By Morris Rote-Rosen
Since writing about the recollections of the Pember theatre, several weeks ago, we have received letters from readers including Theodore H. Leake of Albany and from Louis Blossom of Detroit, to write another chapter of reminiscences of the "good old show days" in Granville's popular theatre of nearly fifty years ago. The Pember theatre flourished between 1901 and 1930, but it was during the first ten years after it opened, that Granville theatre lovers saw the best productions from the American stage. In our previous column about the Pember opera house we described the activities around the opera house of a one-night stand, special train attraction. Let's go to the Pember theatre and take a peek behind the curtain of time at one of the top-notch minstrel shows of the good old days.
The dressing room hall is full of trunks, the entrance being blocked by a huge trunk containing the bass [violin] of the orchestra of John W. Vogel's Big City Minstrels. The cornetist, the trombonist, the clarinetist and the tuba player are running up and down the scales. The snare drummer is rolling his sticks on the drum, while the minstrel show director is announcing the minstrel parade, which is already forming, to march out at 11:30 o'clock from in front of the opera house. "Parade at 11:30 sharp," shouts a voice which can be heard above a welter of confused and discordant sounds. The stage door is slammed as the members of the minstrel show emerge from the opera house.
The minstrel men - forty strong - hustle out of the alley of the opera house. Cleanly shaven wearing silver-gray top hats, scarlet, waste-fitting overcoats, with large silvery buttons, a flower in the overcoat lapel, every man carrying a cane. With the drum beat of the minstrel band in the lead they fall into line in twos and, swinging their canes, the minstrel parade is off over the village streets, to the tune of "Dixie". Boys playing hooky from school carry silk and satin banners, reading "John W. Vogel's Big City Minstrels." They receive a free pass to the show for dodging Mostyn Parry, the old truant officer.
Children run along the sidewalk, cheering and yelling. Dogs are barking. Horses tear and tear at the hitching posts. Merchants come running to the store doors. Two minstrel men step out of line of the parade, remove their top hats and with canes under arms, do a cakewalk to the delight of the onlookers and then fall back into the parade. Down Main street, the minstrel parade turns at Maple street to Morrison avenue, up Church street and when the parade reaches the village square the six foot tall drum major twirls his baton in a specialty to the amazement of an excited crowd of young and old. Hand bills are handed out to the large group of admiring spectators and the parade is disbanded.
The minstrel men disappear from view through the stage floor of the Pember opera house and head for their dressing rooms. Walls are covered with costumes and wigs. Makeup boxes, grease paint, burnt cork cold cream, powder boxes, cover the shelves and tables in the dressing rooms. A sign reads "On stage at 8 o'clock". "Curtain at 8:20" and the minstrel men relax. There being no matinee they scatter all over the village - a good advertisement for the minstrel show. Some retire to their special sleeping car, sidetracked on the depot siding, and the village of Granville is all agog and keyed up to a high pitch. The minstrels are in town!
At 7:30 o'clock in the evening there is another free entertainment. The minstrel band gives a concert in front of the Pember Opera House. A large crowd gathers around the village square early to be on hand to listen to the minstrel band. At 7:30 the band comes out to the front of the opera house under the large electric light near the bill board. The band renders several ragtime numbers featuring southern melodies. The cornetist steps into the center of the group and features in a solo. He is followed by the trombonist and the crowd applauds their renditions. At 7:45 the concert ends and the minstrel men rush to their dressing rooms while the crowd rushes up the creaky stairs of the opera house and to the box office where choice tickets are taken up in record time.
Few, if any, of the better minstrel shows failed to have a "sell-out" and standing room is being sold in the opera house by 8 o'clock. Price range from 25 and 35 cents in the balcony to 75 cents top on the main floor. At the door is one of the minstrel cast who shouts: "Buy a copy of the most popular songs of our minstrel show." And the books are sold at five cents per copy. Ushers hurry up and down the aisle of the Pember to seat the patrons before the rise of the curtain. The orchestra pit is vacant at the minstrel show. For the first part of the show the orchestra is on stage, elevated behind the minstrel circle.
Foot lights are flashed, a hush falls on the house and the curtain rises to disclose a dazzling array of colors on the stage in contrast to the darkened theatre. The entire company is singing. End men in burnt cork makeup and black wigs, dressed in green satin coats and trousers, stiff busomed shirts with long pointed collars. They occupy the extreme ends and they receive a thunderous applause in greeting, recognized by some as having played in the Pember opera house previously. The soloists, dressed in white satin, knee length breeches, long white silk stockings, pea-green jackets with white ruffled collars, white wigs of the colonial period and black patent leather shoes with shining buckles.
The stage draped with plush curtains, strings of glass beads, shine like sparkling diamonds, the chairs in the circle are covered with silk covers with the familiar "V" of Vogel's Minstrels shaped in pearl buttons. Raised on a dias is the interlocutor, holding a silk fan in his hand, master of ceremonies of the show. He glances down occasionally behind his fan for the program cue. Behind him, on the orchestra platform elevation, palm plants almost obscure the players from the sight of the audience. And the minstrel show is on.
From now on the program is a continuous panorama of singers, dancers, story tellers, and the end men, as always, are the star attraction of the minstrel show. "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown," "All I Got Was Sympathy," "Nobody," these are end-men's vocal solo features, followed by one of them doing a soft shoe dance to the strains of "Way Down Upon the Swanee River." In between the black face numbers, white faced soloists sing "Only a Message From Home Sweet Home," and "Fly Away Birdie to Heaven." The quartet renders a medley of church hymns of the old village choir. Then the eyes of the audience turn to a popular soloist, an annual feature of Vogel's Minstrels. His name - Harry Leighton.
A man of small stature, Harry Leighton, slowly walks toward the footlights at the introduction by the interlocutor and in an amazing falsetto-tenor sings "When the Evening Breeze Is Singing Home Sweet Home". It is several minutes before the thunderous applause dies down, as he slowly backs towards his chair in the circle. The ovation brings him back for an encore, which nearly disrupts the regular program of the minstrels. Harry Leighton bows to the audience, then to the interlocutor. He is the feature soloist with Vogel's Minstrels.
The curtain on the first half of the minstrel show is lowered and now comes the piece de resistance - the olio. It's a whirlwind program of high class variety vaudeville. The hoop rollers, comedy cyclists, tight rope walkers, sword swallowers, dire eaters, jugglers, tumblers and comedy acrobats and the second part would not be complete without "The Human Frog" - contortionist, who makes the ladies in the audience wince at his twisting form. Then comes the instrumental comedy duet and last but not least, the entire group of end men in a "hilarious, uproarious, mirth provoking" one act comedy sketch. And the minstrel show is over. No variety program offered as pleasing a show as the old minstrels in the Pember opera house to the people of Granville.
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