in the distillery business. Crosby was a devotee of grand opera and he believed Chicago could support an opera season if there was an appropriate venue in which a company could perform. McVicker’s theater and Wood’s Museum were well suited for straight plays or small minstrel shows but too small for the demands of European grand opera. In 1865, Crosby spent the greater part of his fortune, an unfathomable (for the era) $600,000 for a magnificent Opera house. The Crosby Opera House, richly embellished with statuary and murals in the same fashion as the most ornate Italian opera houses, was heralded without hyperbole as the finest opera house in America and the largest in the West, far outrivaling the venerable Pike’s Opera House in Cincinnati. The building contained an art gallery, a large theater for either opera or theater and a smaller music hall for the more intimate needs of soloists or small musical groups. Crosby’s Opera House heralded the mixed use buildings of the future with a restaurant, two piano and music stores even a doctor’s office included within the building complex. Crosby’s architects designed a building years ahead of it time. They even developed a ventilating system that would pull cool air from the basement allowing performances during the hot summer months when many theaters were forced to close. Crosby’s Opera House was the finest theater building in America; it was a statement building proclaiming Chicago’s arrival as a major cultural center.

Unfortunately, Crosby’s accounting ledgers were making a different statement. Within two years, Uranus Crosby was bankrupt and the investors who held the mortgage wanted the building sold. Crosby had been an astute businessman and investor but he had allowed his cultural pretensions to cloud his business judgment. Besides a love of opera, Crosby had a growing collection of art that he wanted to display in an appropriate gallery and he was too impatient to wait for the conclusion of the Civil War. Crosby started construction of his opera house in 1864 when labor was scarce and some building materials, especially metal, were diverted to the war effort. Crosby had to pay a premium for a building that was overvalued as soon as the war ended. He couldn’t sell it after the war for what he had paid to build it during the war. Compounding the problem, unlike Aiken, Rice or McVicker, Uranus Crosby had no experience in theater production or management. Too often, the theater and the music hall were dark. Even when Crosby did book a grand opera company and there were full houses with tickets at a price premium, he lost money. Uranus Crosby didn’t know how to negotiate a theater contract and he wouldn’t hire someone with experience who might compromise his aesthetic rectitude. But he did come up with a clever tack to escape his financial dilemma: conduct a lottery with the building and the paintings as prizes.

In January of 1867, the drawing for the Crosby Opera House and dozens of paintings (none of which posterity would value very highly) was conducted. Tickets had been sold across the country although the largest proportion were bought by native Chicagoans. The winning ticket was sold to a denizen of rural Illinois from a ticket broker in St. Louis. When he finally arrived in Chicago to view his new property, the most magnificent theater in America, he was rightly impressed but still not motivated to become a theater impresario instead of a farmer. He offered to sell the building back to Crosby for $200,000. Uranus Crosby bought the building with his proceeds from the ticket sales and still had a remaining profit of $300,000. It had the appearance of a grand fraud but none could be proven. Still there was a deep resentment throughout Chicago. Uranus Crosby had been much admired for his effort to remake Chicago from a frontier outpost to a city of culture but now it was the denizens of the city who paid $5 for a lottery ticket who felt they had paid too much for Crosby’s folly. The stench that often hung over Crosby’s liquor distillery next to the Chicago River seemed to surround his opera house as well and he knew it. Uranus Crosby sold his theater building to his cousin Albert and then left Chicago for his native Massachusetts. Albert didn’t seem to share his cousin’s preference for grand opera either and soon the Opera House was presenting Lydia Thompson and Her British Blondes as well as the Republican national convention of 1868 that nominated Ulysses Grant as their candidate for the presidency. From grand opera to Republican politicians and women performing burlesque, to many Chicagoans, the city’s premier theater had become a civic embarrassment. Following the Great Fire of 1871, Crosby’s Opera House was not rebuilt.

