by Paul R. Spitzzeri
By the late 1920s, vaudeville was rapidly losing audience shares to film across the United States and an example of the transformation was the merger of vaudeville theater chains with motion picture chains, with the creation of R.K.O., or Radio-Keith-Orpheum, in 1928 being a signal event. The Orpheum Circuit began four decades before with the opening of a theater in San Francisco and this was followed in 1894 by the acquisition of the Grand Opera House in Los Angeles, situated at Main and 1st streets and which took the Orpheum name.
Later additions came in Kansas City, Omaha and Denver and, at the dawn of the 20th century, came incorporation and the expansion of the circuit to such cities as Minneapolis and New Orleans, while also having booking arrangements with other venues and chains, with the peak involving 55 theaters with the Orpheum moniker. In 1903, the Los Angeles Theatre, on Spring Street near 2nd Street became the second Orpheum in town and then, eight years later, a new venue was completed on Broadway south of 6th (the Spring theater became the Lyceum.)
The dawn of the Roaring Twenties brought the building of the Hillstreet Theatre at Hill and 8th streets, this opening in 1922, and, two years later, a new Orpheum was announced for a site on the east side of Broadway between 8th and 9th streets (the Mission Theatre was demolished to make room). The G. Albert Lansbaugh designed venue (he also was architect of the 1911 theater which became the Palace and the Hillstreet), truly of the “movie palace” variety, opened in February 1926.
This post features, from the Museum’s artifact collection, a program from the Orpheum for the week of 5 June 1927, with vaudeville still the attraction for attendees. The Los Angeles Record of the 1st reported that:
Harry Carroll and his new revue will bring the jubilant spirit of summer to the Orpheum starting Saturday matinee. The noted composer-producer-artist this season brings “a joyous musical comedy jamboree,” new in every detail.
Special costumes, settings and music feature his latest offerings and a cast of 18 pretty girls and talented young artists present themselves.
Among these was “beautiful” Ann Greenway in “a special song cycle.” Carroll (1892-1962), a native of New Jersey, was trained on piano and violin and, as a teen, played the former in movie houses before heading to New York City, where his first songs were published when he was 18. Also in 1910, he began working the Keith vaudeville circuit, while continuing to write popular songs, including “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” which sold some three million copies of sheet music, “By the Beautiful Sea” and “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”
The Los Angeles Times of the same day provided much of the same information, but also listed other artists on the bill beyond Greenway, including Allan Brooks and Lolita Lee, Ken Murray and the California Collegians, who later included a musician and aspiring actor named Fred MacMurray, later one of the biggest stars in film. There was also a husband-and-wife comedy team, but we’ll discuss them later. Murray, whose parents were vaudevillians, was a stand-up comedian but later became well-known with variety shows and on radio and television, but he was new to the stage in 1927.
In its number of the 5th, the Times presented a feature on Carroll, specifically discussing his primary women partners, including Anna Wheaton, Adele Rowland, Rosie Dolly, Vivienne Segal and others. The piece continued that,
In the Carroll Revue at the Orpheum this week there are a half dozen or more young girls, said to be stri[ki]ngly beautiful and of a talent which promises to lead them to future triumphs as notable as have been achieved by Miss Rowland and Miss Segal.
Those named were Heather Anderson, Helen Charleston, Florence Foreman, Harriet Hilliard, Vera Marsh and Phyllis Soule and, of these, the only one who went on to popular recognition was Hilliard, who came from parents who were actors in the Midwest and who took to the stage at age 3 and went on to become a dancer in New York City before Murray hired her earlier in 1927 as a straight woman for his comedy act and the two appeared in the Carroll Revue. After working for Bert Lahr, best known as as the Cowardly Lion in the classic 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. In 1932, she joined a dance band and later married its leader and the two later achieved fame on radio and television with their The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, with their son Ricky becoming a very popular actor and musician, as well.
The same issue highlighted Greenway, born in Alexandria, Egypt where her father was British consul. After he died, Greenway and her mother resided in Paris before migrating to the United States, where she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. While she was trained to be an opera singer, Greenway ended up on vaudeville, but occasionally got to show off her “prima donna” chops among the comedy routines and romantic pop tunes. Before singing with the Carroll troupe, she performed by Ed Wynn, who went on to be a film, radio and television star. The article observed,
when she begins singing even the most critical music lovers sit back and listen with keen enjoyment, for this young woman, who is naturally a lyric soprano, projects the aria with the skill of a powerful dramatic singer.
In its review on the 6th, the Record remarked that “laughter, beauty, song and rythm [sic] is [are] a combination that proves nothing but successful when presented by artists” and that “from beginning to end there is a brand of entertainment that should please even the most critical of audiences.” Acting as master of ceremonies under the title of “spokesman,” Murray was said to have “little difficulty in clowning his way into the hearts of the audience” and his effort as a “tireless worker” led to “generous applause” from Orpheum crowds.
Greenway was accompanied by Carroll on piano for “In the Blue Ridge Mountains” and “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” and the paper remarked, “her personality is most pleasing and she easily charmed yesterday’s audience,” while she also earned kudos for her imitation of the famous Sadie Thompson. The California Collegians were in a “triumphant return” and the “purveyors of ‘hot’ rhythm and very clever entertainers” offered “a brand new travesty entitled ‘Throwing the Bull.'”
The main event was the Carroll Revue’s “The 1927 Edition of Glorifying American Youth” including a parody of the French Foreign Legion, featuring the Collegians, Greenway and Murray and which was deemed “absolutely convulsing” while “this ensemble idea meets with the approval of the Orpheum fans.” A last-minute change to the program was a newsreel by Pathé, the French film giant with a large presence in America, that showed the arrival of aviation legend in Paris after his epochal solo flight across the Atlantic just a little more than two weeks prior.
