Tag: Stars
Imagining the Radio Hour
On July 31, 2018 August 19, 2018 By tracykasaboskiIn 1919-1930s: The Forest City4 Comments
Close your eyes and imagine that it's 10 o'clock on a Saturday evening in London, Ontario. The year is 1928. This is our grandmother Doris Deverill's world. She is 18, and is somewhere in the same city, perhaps, like you, sitting in a flocked, over-stuffed armchair with her feet curled beneath her.
Doris Deverill around 1928
In your room, the heavy drapes are drawn and a small lamp with a thin silk shade is colouring the room a dusky orange. You've just turned the knob on the front of the polished wooden radio set that has pride of place on the floor of your small living room, and it hums and then crackles to life. Strains of a theme song fill the space – This is My Lucky Day – and it's not lost on you that the song has been chosen with a purpose; first, the word 'lucky' provides a little indirect advertising for the show's sponsor, Lucky Strike Cigarettes, as well as a link to the show's title, The Lucky Strike Radio Hour, and second, it's a popular song, having been part of a string of Broadway revues called the George White Scandals, similar to the Ziegfeld Follies.
Immediately following the last notes of the song the voice of the unnamed announcer comes on, his speech clipped and crisp and slightly nasal. "And so begins this hour of dance music, presented for your pleasure by the manufacturers of Lucky Strike Cigarettes. The Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra will be heard in the tunes that made Broadway, Broadway."
And on cue, the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra's bandleader, Benjamin Albert Rolfe, the so-called Boy Trumpet Wonder, introduces the first numbers of the evening, "a real dancing combination." One of the songs – Bambalina – he calls an "old friend."
You smile and listen as Rolfe and his orchestra play. His concept of dance music during this time of the late 1920s was that it should "throb and laugh with happiness; it should have the rhythm of a rubber ball, bouncing back, only to fall again, going on and on." Those words were a fair description of what Rolfe himself had been doing for his entire career up to this point. Raised in Brasher Falls, New York, he'd played piccolo and cornet in his father's band, performing throughout the eastern United States and Europe. After high school he picked up work as a musical clown in a traveling circus, then joined the Majestic Theatre Orchestra before finally heading the brass instruments department at the Utica Conservatory of Music. But show business was in his blood, and after a run as a bandleader and only marginal success as a vaudeville producer he eventually turned his efforts to movies, forming a production company and turning out more than 50 silent films.
B.A Rolfe produced more than 50 silent films, including this one starring Harry Houdini.
Financial difficulties forced Rolfe out of that business and he took up his trumpet again and began performing as a solo artist. Eventually, inspired by the likes of Paul Whiteman and his "symphonic jazz", Rolfe put together his own dance orchestra, and found a measure of success on the airwaves as master of ceremonies for the Lucky Strike Dance Hour.
The last strains of Bambalina fade, and Rolfe introduces another number, and after that, a waltz from the operetta The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow Waltz is already a "famous classic", but in 1934 French actor and cabaret performer Maurice Chevalier will lend his charm to the film version of the operetta, and an Academy Award win for Best Art Direction will make the music just that much more popular. But for now, Rolfe's Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra is doing justice to the notes, and you in your comfortable chair sway ever so slightly, dreaming up the feel of a hand at your back, leading you through the imaginary steps.
Then the music ends, and without a pause the never-named announcer brings listeners back to the real world, and makes the requisite pitch for the show's sponsor. Tonight, the script-writers lead with Douglas Fairbanks, a founding member of the fledgling Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But you have never heard of an Oscar. The first of those diminutive gold statues won't be handed out by the Academy for another year, although when they are, it will be Fairbanks hosting the show and shaking hands with his peers when they take their bows. Despite his many and varied contributions to the world of film (he helped start the School of Cinematic Arts in California, and was one of the founders of the United Artists studio), Fairbanks would never win an Oscar himself.
The radio announcer reads his text: "Douglas Fairbanks, America's motion picture favourite, will soon appear in his new production of 'The Iron Mask.' This is a sequel to 'The Three Musketeers' with Mr. Fairbanks again playing the part of D'Artagnan.
