by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It has been oft-noted on this blog that the arts made enormous strides in Los Angeles as the city grew by leaps and bounds during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so that, by the Roaring Twenties, the Angel City was among the largest in the country, becoming the tenth in size in 1920 at some 575,000 residents (a decade later, it climbed to fifth at north of 1.2 million denizens).
The film industry was the most obvious and public of the arts that came to largely define the identity of what some took to calling “La La Land,” but there was also tremendous growth in music, serious or otherwise, and the theater, as well. This last was not as popular as the others, but there were plenty of audiences to support a number of venues presenting works on stage with this being augmented by the burgeoning “little theater” movement that was taking root nationally.
Still, support for smaller venues was often tenuous and many such playhouses lasted but a short time, including the one featured in this post, the Harlequin, which operated for just one season in 1921-1922 from its location the relatively new Ambassador Hotel, long a Los Angeles landmark and the site of which is today’s Robert F. Kennedy Community of Schools campus. A rare program for the week of 16 January 1922 is the featured artifact from the Homestead’s collection with the performance of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice run in this additional second week.
The grandly conceived and executed hostelry opened on New Year’s Day 1921 and immediately became popular with the Hollywood set and Angel City society and it operated a magazine called California Outdoors and In and often hosted elaborate and unusual events, such as a March 1924 “Mardi Gras des Artistes,” which has been featured here. Part of the planning for the facility was a motion picture theater run by the Gore Brothers and Sol Lesser, who were major figures in that local industry.
While the Ambassador Theatre opened in early February 1921, it did not succeed as a film venue and, within several weeks, a new approach was taken with the Ambassador Players presenting one-act stage works produced and directed by Frank Egan, a “little theater” promoter and acting school head, along with the screening of movies. Apparently, the haste with which the company was formed and problems with audience and critical reaction led to the dissolution of the Players by the end of spring.
This was followed by the organization of a new company as reported by the Los Angeles Times of 8 August 1921:
The little-theater movement is to acquire renewed vigor through the undertaking of a number of society people. This amounts to nothing less than the establishing of the intellectual drama at the Ambassador Theater, which is to be rechristened the Little Harlequin Theater. The playhouse will be devoted exclusively to the presentation of one-act dramas, such as are offered at the little theaters abroad and in New York.
An opening date was established for 7 November and it was continued that “meanwhile the house will be redecorated, improved with new scenic equipment and better stage facilities” added. A slew of American and European playwrights were mentioned whose works “will be staged with absolute accuracy given to every detail,” while “the casts will be made up of the best professional talent available in Los Angeles,” with the city said to “boast such a splendid variety of histrionic talent” found nowhere else outside of New York City, the nation’s dramatic capital.
Advisory board members included such local luminaries as real estate developer William May Garland, Ambassador manager Abraham Frank, business figure Motley Flint, and chair Lynden E. Behymer, who was ubiquitous when it came to the arts, musical and dramatic, in the Angel City. Three women staffed key roles in the new theatrical enterprise, including managing director, Caroline E. Smith, formerly an aide to Behymer and who was the secretary and representative of board member William Andrew Clark, Jr., key founder a few years prior of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, of which Smith became the manager.
The director general, Mrs. R.D. Shepherd, was born Elizabeth Lee Kirkland in Savannah, Georgia, and was the daughter of a Civil War Confederate general, and, from age 16, became a successful stage actor known as Odette Taylor working for the likes of Charles Frohman. She was married to a fellow thespian, New Orleans native Rezin D. Shepherd, and the couple performed together for many years, prominently in Shakesperian works with Taylor widely praised for her Juliet to her spouse’s Romeo. Shepherd’s stage name was R.D. MacLean, the surname being the maiden name of his mother and who specialized in the works of The Bard. Mrs. Shepherd was also prominent in local music circles, including the Philharmonic and Grand Opera associations.
The social director was Mrs. Charles Jeffras, born Mary McFarlane Gray in Louisville and married to Charles Jeffras, a department manager at Blackstone’s department store in downtown Los Angeles. She had a major presence in Angel City society and was hired as a social director, or hostess, for the hotel, including its famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub, when it opened. A tie to the Workman family soon came through her only child, Nathaniel, an advertising company executive, who, in 1923, married Audree Workman, daughter of Frances Widney (whose father was the prominent attorney, judge and University of Southern California founder, Robert M. Widney) and Boyle Workman (whose father was former mayor and city treasurer William H. Workman), a member of the Los Angeles City Council.