A short decade after James McVicker opened his theater, Chicago’s theater community was expanding at an incredible pace. In 1863, the first Academy of Music on Washington Street opened to showcase touring opera and minstrel companies. The ill-fated Crosby’s Opera House opened in 1865 during the same week as Lincoln’s assassination. The Globe (later named the Lyceum) opened on Desplaines Street in 1870. The Olympic Theater at Clark and Monroe opened during August of 1868 and Frank Aiken in January of 1869 opened a theater on Dearborn, later named the Dearborn Theater. Later in 1870, just four years hence from the end of the Civil War, Chicago would have its first New York-Chicago chain theater organization and probably the greatest theater manager the city would ever possess: Richard M. Hooley.

Richard Hooley came to America from Ireland in the 1840’s but unlike many of his starving fellow countrymen fleeing famine, Hooley, a man of some means, came only to vacation and decided to stay. Hooley was the son of a wealthy Irish merchant who wanted his son to be a physician. Sent to England to learn the medical sciences, Richard Hooley instead preferred art and music. He studied the violin and became a master of the strings. On a vacation to New York City in 1844, Hooley was offered the position of manager and lead in a minstrel company. He accepted and within a few years had established the company as one of the best in America. They traveled and played England, Scotland, Ireland and Belgium to much acclaim. With his reputation well established in America he was offered and accepted a management position in a San Francisco theater in 1855, perhaps not realizing that safe, fast, reliable transcontinental transportation was an achievement of the future not a present convenience. To avoid the omnipresent possibility of Indian attack or getting trapped in a mountain blizzard, Hooley traveled the ocean route which still required an arduous land trip across either the isthmus of Nicaragua or the isthmus of Panama.

After a long laborious trip from New York, Hooley’s reward was to discover San Francisco just half a decade from the gold rush of 1849 was still a rough frontier outpost even though it did have a reliable audience for good music and theater. After only a couple of years, Hooley decided to make the long journey back to New York to resume his performing career in the more genteel East. By 1862, Richard Hooley had his own minstrel company and his own theater, Hooley’s Theater, in the growing city of Brooklyn. After six years, Richard Hooley had amassed an unprecedented $800,000 fortune from his music theater operation and was eager to expand. It isn’t clear why Richard M. Hooley chose Chicago to build his second theater, perhaps he believed it offered the greatest opportunity as Chicago was then expanding faster than Western rivals Detroit, St. Louis or Cincinnati. In late 1869, Hooley opened his Chicago theater on Clark Street in the downtown business district and it became an immediate success. Yet the timing could not have been worse. Two years after the grand opening and just two weeks after leasing his theater to manager Frank Aiken so he could commence a semi-retirement at the grand old age of 50, Hooley’s Theater with most of the rest of Chicago was consumed in a fire on a warm early October evening in 1871.

1870’s-1880’s Great Fire destroys downtown theater district-A Chicago producer suborns New York’s critics-Stock companies decline-Gilbert & Sullivan impacts Chicago theater-The American musical extravaganza starts in Chicago

The Fire of 1871 destroyed every major theater in the city except the Globe on Desplaines Street just west of the central business district. The hiatus in theater production caused by the conflagration was brief in duration although the fire did cause the loss to the city and its theater community of a promising young playwright: William Young who had come to Chicago from Western Illinois in 1868 in pursuit of a law degree and a career in law. Instead he discovered his true passion was in theater. He submitted his first play, Four Leaved Clover, to James McVicker who was impressed enough to schedule a production in late 1871. This particular four-leaved clover brought McVicker no good fortune, his theater was incinerated like the rest of central Chicago. With Chicago’s theaters in a state of devastation, Young felt compelled to move to New York where Four Leaved Clover did well and William Young embarked on a successful forty year career as an American dramatist and producer. Still, like the city in general, Chicago theater rose again in the tradition of the ancient phoenix. The embers of the incinerated city had barely cooled when theater production resumed at the Globe by Colonel Wood’s stock company thirteen days after the Fire. Shortly thereafter, in January of 1872, the second Academy of Music opened at its new location on Halsted near Madison. The first of the old theaters to reopen as a gala civic affair was Chicago’s premier house: McVicker’s on August 9, 1872. Frank Aiken built a new theater on the northwest corner of Wabash and Congress Street with a capability of 1700. With McVicker’s and Aiken’s houses reopened, Chicago theater would continue to grow and prosper though fire remained a particular incubus.

