As the century changed, so did entertainment A few days before 2000

--- Kansas State Historical Society

--- Kansas State Historical Society

--- Kansas State Historical Society

By TIM CURRAN

The Associated Press

The year 1900 arrived in Topeka with a little-noticed hint of what the next century would mean for entertainment. As unlikely as it seemed then, many of the opera houses where Kansans went for amusement would have to change their ways --- or face the final curtain.

At Topeka's Crawford Opera House, run by a local impresario who owned 60 theaters in several states, the New Year's Day show featured "America's Greatest Vaudeville Stars," from Kansas City.

The nine acts included the usual dogs, comedians, actors and singers, as well as something new --- a moving picture machine called the picturescope. The latter promised "sensational views," including one showing the Twentieth Kansas regiment in action in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.

The moving pictures, alas, drew only groans from the audience, evidently because they couldn't see much of anything.

"It was decidedly on the bum," according to a review the next day in The Topeka Daily Capital.

BUT MUCH BETTER DAYS were soon to come for motion pictures. At the turn of the century, continuing technical improvements increased their popularity and movie houses began to spring up around the country. But many old-line theater people remained scornful or complacent.

The more prescient, though, were getting ready for a new era, buying equipment and converting their exhibition halls to include the new movies with the traditional plays and vaudeville acts.

As early as 1896, C. H. Matthews built a motion picture machine, bought some rudimentary films featuring things like a fisherman falling into the water and went on tour around Kansas with a piano player and electrician. He apparently didn't meet with much success and decided to go back to the laundry business in Topeka.

Two Larned men, John Schnack and R. T. Webb, formed the Edison Exhibition Co. in 1902 and began touring Kansas and other states with one of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope machines. The following year came "The Great Train Robbery," the first successful movie with a legitimate story line.

That same year, Clair Patee, who claimed to have started the nation's first movie theater at Jersey City, N.J., in 1901, opened one in Lawrence. His Patee Theatre --- called the Nickel because that's what it cost to get in --- was billed as the first motion picture theatre west of the Mississippi.

In 1904, the Stone Brothers opened the city's first permanent theater. By 1905, the Star Theater was showing three-reel films, along with vaudeville acts.

Arthur Baker, who eventually had a number of theaters around the state, opened his Electric Theater at Kansas City, Kan., in 1906, with room for 144 people sitting on chairs. Within four years he'd expanded to a 1,100-seat theater.

By 1915, when Kansas began requiring all films to get approval of a censorship board, producers were sending more than 500 movies a month into the state. The Kansas State Exhibition Association was formed in 1919 with 44 members, rising to 122 the following year.

And these were all silent pictures with subtitles and local musicians providing the background and atmosphere. The real explosion of movies, hastening the end of the vaudeville circuits, came after talkies arrived.

The first successful talking movie, "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson, reached Topeka on Sept. 15, 1928, not quite a year after opening in New York.

The first showing at the Grand Theater, which spent $25,000 installing new equipment, drew applause from a not-quite-filled house.

"At first it seemed timid applause --- the audience seeming self- conscious at showing appreciation of a mechanically reproduced show," wrote The Daily Capital's reviewer. "Then when the realness, the fineness of it became more and more apparent, the applause was as hearty as any that has ever greeted a stage production."

THEY CALLED THEM opera houses, and some of the bigger ones indeed occasionally featured internationally famous singers. New York's Metropolitan Opera never hit Kansas but opera singers of some renown, including Nellie Melba and Emma Calve,1 did appear in the state.

However, the opera houses that dotted the state were used primarily for non-operatic purposes. The fare ranged from Shakespeare to melodrama, home talent to minstrel shows, high school commencements to politicians.

More entertainers came to Kansas with the development of a vast railroad network after the Civil War.

Between 1880 and 1900, from 50 to 100 opera houses were in regular use in the state, with more built into the early 1900s. The first record of a grand opera performance in the state was a production of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" in Lawrence in 1869.

By the 1890s, though, what interest there was in grand opera was declining in Kansas. An Italian company on tour in 1899 drew a disappointing crowd of only 287 for "Rigoletto" at Topeka.

LESTER CRAWFORD was a printer who got into show business in the 1870s doing billboard advertising for the traveling theater troupes. He began renting halls for entertainment productions before switching to buying theaters, first in Topeka and then other cities.

The impresario had a reputation for presenting family-oriented shows and personally censored every production. There were feuds between Crawford and some performers, most notably the prominent soprano Emma Abbott, as well as with the press.

The Leavenworth Times reported that Abbott refused to bring her company to town because Crawford wouldn't advertise to suit her. The paper said she didn't want to be "rated with the various cheap shows that Mr. Crawford delights in palming off on the people of this city."

ANOTHER PROMINENT NAME in Kansas theater circles was J. D. Bowersock, a wealthy Lawrence businessman.

The new Bowersock Theater opened on Jan. 20, 1912 --- 30 years after the Bowersock Opera House started operations on the site of what used to be Liberty Hall, which dated to 1856.

Bowersock, who got a standing ovation from the opening night crowd, cautioned the crowd not to expect regular appearances by the best theatrical attractions. The biggest stars, he said, wouldn't come to a smaller town like Lawrence for one-night stands.

That policy didn't go over well with some, according to the society reporter for the Lawrence Daily Journal-World.

"You don't catch me going to that house unless they get some good stars," she quoted one man as saying. "Who wants to see a lot of dinky shows and pay $1.50 for them?"

THE OLD BOWERSOCK has gone through a number of changes since that opening night --- but it's still going strong today. It spent many years showing movies as the Dickinson and the Jayhawker, then had a stint as a concert hall with a variety of names.

Now, after a mid-1980s renovation which brought back the Liberty Hall name, it operates successfully as a multi-purpose entertainment venue. The mix includes concerts, movies and a video store, and it's also booked well ahead for wedding receptions. The hall has also been the site of four memorial services.

AS THE MOVIES kicked in, Victrolas and other similar machines brought recorded music into the home. Then came the arrival and rapid expansion of radio.

Kansas got its first station, KFH at Wichita in 1922. By 1937 an estimated 80 percent of American homes had radios. People could sit in their living rooms and listen to Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny and the "Fireside Chats" of President Roosevelt.

Television took it up another notch in the 1950s. Music took off with the development of 45 rpm and long-playing records. Still later came cable TV, compact discs, video cassettes and an Internet that makes entertainment choices seemingly limitless.

SO WHERE HAS all this brought us as the year 2000 draws near?

As one entertainment historian sees it, heading right back to where we were a century ago.

"We began the century with really kind of a fragmented popular culture," said Bob Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of film and television and president of the Popular Culture Association.

Entertainment then, he said, was primarily home-based. And while many people watched performances by traveling troupes there were distinct regional differences in what they saw.

"Hollywood changed all that," he said. "Everybody saw Al Jolson like it was opening night. They saw the biggest stars, the same performances."

Radio and television, he said, just added to the homogenization.

"For most of the 20th century, and this is unparalleled in the history of civilization, we have everybody watching or listening to the same thing at the same time, regardless of gender, class, you name it. It became our national drama, the glue that held us together."

Then, Thompson said, cable and the Internet began to change things.

"Suddenly we've got this opportunity where people in their living rooms maybe have 80, 90 or 100 channels to choose from, they've got VCRs, they've got Internet entertainment to go to, video games, all these different things," he said. "In an ironic sort of way we're back to that fragmented notion that we no longer have a truly national drama anymore."

"We now are back to this place where we were at the beginning of the century, where we don't have a single dominant culture any more - -- we've got many."

Century

Copyright 1999
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