There was a good deal of press coverage of the formation and early planning stages of the Harlequin with the Los Angeles Express of 10 September citing Shepherd’s “realization of a dream . . . ever since she came to Los Angeles” with McLean a few years prior, “and saw that the city was a gathering place of famous stars, directors and authors of international renown, and realized the possibilities of a Little theater movement here.” Also mentioned was the resurrection of the “Green Room,” and the paper reported, “audience and artist will meet there quite informally to exchange ideas and enjoy, who knows, nice little gossip fests?” This definitely sounded right up the society folks’ alley!
Notably, the Times of 14 September observed that, in addition to the staging of “high brow drama,” there was the announcement that the Harlequin would “preceding the opening of the house for drama, and possibly coincidental therewith, . . . house pre-releases of certain [motion] pictures.” One upcoming movie was “Bebe Daniels in her Santa Ana special, ‘The Speed Girl,'” a Paramount Pictures production to be issued in wide release in November, and which featured the 20-year old film star in an adaptation of a real-life incident in which she was nabbed at the Orange County seat for driving her car well over the speed limit, which resulted in her getting a ten-day jail sentence.
A lengthy feature in the 3 November edition of the Express by Florence Pierce Reed exclaimed that:
A new proscenium has been arched across the dramatic sky of Los Angeles.
It is high-flung and solid, with a granite base of genuine artistic and professional ideals and technique of the theater.
The name as [is] Harlequin, which suggests whimsy, humor, pathos, comedy, tragedy, fantasy. It has a healthy as well as playful sound . . .
Shepherd was deemed “a radical” as she “will go fearlessly into the dramatic jungle to discover new writers who have plays worth while to produce, and she aims to produce them.” Of particular interest were those American playwrights who “have served their apprenticeship and have come to a high point of dramatic realization” and not those who had the Broadway seal of approval. Moreover, Reed went on, the producer “is going to make her own footprints first and not follow other people’s dramatic trails.
Shepherd told Reed, “I want to make the Harlequin a universal theater” with affordable prices so that “all lovers of good drama may have the opportunity of feeling that the Harlequin is their theater.” Works were especially valued if they possessed “the broad sweeping strokes as well as the finer stencilings that go to make up infinite detail” and offered “the dramatic sweetmeats and bitter aloes alike . . . handled in big splashes of composition,” while she sought to sedulously avoid “any suggestion of staginess and make everything seem real.”
It was worth it, moreover, to read a slew of poorly written works “to find the hidden gem” and Shepherd remarked, “I have discovered a woman playwright in Los Angeles whose plays are as brilliant and sparkling as Shaw, Pinero or Wilde” and she intended to bring them to the stage while “guarding them with my life.” She also claimed that the greatest play every written would be from the mind of an American playwright as “the very mixed spontaneity of American life will make that possible.”
Even the performance of The Merchant of Venice, starring her husband, “will not be produced according to tradition of childhood days of drama, but will be as individualistic as it is possible o make it.” Shepherd insisted that “we are not afraid of Shakespeare . . . he can’t hurt us anyway, and if he is watching he may like our new ideas.”
When the opening occurred, Monroe Lathrop, critic for the Express, began his coverage with the “brilliant social gathering” that attended the event and then turned to the fact that “the Harlequin has assembled a competent array of players for the season. Lathrop continued that “most interesting of last night’s brace of one-act plays,” of which there were three tragedies selected by Shepherd, was a German production called “Roses,” which was “a morbid study of sex passion and marital infidelity with the death of two of the neurotic characters at the hand of the wronged husband.”
As for the Times, it thought it important to inform readers that “one point of interest” with the Harlequin was that “evening clothes will not be necessary at these performances” because “not the slightest distinction is made in this respect between the Harlequin and any other theater in the city, and every one will be welcome in their ‘everyday clothes.'”