Richard Hooley’s loss from the Great Fire was reported to be $160,000 for a theater only two years old. His retirement by necessity suspended, Hooley seemed inspired to not only rebuild his theater but make it into the best in the country. He found a superior location on Randolph Street for which he exchanged his Clark Street property and he recruited an unusually large stock company for his new theater. Hooley reopened his new theater, Hooley’s Opera House (the name opera in 19th century theater context seemed to apply to any type of stage theater not necessarily the grand opera of European tradition), in 1872 with a popular international touring company performing The Black Crook; the play some theater historians claim is the first authentic American style book musical. While there is some doubt as to whether Black Crook was really the first, there is no dispute that it was the most noteworthy. After its premiere in New York in 1866, it became a national sensation and to Richard Hooley, a worthy production to re-inaugurate his new opera house. While Hooley’s newly assembled stock company presented popular old chestnuts like Rip Van Winkle, Hooley became willing to risk new material from unknown authors and in the process helped launch the careers of two playwrights that most theater historians credit as the first authentic American dramatists: Bartley Campbell and Crocker Bronson Howard.

Bartley Campbell was born into a family of struggling Irish immigrants near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1843 and was forced by economic necessity to abandon his formal education at an early age to enter the job market. Campbell started his career as an office boy on a Pittsburgh newspaper. What Campbell lacked in formal education he more than made up for with hard work and ambition. From office boy, he soon became an investigative reporter with some success exposing municipal corruption in Pittsburgh. For the next several years, he worked on several Pennsylvania newspapers as a reporter and drama critic. As a theater critic, Campbell exercised his position with extreme severity. Eventually one actor sued him for defamation and Campbell compounded his problems by first acting as his own lawyer and then feeling it necessary to also review the judge’s performance. After spending over a month in jail for contempt of court, Bartley Campbell found himself unemployed, financially destitute and with a growing family of his own. For the next several years, Bartley Campbell traveled across the country trying to find a way to make a living. He tried writing advertising jingles, ghostwriting campaign speeches for politicians, working as a government court recorder and trying to start his own magazine or newspaper, all with very little success. Finally in 1871, Campbell returned to Pittsburgh and attempted a new career as a playwright. He wrote two plays in his hometown both of which seemed to be well-received by the audience but neither of which made any waves in national theater although somehow they came to the notice of Richard Hooley in Chicago. The next year as Hooley prepared to re-inaugurate his Opera House, he invited Campbell to come to Chicago for the purpose of writing and directing new dramas. Campbell’s first play for Hooley in 1872, Fate, was a critical and commercial success.

Richard Hooley had assembled in Chicago a rather large stock company so that he could rehearse a new play with part of his theater company while the rest of the company performed in a running production. Campbell’s plays offered greater commercial possibilities than a one-time production in Chicago. While Hooley’s home theater was booked with another producer’s touring company, Hooley took his stock company on the road to present Campbell’s dramas to the provinces. By 1875 after premiering six new dramas at Hooley’s Opera House in Chicago, Campbell took part of Hooley’s stock company to San Francisco, transcontinental transit now being faster, more convenient and somewhat less life threatening, to direct his plays at Maguire’s Opera House which was the same theater Hooley had managed two decades earlier. Richard Hooley now had a continental presence with a theater in New York, a theater in Chicago and a stock company in residence in a San Francisco theater.

