by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The life of the professional musician can often be a difficult one, especially if work is not steady and ongoing, the pay low, the hours of practice and performance long and sometimes variable and if there aren’t enough funds for retirement, among other aspects. Yet, the passion to perform propels many of them to follow their calling and hope for consistent and fairly remunerative work even if gigs can vary wildly in place and audiences.
At the end of the 19th and first two decades or so of the 20th century, an ensemble that looks to have been relatively stable and quite popular was the Schoneman-Blanchard Orchestra, which appears to have lasted some thirty years, though its peak years with its leaders, Harry H. Schoneman (1874-1944) and Clarence W. Blanchard (1871-1946), look to have been in the last years of the 19th century up through the first decade or so of the 20th.
The highlighted object from the Homestead’s collection for this post is a real photo postcard of the ensemble numbering a dozen musicians in their uniforms, which are such that they might have been mistaken for streetcar conductors or even police officers were it not for the fact that they didn’t have badges or stars that would identify them as either.
It also helps that inscribed in ink at the lower portion of the image is “Schoneman Blanchard Orchestra” and “per H.H. Schoneman, this being the writing of the co-leader. On the reverse is a simple message by him simply reading “The Bunch / ’07’ / Redondo” to Barker & Hutchinson, who ran a saloon on Spring Street just south of 1st Street, where the Los Angeles Times headquarters was later located. Perhaps the orchestra had some gigs there or, at least, Schoneman was a patron of the establishment!
In any case, the ensemble had a long and important connection to the resort town of Redondo Beach, some of the history of which has been covered in a previous post here. First, we’ll note some of the background of the leaders of the group, with pianist Blanchard, being the junior member in terms of his having more of the managerial role in its operation, while violinist Schoneman handling the leadership of the musical aspect.
Schoneman was born of German parentage in Virginia City, Nevada, the silver boom town near Carson City that was very important to the admission of that state to the Union in 1864 during the Civil War, as well as being the fulcrum of the economic collapse of California just over a decade later that directly related to the failure of the Temple and Workman bank because of the bursting of a stock bubble among firms working mines in that town.
He was in his early teens when his family moved to Los Angeles and his father, Herman, went from being a gun and lock smith to a restaurant owner. Of four surviving children, three developed a strong aptitude for music and formed a trio, including Harry’s brother Charles and sister Katie. Eventually, Charles decamped to Pomona while Katie, who was a rare performer on the zither, married and raised a family.
This left Harry to pursue music as a career and he was briefly the junior co-leader in the Shephard and Schoneman Orchestra before they made the acquaintance of and performed with Blanchard as early as 1892, with the two joining forces to form their ensemble by June 1894. Blanchard, who hailed from Massachusetts and appears to have migrated to Los Angeles around the time Schoneman did, was not quite as well known in musical circles and was likely more an accompanist.
Blanchard did have two important relatives in various phases of his life, these being siblings of his father, Henry. His aunt Elizabeth married D. Edwin Hartwell, who was secretary of the Swift meatpacking company in Chicago and who amassed a significant estate from his years with the powerful firm. She was an art collector and founder of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission, as well as prominent clubwoman and philanthropist and left a million dollar estate, of which a substantial portion went to Blanchard.
His uncle Frederick, who came to Los Angeles in 1889, was previously co-owner of a music store in Denver and continued in that line in the Angel City, opening the Fitzgerald and Blanchard Music Company. A decade later, he built Blanchard Hall, located on the west side of Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets where prominent merchant Harris Newmark long resided and which became a center for serious music.
He was also a founder of the Gamut Club, an important music society, the Brahms Quartet, and was president of the Los Angeles Symphony Association, predecessor of the Philharmonic. With the formation of the Hollywood Bowl, Fred Blanchard assumed the presidency of the founding association and also led the American Opera Association.
Frederick joined his sister in organizing the city art commission in 1906 and served as president for much of two decades and held the chief position of the Central Development Association, which played a major part in what became Union Station. In real estate, he was part of the companies that developed the Hollywoodland tract and the Orange County coastal town of Dana Point. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman and a member of prominent social clubs, as well.
In its early days, the Schoneman-Blanchard Orchestra played at a wide variety of community functions and events. An early one in 1894 was for the Legion Francaise, while another four years later was for a Catholic celebration of Independence Day at Sycamore Grove in Highland Park. In 1896, they furnished music for a “grand concert and ball” for the Retail Clerks’ Protective Association and two years later performed for the winter graduating class of Los Angeles High School.
A notable performance was for the Hidalgo Club in 1897, at which it was stated in an ad that attendees would enjoy “the days of Happiness in California” as “Happiness Leaves off where Modern Civilization Comes In” including the rendition of “Ancient Spanish Dancers” covering a period from 1773 to the present.
Later, the Orchestra played at store season openings, the café owned by famed boxer Jim Jeffries, a 1905 Arbor Day event, a boxing benefit in April 1906 for survivors of the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and much more. Schoneman was a prominent member of The Fraternal Order of Eagles, one of many such associations that were very popular during the period, and the orchestra regularly performed at picnics.
In 1897, the Orchestra secured an ongoing contract with the Southern Pacific Railroad to play at San Pedro in a new pavilion. This resort gig may well have garnered them the attention of folks in Redondo Beach, with the Los Angeles Times of 14 July 1901 briefly noting that the ensemble was hired to play for six weeks there during that summer.
