by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As has been noted here in several “Treading the Boards” posts, the astounding growth of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved so many aspects, elements and factors in economics, education, social life and politics and there was certainly true with entertainment. Much of the development of the city, as with a good deal of the rest of the United States, was the remarkable rise of the middle class, which had more disposable income with which to enjoy leisure time, including patronage of the theater.
This post features, from the Homestead’s holdings, the program for the week of 26 December 1910 issued by Hamburger’s Majestic Theatre, located on Broadway between 8th and 9th streets and which represented another milestone for performance venues in the Angel City when it was completed two years prior by the Hamburger Realty and Trust Company, operator of a popular department store which later became the May Company.
A notable component of the offering for the week was that the play, “A Man’s World,” was penned by one of the few women playwrights of renown during the era, while the star was a major female actor of the period, as well. The writer, Rachel Crothers (1878-1958), is described in her Encyclopaedia Britannia entry as someone “whose works, which were highly successful commercially, reflected the position of women in American society more accurately than those of any other dramatist of her time.”
After receiving a teacher’s education in her native Illinois, she went to Boston and New York to study drama and did some acting, while penning some one-act works before her “The Three of Us” from 1906 became a Broadway success. She went on to a notable career through the Great Depression years, established relief funds for the stage and its women members and was the executive director of the entity that ran the famed Stage Door Canteen.
The star of “A Man’s World” was Mary Mannering (1876-1953), who was born Florence Friend in Leicester, England and began appearing on stages in her native country while in her mid-teens. She drew the attention of American impresario Daniel Frohman and began working on Broadway in 1896 and became prominent quickly, including appearances in several plays with her husband, actor James K. Hackett.
The Los Angeles Times of 30 May 1897 reported that,
Daniel Frohman discovered in a provincial theater in England a young woman who although unable to secure a hearing in the British metropolis [London], he thought fitted to assume the leading parts in his New York theater, and she has justified his selection by doing exactly what he expected. Her name is Mary Mannering and she is said to be as pretty as she is clever.
In July, she made her first local appearance with the Frohman company and her husband at the Los Angeles Theatre. When she performed at the venue early in 1902, the Los Angeles Express called her “one of the greatest actresses on the American stage” and she’d formed her own touring company after leaving Frohman.
The Los Angeles Record of 1 June 1903, when she again performed at the Los Angeles Theatre, noted that she was expected to pack the house each night and added that, as related by a press agent (to be taken with the requisite grain of salt), the star “broke out with measles at the age of 15, broke away from home ties and broke into art.”
In 1908, she was again in the Angel City starring in “Glorious Betsy,” written by another prominent woman playwright of the period, Rida Johnson Young, and which was a major success. The Times of 1 March published an interesting tangential piece that reported Mannering was the subject of “the artist’s design on the new issue of $10 pieces [coins],” and added that a government photographer went to San Antonio, where she was appearing, to take portraits. While some sources say that Lady Liberty in an Indian headdress was designed by the famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who died in late 1907, this article stated that his student Henry Haring did the work and chose the actor. In any case, the coin remained in production until 1933.
When Mannering returned to Los Angeles to perform in “A Man’s World,” she’d just been granted a divorce from Hackett, with whom she had a daughter and who traveled on the road with the actor. The Los Angeles Herald of 18 December 1910 observed that she was under the management of the Shubert organization, which “have surrounded her with a dignified supporting company” in a work that was “a study of realism, replete with highly dramatic features, relieved with comedy and telling an intense story.”
In its brief comments on the play, also from the 18th, the Times observed that the work’s subject matter “is a new light on the old problem of whether or not it is possible to lay down a single set of rules of conduct for men and women alike,” though offered no further insights into the plot. In its Christmas Eve issue, the Record remarked more on this, observing that “the action of the play has to do with Frank Ware, a woman novelist [with the typical male pseudonym]” who takes in the child of a dead abandoned woman, Clara Oaks, but Ware realizes that the father of the young one is also her lover, Malcolm Gaskell.