Bart Campbell remained in San Francisco with Hooley’s theater company for several more years writing and directing his plays. Richard Hooley would continue to present Campbell’s plays but after one of Campbell’s biggest commercial hits, My Partner, endowed Campbell with a national reputation, increasingly Campbell became his own producer. Bart Campbell was a prolific writer, presenting two to three new plays a season and with his own productions on tour from London, England to across the American continent, he was making, as well as sometimes losing, a small fortune. By 1885, Bart Campbell had amassed nearly $500,000 in capital from his productions and had built his own theater in New York City. And then, like an inconceivable contrivance in a bad melodrama, Bartley Campbell became a tragedy himself. The gala premiere for his newly built theater was his own new play Paquita. The audience was dumbstruck. The play was bizarre and incoherent but worse, so was the author. Campbell claimed he had been advised continuously on the play by the Greek playwrights Sappho and Aristophanes, advisors with excellent credentials except they had been dead for several millennia. Within several months, Campbell was declared by a Court to be legally insane and was committed to a State mental hospital. The mental health medical profession of the late 19th century being rather primitive could not really diagnose a disease much less treat it. Two years later, at age 45, Bartley Campbell was dead. Richard Hooley purchased Campbell’s plays at an auction and bequeathed them to Campbell’s widow so she would have some means to avoid destitution. Campbell had become a dramatist with an international reputation but it was fleeting. His plays were written to the sensitivities and expectations of the society of his time. As the audiences’ values changed, Campbell’s melodramas seemed less powerful and more silly. A decade or more after his death, Campbell’s dramas were rarely revived even in Chicago the city where he had known his first great success.

Crocker Bronson Howard, like his contemporary Bartley Campbell, started his career working on a newspaper but that is where the similarities end. In most respects, they were antipodal. Howard had not been born into poverty but privilege. His father was the Mayor of Detroit and his great-grandfather had been an American warrior hero, first in the French and Indian War and then in the Revolutionary War where he was killed in the battle of Monmouth. Bronson Howard received a formal education at private schools and at an early age decided his ambition was in theater. At age of just 22 he wrote his first play, a dramatization of an episode from the popular French novel Les Miserables, which was critically praised. Convinced of his own abilities, Bronson Howard moved to New York to write for the stage.

Howard required five years to complete his first script but it was worth the effort. Augustin Daly, New York’s premier producer and owner of the Fifth Avenue Theater, accepted Howard’s first play, Saratoga, for his theater (Daly who wrote some plays for his own theater is also sometimes credited as America’s first true dramatist). Presented in December of 1870, Saratoga was a commercial and critical success running three weeks which, by standards of the era, was a long run. Daly was pleased and commissioned Howard to write another play for Daly’s stock company but writing to the demands of a patron instead of for the pleasure of the audience is a prescription for failure. Daly had a large stock company of over twenty actors and actresses and he wanted speaking roles for the entire company. The plot of Howard’s second play for Daly, Diamonds, was lost to the audience with so many needless characters. Diamonds was a failure as was Howard’s third attempt for Daly, Moorcraft. New York’s theater critics turned vicious after two failures so Howard fled New York for Chicago and Richard Hooley.

Hooley presented Saratoga and Diamonds with his stock company and with the same results: Saratoga attracted an audience and Diamonds did not. Hooley saw potential even in the failures and encouraged Howard to continue. In 1873, Hooley produced Howard’s next play, Lillian’s Lost Love, a melodrama different than any of his earlier dramas and a commercial success. Bronson Howard had revived his career under Hooley’s auspices; a career that would continue several more decades. The peak of Howard’s career would come in the early 1890’s with a comedy, Shenandoah, which was a huge national hit. Still, like Campbell, Howard was a man for the season not for all time. By the 20th century, C. Bronson Howard’s plays were considered dated and rarely revived.

