Lest We Forget: Chicago's Awful Theater Horror

But this is a dreary side of the picture, and all productions are by no means doomed to flunk; those that do not go forth upon the road with a flourish of trumpets, the glitter and glamor of carloads of courts and palaces of canvas, tinsel and papier-mache and with everyone looking forward to the rapid acquirement of a fortune. Verily, your actor is a born optimist. Were it not for ambition, hope, egotism and inherent love of publicity, notoriety and admiration, where would the stage get its recruits?

THE SHOW ON THE ROAD

After the production has taken to the road it may still prove a "frost" – the theatrical term for failure. Then it is the same grim story, with additional discouragements. There are cold, clammy hotelkeepers whose one anxiety is to see their bills paid, and commercially inclined railroads who will transport none, not even actors, without payment in something more tangible than promises. Then comes the benefit performance, the appeal to local lodges of orders the actors may be identified with and the mad scramble to induce the railroad to carry the people home "on their trunks." If they can get their baggage out of the hotels the performers usually find it possible to secure transportation by leaving their trunks with the railroads as a pawn to be released when they raise money enough to settle the bill. Surely a pleasant prospect – to go "home" penniless and without personal effects, clothing or even prospects.

And all this time where is the manager? He may have fled in desperation with the few dollars that came into his hands the preceding night, or he may be shut up in his room worse off than his employes. It all depends upon circumstances.

All shows do not meet disaster on the road, however. Yet there is always the distressing possibility to confront the actor. Many go on their glad, successful way, for a time, like "Mr. Bluebeard," piling up profits and bringing joy to the hearts of managers and owners and continued employment to the players. Yet even then all is not as roseate as might be thought from a casual glance taken from the front. There are epidemics, railroad accidents, hotel fires and all manner of emergencies to be considered, not to speak of the one-night stand.

THE ONE-NIGHT STAND

Of all the terrors the actor faces the one-night stand is the worst. That is the technical name applied to the city or town where the company lights for a single performance as it flits across the continent. It is almost impossible to so route an attraction that its time will be placed exclusively in large cities, so they fall back on the one-night stand. Imagine the joy of leaving Chicago Sunday morning, playing at South Chicago Sunday afternoon and evening, taking a train after the performance and jogging into Michigan City, Ind., with the early dawn, catching a bit of sleep during the day, playing at night and skipping out for Logansport. With the same programme at Logansport, Fort Wayne, Richmond, and Lima, Mansfield or Dayton, Ohio, the company is within striking distance of Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville or Indianapolis, as its bookings may elect. And that is precisely what they all do. This is a sample week. It is not an uncommon thing for a big attraction to cover two or three weeks of unbroken one-night stands, and those going to and from the Pacific coast are often compelled to play four and five, without the friendly relief of an engagement covering a week.

Truly life under these circumstances is a horror. Train-worn, broken in rest, with scarcely opportunity to unpack to change their linen, such weeks mean to the performer an existence not calculated to tempt recruits to the profession. To the principal, stopping at the best hotels and making use of sleeping cars whenever possible, it is wearing enough and a burden. To the chorus girl, it is a hideous nightmare. Out of her meager salary she must pay during such weeks from $1.25 to $1.75 a day for hotel accommodations that are far from tempting. She is driven to resort to sleepers through self-preservation at an average of $2 a night for long night trips, and her laundry and other incidental expenses mount up into startling figures. Her clothing is ruined by almost ceaseless crushing aboard trains, and unless she be thoroughly broken to such a life she is wrecked physically.

When she reaches a big city again she can once more creep to bed after her work at midnight and find in unbroken hours of sleep balm for all she has passed through. She may secure a decent room at a second or third class European hotel for $6 a week and buy her meals where she chooses. If some callow youth buys them for her in consideration of the pleasure of basking in her smiles, she is that much ahead. She can live within her means in the city and save money – if she wants to. But she seldom does, and no one can blame her, for she feels that nothing save the pleasures secured by extravagance can compensate her for what she has lost – comfort, repose, dignity, social recognition, and, most of all, home.