The characters however are more romantic and adventurous and Mr. Fairbanks considers the picture as a whole to be faster moving than any story he has ever brought to the screen. The manufacturers of Lucky Strikes have requested me to read what Douglas Fairbanks has to say regarding the Lucky Strike Cigarette. Mr. Fairbanks says – 'I get more kick from the Lucky Strike flavour than from any other cigarette. They are easier on my throat and wind. That's why I smoke nothing but Luckies. Toasting really means a lot to me. My own experience has proven that toasting not only takes out the bad things but doubles the flavour.'"
You sigh and shift position. The hour grows late, and you want less talk and more music, and don't care if Mr. Fairbanks smokes Luckies or Camels or even British Consols, which is unlikely, since they are a Canadian brand manufactured in Montreal, and Mr. Fairbanks, of course, is a Hollywood star.
Bandleader Rolfe announces the next couple of numbers, Crazy Rhythm, "a musical impediment of speech," and Oh Evelyn, Stop Your Devilin, a song from the musical comedy Pom-Pom, and Mitzi's favourite, according to Rolfe. He doesn't share more details than that, but you know that Pom-Pom was released 12 years ago in 1916, and starred the "tiny prima donna from Hungary" Mitzi Hajos, whose name, the New York Times advised most helpfully, is pronounced "High-yuss."
An ad for the 1916 musical Pom-Pom starring Hungarian singer and actress Mitzi Hajos. Despite her early success, mid-life brought work as a secretary at the Shubert Theatre in Brooklyn, NY.
Despite the aids to pronunciation, the "golden haired darling" eventually became convinced that her Hungarian surname would never "roll readily from the American tongue," and she legally dropped Hajos to become plain Mitzi. But as the Reading Times of Pennsylvania declared, "plain…she could never be, as witness her dressed as a boy in Pom-Pom."
Two more songs follow, and then the announcer speaks again, this time sharing the endorsement of Lucky Strike cigarettes by yet another famous person, the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. The script goes like this: "A short time ago the world was thrilled by the daring Amelia Earhart, the first woman ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean by airplane. Of Lucky Strike cigarettes Miss Earhart said 'Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the Friendship when she crossed the Atlantic. We bought a carton in Newfoundland before we took off, because Luckies are best. On a long hard grind of this kind they were real life-savers, and were smoked continuously from Trepassey to Wales. I think nothing else helped so much to lessen the strain for all of us.'" You think about that, and picture the intrepid Miss Earhart earnestly puffing her way through her share of the carton of Luckies, clad in her aviator coveralls, leather cap with earflaps snugged beneath her chin, and wearing clumsy gloves to protect against the cold of the 20 hour flight. Presumably pilot Wilmer Stultz and flight mechanic Louis Gordon had found time to inhale the other two-thirds of the smokes despite fighting bad weather they'd thought had blown them off course, and almost running out of gas. Amelia drew the world's attention with that trip, although by her own words she was "just baggage" and wouldn't pilot her solo voyage across the Atlantic until 1932.
Pioneer female aviator Amelia Earhart in a photo taken just before the 1928 flight destined for "any port in England."
Mr. Rolfe is back at the microphone, introducing five more numbers that float across the airwaves. You are yawning now, but the music is lively and keeps you in your chair, enjoying the beat of the "optimistic little melody, Old Man Sunshine," and then the even spunkier Tiger Rag. But by the time the theme song plays to signal the end of the show, your eyelids are drooping and your hand props your chin. The announcer bids his listeners good night, and makes one last plug for the show's sponsor. "This closes the program of one hour's dance music presented for your pleasure by the manufacturers of Lucky Strike Cigarettes. The tunes that made Broadway, Broadway. Thank you." But you do not hear those last sentences. You're asleep, your breath coming evenly, your head tilted back on the cushion of that over-stuffed chair.
Lucky Strike Radio Hour transcript
Thurlow O. Cannon, "B.A. Rolfe – From Brasher Falls to Broadway to Broadcasting," in The Quarterly, St. Lawrence County Historical Association, January 1981.
Pom-Pom Coming to the Academy, Reading Times, 8 February 1917.
http://www.biography.com
Douglas Fairbanks: The Extraordinary Life of Hollywood Founding Father, The Guardian online.