Eleanor Barnes of the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News offered her take of the vaudeville fare at the Orpheum, also on the 5th, using an athletic analogy among her compeers, stating that,
Sports writers, if they described the New Orpheum show this week, would call it a “gigantic,” as the bill is packed full of entertainment, humor, pretty girls, fancy singing and clever stepping.
Harry Carroll, presenting his new 1927 revue, is the big shot among the performers and sponsor of the pretty maidens. The girls are beauteous in a dance extravaganza and are as charming as Gus Edwards’ galaxy of good-lookers seen here recently.
Murray was praised for “a lot of laugh-getting nonsense, while Greenway sung “very charmingly and the Collegians earned their “heaps of applause” because their “burlesque on a circus is a gem and vastly entertaining. Allan Brooks and Lolita Lee offered a playlet called “Too Perfect” that Barnes considering “ridiculous, but entertaining and which they were able to “ride to considerable applause” through scenes that were “laugh-getters and make for high entertainment.”
Murray and the Carroll dancers contributed “In the Gym” with American, Hawaiian and Irish-themed dancing and which was “another special set on the bill.” The Pathé newsreel of Lindbergh’s landing was reported to be “of great interest to Orpheum patrons” as “the scenes reveal hysterical crowds, the receptions accorded America’s latest hero and his start across the sea.”
An interesting article in the Times as the week came to a close comprised an interview with Carroll titled “NO SIGN OF DISAPPEARANCE OF VAUDEVILLE,” as he remarked that “there will always be two-a-day theaters at slightly higher seat scale for the fastidious audience” while he asserted that “the bargain hunter will, of course, patronize the three-a-day.” He allowed that there was a movement toward combining vaudeville and film programs, as reflected in the aforementioned merger, and the paper commented that Carroll “can see no change in vaudeville, at least not during the next five years.
When it came to the Angel City, where he said he would likely not return for two years, he noted that,
Los Angeles is one of the few white spots, theatrically speaking, in the country. Right now I think perhaps the city is over-seated when it comes to theaters, but as the city grows the show-going population will increase accordingly. These new theaters will all be needed shortly.
Carroll was also effusive about local talent, observing that the Collegians were almost all from the area, as were two of his dancers, and he made a notable comment about his songwriting, telling the paper that he only composed for his shows, not for publication, as when he had so many hits in the past. He added, “what’s the use?” it being explained that, “by the time his show would get to Los Angeles the songs might be old, or there might be one or two other entertainers on the same bill using his songs.”
The article concluded with the observation that Carroll was a 15-year veteran, though he wasn’t yet 35 years old, “but there is no lessening in the vim with which he attacks his piano, or in the other old lively Harry Carroll antics.” In fact, he and his revue were held over for another week, as the Times’ Marquis Busby commented that “Harry Carroll continues to provide syncopation at [the] Orpheum” and he was joined by Greenway, Russell and the Collegians, as the critic remarked,
It’s a good show and you can recommend it to the neighbors.
A vaudeville bill without a dull number is just about as rare as a day in June, as the poet [James Russell Lowell in an 1848 piece of verse called “The Vision of Sir Launfal”] says, but this is what happens at the Orpheum this week.
There is [are] lots of dancing and music, just enough patter to add the necessary balance and any number of beautiful girls.
Barnes of the News also remarked on the “PEPPY NEW BILL,” including the comedian and dancer Joe Frisco, known for his derby hat and massive cigar as well as his being the first to dance to jazz music and for his catch phrase, “don’t applaud, folks; just throw money.” Greenway, labeled a “charming little songstress,” was “held over with no loss and much gain to the general entertainment,” while Murray “has rearranged his stuff so as to escape monotony. The Collegians were deemed “one of the best ever” and “their burlesque on a circus is wow” and Carroll’s dancers “infiltrate through all the acts and the future Harriet Nelson and others “are other bits of color in the revue.”
Not retained for the second week and likely on their way to the next city and the two-a-days, or, perhaps, three in a day, was a relatively unknown husband-and-wife team, who began working together in Newark, New Jersey five years prior, married early in 1926, and played small theaters until they were signed earlier in 1927 to the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit.
The Record review observed that they “have a humorous vehicle in ‘Lamb Chops’ . . . and they make the most of it with the female, as the “dizzy” member of the duo, reported “as very good and her chatter evoked continuous laughter.” Barnes, in her summary, remarked that the piece, written by Al Boasberg, a frequent collaborator, was “a laughable skit,” presumably meaning it engendered laughs, not that it was terrible, because it was “interlaced with considerable comedy, which is put over effectively.”
The couple were the last act before Carroll’s main feature and were listed in the program as “Geo. N.—BURNS & ALLEN—Grace,” with the former writing the material and playing it straight for Allen’s “dizzy” characterizations, even though the roles were reversed originally until Burns realized that audiences were laughing at her straight lines. Burns and Allen, however, did not reach large-scale audiences until they were replacements at the eleventh hour for Fred Allen in 1929’s Lambchop and then made a series of successful short films, while they became massively popular on radio and then television, including when Ozzie and Harriet Nelson were very successful on the latter medium, until Allen’s death in 1958 shortly after retirement.
The program has a wide variety of advertisements, as well, with a few examples shown in the illustrations here. We have plenty more theater programs from early 20th century Los Angeles, so look for future entries in the “Treading the Boards” series of posts on this blog.