Before the mounting of The Merchant of Venice, the 8 January 1922 edition of the Times observed that MacLean performing as Shylock constituted “one of his best roles, and is a character finely suited to his magnificent voice and manly physique,” while “the production will be put on with the utmost care for costuming and stage effects.” In fact, after the initial planned week of staging the classic, it was decided to add a second one, largely because of MacLean’s performance, which the paper, on the 15th, recorded was “one of the most remarkable ever seen on the American stage,” though it may well be that having the producer as spouse was a key factor!
MacLean was lionized for having “an enviable place” in the theatrical realm because “while he represents the most modern ideas in stagecraft, he still preserves the traditions most sacred to interpreters of Shakespeare” with his version of Shylock, a character often seen by commentators as a reflection of The Bard’s purported anti-Semitism, a product of “a characterization human and convincing.” The supporting cast “includes members who have been trained under the best interpreters of Shakespeare, with Mary Forbes credited with an excellent Portia and Craig Ward cited for his splendid Bassanio.
Notably, after the company rendered a version of Othello, MacLean gave an extensive interview to the Times, published in its 5 March edition, in which he asserted that
The fondness of most classic actors for spouting lengthy speeches, without considering whether they have dramatic value or are of interest to their audiences, is chiefly responsible for Shakespeare being considered a bit of a bore by the average man or woman.
If Shakespeare’s plays are ruthlessly cut, simply staged, and acted by casts who have been trained in the essentials of classic drama, they are still superior to anything we have in dramatic entertainment. But they must be so treated.
The thespian counseled that actors had to be conscious of their audiences and not assume a familiarity with the Elizabethan dramatist. After all, he went on, “drama is what the average audience wants, and it is the actor’s duty to give it, ” so that “to send people away wishing there had been more, rather than less, is true success.”
MacLean was praised for focusing on the basics, utilizing simplicity and “deep sympathy with the character” to achieve his goals, while his fidelity to his performance philosophy meant his stage work was occasional “with the result that the general public do[es] not know him as he deserves to be known.” The actor, however, would achieve more regional renown for playing Junípero Serra in the very popular, if patently paternalistic, The Mission Play, staged at San Gabriel each year.
For all of its grand ambitions and audacious aims, however, the Harlequin was not a success and it closed after a shortened season of eighteen, rather than the intended twenty-six, weeks. Apparently, the first local theater to use subscriptions to build an audience and financial success, the enterprise failed to reach enough of an audience for its “radical” approach to theater. By the end of March, the venue went back to showing movies.
In a U.S.C. dissertation by Camille Bokar, it was explained that the operation of the theater in the Ambassador was a hindrance, rather than a help, to success, while its location far from the downtown theater district and the subscription concept were also contributing factors to its f failure. Bokar also observed that staging new productions weekly was far too lofty a goal taxing both the actors and the bottom line, even if competition with movie theaters or the belief that continued staging with going “dark” between productions made economic sense were considered smart operational strategies. The author concluded that “the choice was artistically depleting.”
The highlighted object has a colorful front cover; a page devoted to officers, the board, staff and ticket and performance information; the program listings; a note that Sheridan’s The School for Scandal was next to be staged; and, of course, the advertisements that paid for production and included local stores, clothiers, a tea room, and the hotel’s Stendhal art gallery, the Cocoanut Grove, and “School for Little Children.”
While the Harlequin had a short existence, it was a notable one, as Bokar discussed in her dissertation and as media accounts covered and this program, a rare one, is a nice visual accompaniment to that story.
The small venue movement mentioned in this post prompted me to reflect on the changing sizes of theaters from the late 19th century to the present day. As noted multiple times on this blog, theaters in the early era were often large, accommodating 1,000 to 2,000 audience members for live performances such as opera, drama, and vaudeville. Early movie theaters in the first half of the 20th century were also designed to cater to mass audiences.
By the mid-20th century, however, suburbanization and the advent of television led to smaller theaters with capacities of 200-300 seats, scattered across newer residential communities. In the 1960s-1980s, multiplex theaters featuring multiple smaller auditoriums in one building became the preferred model.
In the late 20th century, the rapid rise of home theaters and family entertainment systems, equipped with DVDs and projectors, significantly reduced the demand for movie theaters, nearly driving them to extinction.
Since the early 21st century, however, we’ve seen a revival of large theaters and hybrid models featuring auditoriums of various sizes, offering both intimate spaces and big screenings under one roof.