Less than a decade following the near destruction of the entire city, Richard Hooley and James McVicker had made Chicago a premier theater town. Both men possessed an international reputation for excellence as both had earlier toured and performed in London, Hooley with his minstrel company and McVicker as a headliner at the prestigious Drury Lane Theater. The two theater producers operated their Chicago theaters via different strategies. McVicker was an adherent of the star system. Routinely, James McVicker would contract an actor or actress with national celebrity to headline the play. Arguably the most acclaimed actor of this era was Edwin Booth and he was a frequent headliner at McVicker’s as Booth was married to McVicker’s stepdaughter Mary. Hooley used a different approach. He built a large stock company of professionals and then showcased newer plays by contemporary playwrights such as Bart Campbell, C. Bronson Howard or European playwrights Dion Boucicault and Tom Taylor. Richard Hooley and James McVicker were rivals but apparently it was a friendly rivalry. The two were the main advocates among thirty original founders of the Owl Club, founded in 1876, to provide a place for theater people and people interested in theater to socialize and network. Founded four years before the Chicago Press Club, the Owl Club, located in James McVicker’s theater building, became a popular trysting locale for Chicago’s growing population of newspaper theater, music and literary critics. It was from the newspapers and the Owl Club that Chicago’s first successful playwrights would debouch.

There had been many an attempt by resident Chicagoans over the decades since John B. Rice had founded a permanent theater in the city to write for the stage. Few productions were successful enough that anyone bothered to record the names of the authors or save their scripts; the plays’ past existence is only known because of listings in the newspapers. In a city still as small as Chicago most of these aspiring local dramatists did not want their neighbors to be aware of their theatrical aspirations until some success had been attained. Such was the case with one young Chicago women who premiered a comedy at the Academy of Music in 1872. She wanted to remain anonymous until the success of her comedy, The Coming Man; or Women Fifty Years Hence, about life after the Suffrage movement was assured. And since we still don’t know her name, it can be assumed the play was not well-received. Another locally scribed play by an anonymous playwright was The Poor and Proud of Chicago presented at Wood’s Museum in 1876. Most of these early aspiring playwrights were not deemed worthy of note by the newspaper critics or reporters. That would change in 1877 with Will D. Eaton’s first play: All the Rage, presented by James McVicker with McVicker’s stock company. The play brought full houses to producer McVicker’s Madison Avenue theater so he decided to organize a road company and take the comedy on tour. Therefore the title of first successful Chicago playwright, goes to Will D. Eaton, a drama critic and one of the original founders of both the Owl Club and the Chicago Press Club, for his comedy farce, All the Rage, which was both a commercial hit first in Chicago and then on a national tour.

Actually All the Rage’s first successful tour in 1877 had a premature ending after only three months on the road. The play had been doing full houses for three months until one night the leading man, John Dillon, had too much after-dinner drink or perhaps too little before drink dinner, howbeit, he tried to perform in a state of indisposed as the newspapers later described it. At a point in the play where an actress asks his character is your name Dr. Atwood? Dillon’s mind drifted. Realizing his eventual improvised response, You’re goddam right it is has probably shocked the audience’s Victorian sensitivities, he compounded the problem by going to the edge of the stage to explain: Fact is, that there are so many of these women fooling around me I’ve got to use a little hard language to drive them off which immediately brought down the curtain on that night’s performance. McVicker’s road manager feared word of the controversy would spread and doom the tour, so they returned to Chicago. Yet another Chicago theater manager, J. M. Hill, observed the demise of Rage’s tour and realized the premature termination of the play’s tour meant there was still money on the table waiting for someone to pull in as the play never got to the largest theater cities of Boston and New York. Hill bought the rights to All the Rage two years later and prepared his own company for another tour.

If the measure for the epithet greatest American theater manager of the late 19th century is bestowed on the person who launched the single most successful original play of that era, then the case can be made for James M. Hill of Chicago, an erstwhile clothing merchant. Hill attended a variety show one evening in 1876 that included a short sketch by an unknown actor, named Denman Thompson, about a Yankee farmer on a trip to Boston. It was a simple character sketch but Hill who had grown up in rural Massachusetts found the sketch true and affecting.