These same conditions are experienced to a varying degree by all players save those within the sacred circle drawn by the finger of phenomenal success. That small handful with private cars, lackies and all the comforts of a portable home, is so insignificant in number that it requires no consideration here.

THE "MR. BLUEBEARD" COMPANY

In the best and most prosperous organizations, such as "Mr. Bluebeard" was, life is not all sunshine and roses. To be true, its members escaped the manifold terrors of playing in the barns to be found in many large one-night stands and dressing in their stalls, dignified by the term dressing-rooms. The women were not compelled to dress and undress behind inclosures made of flimsy scenery with a sheet thrown over for additional protection. Nor did they have to live in the barn-like hotels many such towns boast. But they had their own troubles, such as they were. The chorus girls did not escape having to be thrown into involuntary contact with all classes and conditions of mankind, nor did they avoid the sharp social distinction drawn by the principals in all organizations.

Only a few weeks before the Iroquois horror they passed through a serious fire scare in the theater where they were playing in Cleveland, an experience that for the moment promised to rival the one that finally overtook them. Flames in the scenery endangered their lives, but the fire was extinguished. Therefore the incident "amounted to nothing" and little or nothing was heard about it.

When the dread hour arrived at the Iroquois, the majority lost their all. It was not to be expected they would leave their jewelry and money about hotels of which they knew little. Quite naturally, they took both to their dressing-rooms. Many were on the stage when the cry of fire came, and were fortunate to escape with their lives, without thought of clothing, money or jewelry, all of which were swept away. With employment, valuables, everything gone save their hotel baggage, they were in a sorry plight, indeed. But with the optimism that only the actor knows they rejoiced in their escape from the fate that overtook little Nellie Reed and from the terrible scars and burns suffered by many of their number.

A score of their number were under arrest, held as witnesses, men and women alike. The management came to their relief to the extent of furnishing bonds that secured their temporary release. Klaw and Erlanger also furnished transportation back to New York for such as were at liberty to go. Then another obstacle arose. Few had the means to settle their hotel bills, and the proprietors of the places would not release their baggage. At this juncture relief came from outside sources. Mrs. Ogden Armour provided for the chorus girls, contributing $500 to settle their bills. That night over a hundred of the players were headed back to the great metropolis they call home, to seek new engagements, and if unsuccessful, to do the best they could. And the majority started with certain failure staring them in the face.

It was on Sunday, January 3, 1904, four days after the fire, that the members of the "Mr. Bluebeard" company turned their faces homeward, for to all players New York is "home." Just before the train started a plain white box was put on board the baggage car. It contained all that was mortal of Nellie Reed, the sprightly little girl who had delighted scores of thousands by her mid-air flights from the stage at each performance.

It was her last railroad "jump." Poor little thing, still in her early teens, she closed her earthly career with the close of the show, and went back "home" with it! If the future has for her any further flights they will be of celestial character, and not through the agency of an invisible wire such as guided her above the heads of Iroquois theater audiences and which was at first thought to have interfered with the fall of the curtain and to have been directly responsible for the appalling holocaust.

It was a sad departure. Nearly 150 persons comprised the "Mr. Bluebeard" party, and nearly as many more took the trip from "The Billionaire" company, also owned by the same management. Only a day or two before the fire that closed the "Bluebeard" show death had laid its hand heavily upon "The Billionaire," playing at the Illinois theater only a few blocks distant. "The Billionaire" himself died – big, rollicking Jerome Sykes, who made famous the part "Foxy Quiller" and the opera of that name and who a few years ago made such a hit as the fat boy in "An American Beauty" that he outshone Lillian Russell, its star. Sykes contracted a cold at a Christmas celebration for the members of the two companies and when he died the production died with him.

So with the Iroquois catastrophe there were two big, obviously successful, companies wiped out of the theatrical world at one blow and without notice. The members of each had half a week's salary due; that was their all. It was promptly paid and with that and their tickets all set forth in the happy possession of their baggage, many through the charity of Mrs. Armour.