The central dilemma was that Ware “is confronted with the problem of giving him up or being untrue to her ideals.” In this performance, the short preview ended, “Miss Mannering has never had a better opportunity to show to great advantage the qualities of charm and emotional appeal.” Moreover, it noted that “her sympathy with the feminine nature and her powers of tenderness and warmth are sweetly in evidence in this role.”
As for Crothers, she received her local media spotlight in the next day’s edition of the Herald in a piece titled “Women Writers now occupy important place on American Stage.” Along with Johnson, Edith Ellis Furness and Olive Porter, Crothers was credited in what the opening of the piece stated was a fact that:
In no line of endeavor have American women made more rapid advancement during the last few years than in writing plays. Women playwrights are crowding their brother dramatists hard for first place.
As evidence of this, it was observed that three local theaters, the Belasco, the Majestic and the Mason, works by women writers were to be performed, including two starring the famed Lillian Russell and the other being “A Man’s World” and the article posited that “perhaps after all the age is not quite so thoroughly masculinized as the title of Miss Mannering’s play suggested.”
It was also noted that “Mary Mannering is one of the woman playwright’s best customers” because “her greatest successes have been won in plays written by women,” though it was also remarked that “in her current offering she departs somewhat from the type of character with which the public has come to associate her.” That is, she played a woman writer “who rebels against those rules of conduct prescribed for women and proscribed for themselves by most men.” The core concern was the classic “double standard” but by a woman and from her standpoint “which perhaps will give us a new insight” examined before by men.
A separate preview in that Christmas Day issue of the Herald amplified this by noting that Ware “is so impressed with the injustice visited upon” the child she has adopted “that she devotes her literary talents to demanding the same law for the man as the woman, and preaching that woman should expect in man the same honor that man demands of woman.” This, of course, is dramatized by the realization of who was the father of the child.
The next day’s edition of the paper went into Mannering’s origins in acting, stating that, in recovering from an illness, she was permitted by her parents to pose for a painter and the work was seen by someone from a theatrical company, who exclaimed that her face was exactly what was being sought after for a new play. She had a few lines in the work, but went on to appear in a piece seen by Frohman. It was added that “the greatest success she has enjoyed in several seasons is ‘A Man’s World,’ her present offering, by Rachel Crothers, author of ‘The Three of Us.'”
The Times echoed this last comment in a short piece, also from the 26th, commenting that the work “in addition to running for a season on Broadway, it has played to big business in all the big cities in the East.” Moreover, it noted that “it is a tense story in which Miss Mannering has unlimited opportunities to act, and incidentally to display a gorgeous lot of gowns of the latest modes.” Her wardrobe was also remarked upon in a separate interview, which the paper ran two days later.
In that article, the actor professed that her occupation was ideal for a woman who had to make her own way financially, but “there are two terrible drawbacks” in that it was lonely being on the road, while also being away from family. It was noted that her suite at the top-notch Hotel Alexandria was filled with flowers in jars and baskets as well as a wicker basket on a window seat and poinsettias were complemented by “the Christmas colors of crimson and green” replete in the room.
Mannering continued that the best aspect of acting was the opportunity to gain friends and audiences regularly and “this keeps her up to the pitch, and acts to her spirit like a spur to a mettlesome steed.” If this sounded a bit contrived for an interview, her next quote is striking, if we are to believe this was her natural mode of speech:
Applause is to every actress the sign of her power. As the coquette glories over her power with one or two men, as the writer enjoys that ability that enables him to write a song to move whole nations to peace or sorrow or war, so the woman of the stage must know the strength of her magnetism, her personality and her art as she carries her audience with her to tragic gloom, riotous merriment or ecstatic bliss.