The following year, the town’s Board of Trade hired the Orchestra for the summer season, starting the first of June and including Sunday afternoon concerts in the pavilion. The 7 June 1903 edition of the Times recorded that “the Schoneman-Blanchard orchestra is in attendance and various concert selections are enjoyed every afternoon by large gatherings, while the evening dances are also well patronized.” A list of pieces included waltzes, a valse, overtures and “a Web-foot promenade” called “A Lucky Duck,” indicating a typical mixture of classical and popular works.
In 1904, the ensemble played at the city auditorium as well as the pavilion, but also extended its engagement until the end of summer in September, though it returned to San Pedro that Christmas for a holiday event. Notably, Redondo had an expansive tent city, likely modeled after one at Coronado near San Diego, while there were others locally, such as at Huntington Beach. Located just north of the Hotel Redondo, which briefly had former Temple and Workman bank managing cashier Henry S. Ledyard as manager before his suicide in 1890, the site, which existed into the Roaring Twenties, was a popular one.
The Redondo Reflex of 26 July 1906 commented on a recent “doing” in town by the ensemble and observed that “the orchestra was indeed a freak affair, and Harry Schoneman and Clarence Blanchard were a pair to draw to and no cards left on the deck.” The former, also known as “Dutch,” was deemed “the moving spirit of the occasion” as the paper continued that, “when it comes to creating fun and keeping things ‘zizzing’ all the time, Harry is without a peer.” It was also the bandleader’s birthday and he was presented with a fine gold watch and “a diamond set collar button.”
The edition of 16 August 1906 covered “Pavilion High Jinks,” with the paper reporting,
Wednesday evening was a gala one in the annals of the Pavilion and one of the jolliest, rollicking crowds was in attendance—it was a throng, but not a crush . . .
The feature of the evening was the visit of King Careadam and his bunch of half-baked cannibals from the Feji [sic] Islands or some other place and they kept things whooped up during the entire evening. Genial, jovial, jolly Harry Schoneman, who enacted the role of the king was certainly in his element when it came to creating fun, and fun it certainly was. The committee in charge of the awards thought he was very near a whole show in himself, and their award of the first prize for men to him was greeted by lusty cheers from the spectators and the other maskers.
The Pavilion musical program was separately listed by the paper as including pieces by Schubert, Sousa and Gounod, along with an “Uncle Sammy March” and a tone poem called “Sunbeams and Shadows,” among other works.
During the year the featured photo here was taken, the big event at Redondo was the completion of a new $100,000 casino and pavilion, which an advertisement in the Los Angeles Herald on 29 June noted was to be debuted with a grand opening and “monster celebration” on Independence Day and to include the “finest program of amusement events ever offered by a California resort.”
This included “two big displays of Japanese daylight fireworks” and a “great opening concert program by the famous Schoneman-Blanchard orchestra,” along with high diving exhibitions, boat races in the harbor which was adjacent as is the pier, evening fireworks, dancing all day, steamer excursions and the “finest bathing beach on the west coast.” Moreover, there was the bestowing of a “beautiful souvenir to every lady in attendance.”
Weekly ads in the Times during the summer mentioned singers supported by the ensemble, special concerts for fraternal orders, an “Evening in Dixie,” balloon ascents and, at the end of August, another masked ball. The 3 October edition of the Reflex included another program listing for the orchestra for 2:30 matinee and 7:30 evening performances and including solo spotlights for soprano Martha Marquardt, a cornetist and Schoneman on the violin.
Another important personal event for the orchestra leader was his engagement to Florence Dodson Sinclair, a descendant of the Sepúlveda family from the Rancho Palos Verdes and who was born in an area of San Pedro named Florencita after her. The couple was married early in mid-January 1908 in Highland Park, where they settled with her seven-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, and Blanchard and his wife served as best man and matron of honor. In its coverage on the 16th, the Reflex offered “may his married life be as beautiful and harmonious as his music.”
The marriage, however, was not to be so. Within several years, the couple split and, while it is not known if there was a divorce, Florence, who went on to became a prominent clubwoman with a pronounced interest in historic preservation, listed herself as a widow in a future census. Schoneman, meanwhile, kept the Orchestra intact, despite Blanchard’s departure, until at least 1919, though the following year’s census showed him as a band leader.
As for Blanchard, his World War I draft registration form showed him as a painter for the Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation, which built a larger number of military craft for the war effort (and also had a band, so perhaps he was part of that ensemble), while the 1920 census enumeration showed him as a “Music Co. musician” with his uncle’s firm. A decade later, however, he, listed as a piano tuner, resided with another sister of his father in a $60,000 residence that was next to a $150,000 mansion inhabited by his aunt Elizabeth Hartwell, both situated in Cahuenga Pass on Hollywood Way (now Barham Boulevard) about where U.S. 101 passes through today near Universal Studios.
Then came Hartwell’s death and his inheritance allowed Blanchard and his wife and son, named Harry (likely after Schoneman), to move across the Pass to a small Spanish Colonial Revival dwelling. He remained there until his death in 1946 and his son was a piano tuner during that period. Schoneman died two years prior and had been long out of the music business, though it was reported that he worked at the Dreamland Dance Hall above the Burbank Theatre at Main and 6th streets in downtown.
The photo shown here is a great music-related artifact from the Museum’s holdings and allows us to add another notable entry to the “Striking a Chord” and “Through the Viewfinder” series of posts on this blog.