All – not quite! There were two members of "The Billionaire" who did not make the last "jump," two who were in the audience at the Iroquois and perished in the maelstrom of flame and smoke. The curtain had been rung down for them forever. They, at least, would know no more of pitiful quests for engagements, of wearying rehearsal and momentary, superficial conquest. They had played their last stand.

"This is the saddest day of my life," declared one of the chorus members in the presence of the writer. "Here I am, 1,000 miles from home, no prospects of another engagement this season, and only $5 in the world."

"I have less than you," said a frail appearing girl, with tears in her eyes. "I lost my savings, $22, in the fire, and I have only $3 to go home with."

"It is the life of the stage," said a matronly wardrobe woman. "The poor girls are penniless, and if the injured were left hind it would be as charity patients. The responsibility of the managers of the show ceases when the production is closed. I know many of these girls are without sufficient money to pay for a week's lodging, and it is a sad outlook for some of them this winter."

And the wardrobe woman told the truth – it was merely a striking example, a pitiful vicissitude of "the life of the stage."

CHAPTER XIII.

OTHER HOLOCAUSTS

Since the time that civilized man first met with fellow man to enjoy the work of the primitive playwright, humanity has paid a toll of human life for its amusements. Oftener than history tells the tiny flicker of a tongue of flame has thrown a gay, laughing audience into a wild, struggling mob, and instead of the curtain which would have been rung down on the comedy on the stage, a pall of black smoke covered the struggles of the living and dying.

Of all the theater disasters of history, none ever occurred in America equaling the loss of life in the Iroquois fire. Only two in the history of the civilized world surpass it. There have been fires accompanied by greater loss of life, but not among theater audiences.

But the grand total of persons killed in theater holocausts is large and the saddest comment on this list is that most of the victims were from holiday audiences of women and children. Lehman's playhouse in St. Petersburg, Russia, was destroyed in Christmas week, 1836, and 700 persons lost their lives. The Ring theater, Vienna, Austria, was destroyed Dec. 8, 1881, and 875 persons lost their lives. These are the only theater holocausts whose deadliness surpasses that of the Iroquois.

To all have been the same accompaniments of panic, futile struggle and suffocation. In the last century with the introduction of the modern style of playhouse, these fatal fires have increased. The annals of the stage are replete with dark pages that cause the tragedy of the mimic drama depicted behind the footlights to pale and shrivel into comparative nothingness.

Perhaps it is a fatal legacy from the time when civilized society gathered in its marble coliseums and amphitheaters to witness the mortal combats of human soldiers or the death struggles of Christians waging a vain battle against famished wild beasts. Whatever it may be, death has always stalked as the dread companion of the god of the muse and drama.

An English statistician published six years ago a list of fires at places of public entertainment in all countries in the preceding century. He showed that there had been 1,100 conflagrations, with 10,000 fatalities, and he apologized for the incompleteness of his figures. Another authority says that in the twelve years from 1876 to 1888 not less than 1,700 were killed in theater disasters in Brooklyn, Nice, Vienna, Paris, Exeter and Oporto, and that in every case nearly all the victims were dead within ten minutes from the time the smoke and flame from the stage reached the auditorium. As in the Iroquois fire, it was mainly in the balconies and galleries that death held its revels.

Fire wrought havoc at Rome in the Amphitheater in the year 14 B. C., and the Circus Maximus was similarly destroyed three times in the first century of the Christian era. Three other theaters were razed by flames in the same period, and Pompeii's was burned again almost two centuries later, but the exact loss of life is not recorded in either instance. The Greek playhouses, built of stone in open spaces, were never endangered by fire.

No theaters were built on the modern plan until in the sixteenth century in France, and not until the seventeenth did any catastrophe worthy of record occur. When Shakespeare lived plays were generally produced in temporary structures, sometimes merely raised platforms in open squares, and it was after his time that scenic effects began to be amplified and the use of illuminants increased. Thus it was that dangers, both to players and auditors, were vastly increased.

In the Teatro Atarazanas, in Seville, Spain, many people were killed and injured at a fire in 1615. The first conflagration of this kind in England worth noting happened in 1672, when the Theater Royal, or Drury Lane, standing on the site of the playhouse in which "Mr. Bluebeard" was produced before it was brought to Chicago, was burned to the ground. Sixty other buildings were destroyed, but no loss of life is recorded.