When it was replied by the journalist that it was vital to have a playwright to support this, Mannering readily agreed and offered “it is the bane of my existence that I cannot find a satisfactory play” and that, of some three hundred she’d recently read, she could only send three to the Shuberts, with just one that “would do at all for me.” She longed for a comedy for the next season, after performing “A Man’s World” for two and playwrights in this region were encouraged to send their work her way.
Asked what her most successful play had been, the actor answered that it was “Glorious Betsy,” but noted that “of course, it was a poor play, but the people liked it, even though the critics did say hard things about it.” As for her daughter, Elise, who was six years old, she did not want her to pursue acting, but offered “I hope that she will develop a talent for writing.”
As for child actors, though, Mannering stated that “the aversion to allowing children upon the stage seems most unexplainable to me” if a reputable acting company was involved and she noted that the mother of the performer playing the child in “A Man’s World” traveled with the ensemble and two hours of daily schooling was provided by the manager’s wife.
She added that there were girls working as “cash girls” in stores who would do better in a theatrical company, though E.B. Tilton, manager of Mannering’s troupe, was handed a suspended sentence of a $50 fine for employing a 9-year old girl in the play in violation of California law (the program listed the actor playing “Kiddie” as Mark Short, a child of actors who went on to perform in movies through the late 1930s and whose cousin was the well-known film star, Blanche Sweet, and reviews mentioned him, as well).
Respecting reviews, the Record of the 27th asserted that “A Man’s World” was “a woman’s play” and felt that “it would be a fine bit of education if every wife were to drag her husband . . . to view the object lesson Mary Mannering presents and feel his share of the square deal in the shape of a ‘brick-handed’ man in general.” Crothers was praised for writing “with such simple accurate directness and freedom from counterfeit logic and sentiment.” The Mannering troupe was deemed among “the best the country has” with “stellar players,” while the star matured from being known primarily for her beauty a decade ago.
The Herald of the same day opined that patrons would have varied views on the success of the play, with the plot considered thin, but not about the acting or staging, with the supporting actors deemed “highly capable,” while the lead “has achieved a notable advancement in her art” since her last performances in Los Angeles” and was “less ‘glorious,” to play off the title of that 1908 work, “but she is immeasurably more human.”
Moreover, it was averred that “she has ceased to be a stage puppet, and has become a stage woman,” while it was concluded “in this role, for the first time in Los Angeles, she has vindicated her right to stardom.” Helen Ormsbee, who went to be a drama writer for newspapers and magazines, was also cited for her work.
A lengthy analysis in the Times, also of the 27th, called “A Man’s World” a work that was “eminent designed for suffragettes” (in California, women secured the right to vote the next year), “loose-jointed” but also asserted that, despite her best intentions, Crothers “is saturated with the fallacious proposition that women are down-trodden and unfairly treated by the trousered monsters.”
The paper questioned the ending in which Ware and the father of the child are left “wretchedly unhappy” and asked readers, “in real life, would a woman in love turn down the man of her choice because he had a past?” The answer to the rhetorical question was an unqualified negative. Of the eight actors, half were accounted to do well and the star “does attractive acting at frequent intervals,” though “most of her part is sermonizing.” Mannering, however, “presented a somewhat incongruous picture” as she “mannishly discussed the higher morality for men” while wearing fine clothes.
In fact, it was asserted that Alphonze Ethier as Gaskell “dominated the play, despite all the hysteria of Miss Mannering” and that “even a suffragette would have succombed [sic] to his demands.” Ormsbee, as Oaks, “did the best piece of acting” and, as the Record also noted, her desperation to marry any man who would pay the bills, was particularly highlighted.
Concerning the program, it also included the musical offerings by the Majestic Theatre Orchestra, including works such as “Ave Maria” by Bach and Gounod and Verdi’s “Grand Fantasia” from “La Traviata, and a preview of “Madame X,” which ran for a week starting on New Year’s Day 1911. There are also a slew of great advertisements, of which some examples are given here, and it is interesting to compare this to our modern playbills.