Two hundred and ten people lost their lives and the whole Castle of Amalienborg, in Copenhagen, was laid in ashes in 1689 from a rocket that ignited the scenery in the opera house. Eighteen persons perished at the theater in the Kaizersgracht, Amsterdam, in 1772, and six years later the Teatro Colisseo, at Saragossa, Spain, went up in flames and seventy-seven lives were lost. The governor of the province was among the victims. Twenty players were suffocated in the burning of the Palais Royal in Paris in 1781.

In the nineteenth century there were twelve theater fires marked by great loss of life, and the first of these occurred in the United States. At Richmond, on the day after Christmas in 1811, a benefit performance of "Agnes and Raymond, or the Bleeding Nun," was being given, and the theater was filled with a wealthy and fashionable audience. The governor of Virginia, George W. Smith, ex-United States Senator Venable, and other prominent persons were in the audience and were numbered among the seventy victims. The last act was on when the careless hoisting of a stage chandelier with lighted candles set fire to the scenery. Most of those killed met death in the jam at the doors.

The Lehman Theater and circus in St. Petersburg was the scene of a fire in 1836, in which 800 people perished. A stage lamp hung high ignited the roof, a panic ensued, and there was such a mad rush that most of the people slew each other trying to get out. Those not trampled to death were incinerated by the fire that rapidly enveloped the temporary wooden building.

A lighted lamp, upset in a wing, caused a stampede in the Royal Theater, Quebec, June 12, 1846, and 100 people were either burned or crushed into lifelessness. The exits were poor and the playhouse was built of combustible material. Less than a year later the Grand Ducal Theater at Carlsruhe, Baden, Germany, was destroyed by a fire, due to the careless lighting of the gas in the grand ducal box. Most of the 150 victims were suffocated. Between fifty and one hundred people met a fiery death in the Teatro degli Aquidotti at Leghorn, Italy, June 7, 1857. Fireworks were being used on the stage and a rocket set fire to the scenery.

One of the most serious fires from the standpoint of loss of life was that in the Jesuit church of Santiago, South America, in 1863. Fire broke out in the building during service. A panic started and the efforts of the priests to calm the immense crowd and lead them quietly from the edifice were vain. The few doors became jammed with a struggling mass of men, women and children. The next day 2,000 bodies were taken from the church, most of them suffocated or trampled to death.

The Brooklyn theater fire was long memorable in this country. Songs, funeral marches and poems without number were written commemorating the sad event. Vastly different from the Iroquois horror, most of the victims of the Brooklyn theater were burned beyond recognition. At Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn there now stands a marble shaft to the unidentified victims of the holocaust.

Kate Claxton was playing "The Two Orphans" at Conway's Theater in Brooklyn on the night of Dec. 5, 1876. In the last scene of the last act Miss Claxton, as Louise, the poor blind girl, had just lain down on her pallet of straw, when she saw above her in the flies a tiny flame. An actor of the name of Murdoch, on the stage with her, saw it about the same time, and was so excited that he began to stammer his lines. Miss Claxton tried to reassure him and partly succeeded.

Then the audience realized that the theater was on fire, and a movement began. The star, with Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Farren, joined hands, walked to the footlights and begged the audience to go out in an orderly manner. "You see, we are between you and the fire," said Miss Claxton. The people were proceeding quietly, when a man's voice shouted, "It is time to be out of this," and every one seemed seized with a frenzy. The main entrance doors opened inwardly, and there was such a jam that these could not be manipulated.

The crowds from the galleries rushed down the stairways and fell or jumped headlong into the struggling mass below. Of the 1,000 people in the theater 297 perished. They were either burned, suffocated or trampled to death. The actor Murdoch was one of the victims.

That same year, 1876, a panic resulted in the Chinese theater of San Francisco from a cry of fire. A lighted cigar which someone playfully dropped into a spectator's coat pocket caused a smell of burning wool. The audience became panic stricken and rushed madly for the exits. At the time there were about 900 Americans in the auditorium, and of this number one-quarter were seriously injured. The fire itself was of no consequence.

The destruction of the Ring theater at Vienna, Dec. 8, 1881, remains the greatest horror of the kind in the history of civilization. It was preceded on March 23 of the same year, by the burning of the Municipal theater in Nice, Italy, caused by an explosion of gas, and in which between 150 and 200 people perished miserably, but the magnitude of the Vienna holocaust made the world forget Nice for the time. The feast of the Immaculate Conception was being celebrated by the Viennese, and Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffman," an opera bouffe, was the play. The audience numbered 2,500.

Fire was suddenly observed in the scenery, and a wild panic started. An iron curtain, designed for just such emergencies, was forgotten, and the flames, which might thus have been confined to the stage, spread furiously through the entire building. The scene was changed from light-hearted revelry, with gladsome music, to one of lurid horror.

The exits from the galleries were long and tortuous and quickly became choked. As in the Iroquois theater fire, those who had occupied the gallery seats were the ones who lost their lives. But few escaped from the galleries. The great majority of the spectators were burned beyond recognition by their nearest relatives. One hundred and fifty were so charred that they were buried in a common grave, and the city's mourning was shared by all the world.

The next fire of this nature to attract the world's attention and sympathy was the destruction of the Circus Ferroni at Berditscheff, Russian Poland. Four hundred and thirty people were killed and eighty mortally injured. Many children were crushed and suffocated in the jam, and horses and other trained animals perished by the score. This was on Jan. 13, 1883, and the origin of the conflagration was traced to a stableman who smoked a cigarette while lying in a heap of straw.

TWO GREAT PARISIAN HORRORS

The burning of the Opera Comique in Paris, May 25, 1887, was a spectacular horror. Here again an iron curtain that would have protected the audience was not lowered. The first act of "Mignon" was on, when the scenery was observed to be ablaze. The upper galleries were transformed into infernos, in which men knocked other men and women down and trampled them in their eagerness to save themselves, while the flames reached out and enveloped them all.

Many of the actors and actresses escaped only in their costumes, and some rushed nude into the streets. The scenes in the thoroughfares where men and women in tights and ball dresses and men in gorgeous theatrical robes mingled with the naked, and the dead and dying were strewn about, made a picture fantastically terrible. The official list of dead was seventy-five, but many others died from the fire's effects.

The theater at Exeter, England, burned Sept. 5, 1887, was ignited from gas lights, and so much smoke filled the edifice in a short time that near 200 were suffocated in their seats. They were found sitting there afterward, just as though they were still watching the play. This was the eleventh, and the Oporto fire the twelfth of the big conflagrations of the country. One hundred and seventy dead were taken from the ruins of the Portuguese playhouse after the flames which destroyed it on the evening of March 31, 1888, had been subdued. Many sailors and marine soldiers in the galleries used knives to kill persons standing in their way, and scores of the victims were found with their throats cut.

Ten years after the Opera Comique fire occurred the greatest of all Parisian horrors, the destruction by flames of the charity bazar, May 4, 1897. Members of the nobility, and even royalty, were among the victims. All of fashionable Paris were under the roof of a temporary wooden edifice known to visitors to the exposition of 1889 as "Old Paris." The annual bazar in the interest of charity had always been one of the most imposing of the spring functions. The wealthy and distinguished, titled and modish were there in larger numbers than on any previous occasion.

The fire broke out with a suddenness that so dazed everyone that the small chance of escape from the flimsy structure was made even less. Duchesses, marquises, countesses, baronesses and grand dames joined in the mad rush for the exits. The men present are said to have acted in a particularly cowardly manner, knocking down and trampling upon women and children. The death list of more than 100 included the Duchesses d'Alencon and De St. Didier, the Marquise de Maison, and three barons, three baronesses, one count, eleven countesses, one general, five sisters of charity and one mother superior. The Duchess d'Alencon was the favorite sister of the Empress of Austria and had been a fiance of the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. The Duchess d'Uzes was badly burned. The shock of the news and the death of his niece, the Duchess d'Alencon, accounted for the death on May 7 of the Duc d'Aumale.