Mona Powder, Manx Perfume, and High-Class Boots
On July 17, 2018 August 19, 2018 By tracykasaboskiIn 1830s-1913: In Darkest London5 Comments
Our great grandparents, Harry and Mary Anne Deverill, moved out of the Borough to Lambeth around the time that Mary Anne's sister Jennie and her husband Richard Vanson did the same. Richard and Jennie and their three girls lived just north of Harry and Mary Anne, in a block of artisans' dwellings on Burdett Street off Westminster Bridge Road. You could follow the road west and travel across the Thames to a different world: the Houses of Parliament and the Clock Tower were there, with Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace just beyond. Like Harry and his brother Jack, who'd been in trade together, Richard disappeared from commercial directories around this time, so it seems he'd lost or given up his business as a boot repairer. But his new home in Burdett Chambers was very close to H & M Rayne, shoemakers to the theatrical crowd and, according to The Stage Year Book, "manufacturers and outfitters of every requisite for the stage."
H & M Rayne opened for business in London in the mid-1880s, a collaboration between Henry Ryan and his wife Mary Clarke. Born in 1863 in Devonport, the son of an Irishman who'd joined the British Army, Henry lived for a time in India, then as a young man larked about the United States and France before returning to England. Mary was a Chelsea lass, and when she and Henry married, it was at the height of the Victorian fascination with all things theatrical. The advent of gas lighting, improved modes of transportation affordable to the average citizen, and a working class with a spare penny meant music halls flourished, packing all sorts of customers into venues such as the Alhambra in Leicester Square, or The Borough Music Hall on Union Street in Southwark. Henry and Mary saw an opportunity, and opened their doors at 115 Waterloo Road, selling "high-class stage boots and shoes" to music hall performers.
Actress Henrietta Crosman in costume on the November 1902 issue of The Theatre magazine.
Henry was an astute businessman, and was surely well aware that anti-Irish sentiment was running high around this time, as the Irish nationalist Fenians had begun a "dynamite campaign," targeting tube stations, the offices of Scotland Yard, and Westminster Abbey. Henry took an approach that would be copied by king and commoner decades later when England went to war against Germany, and changed his name from the Irish Ryan to Rayne, which he thought sounded French and would appeal to prospective customers. Presumably he also believed people would not frequent a shop co-owned by a woman, for although the 'M' in H & M Rayne was Mary, they prefaced the company name with Messrs, suggesting this was a partnership of men. They placed notices in publications like The Music Hall and Theatre Review, claiming to have received orders "from all parts of the world, the latest one coming from so distant a land as sunny Roumania." They advertised in newspapers and trade journals touting their costumes and wigs, and exclusive products like their Manx perfume, and mona powder, "guaranteed to give the skin a velvety softness, and the velvety bloom of youth. Not too young, you know, but about eighteen."
H & M Rayne's full page advertisement in the 1912 issue of The Stage Year Book.
Before too long the stars of the music hall and theatrical world were H & M Rayne's devoted customers, among them actresses like Gertie Millar, one of the most photographed women of her time, and Lillie Langtry, once mistress of the Prince of Wales. Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova bought Rayne's dancing shoes, and the company featured her compliment in one of their advertisements: "Your shoes are beautiful."
Gertie Millar as Pierrot in 1909, and one of Rayne's devoted clientele.
It's possible our Richard Vanson worked for Rayne's, hunched over a bench fixing shapely heels onto embroidered satin uppers, or attaching buttons to smooth leather shanks. But any record suggesting such a detail is long gone, and Richard died in 1911, just before the census that confirmed his niece Olive was employed at Rayne's as an "apprentice theatrical costumer," while his daughter Alice tried her hand there at "apprentice perruquier," learning to create hairpieces and elaborate wigs, and, indirectly at least, receiving the accolade from renowned Scottish vaudevillian Harry Lauder that "the wigs are champion."
Nineteen-eleven spelled the end for Mary Rayne too. She died on the 17th of February, an inmate of the Banstead Lunatic Asylum. Whether Mary had succumbed to the pressures of a successful business or there'd been other factors at play isn't known, but in 1915, 52-year-old Henry followed her to the grave, passing the mantle of H & M Rayne to their son, Joseph. From humble beginnings, Mary and Henry's company went on to earn three royal warrants, confirming that "Mdlle Adeline Genee, the world's greatest dancer [was correct when she said] 'The Boots and Shoes are Perfect.'"
Danish/British dancer Adeline Genée, who thought Rayne's boots and shoes were perfect.
The Stage Year Book, 1912
Music Hall Stars of the Nineties, George Le Roy. British Technical and General Press, 1952
Rayne Shoes for Stars, Michael Pick. ACC Art Books, 2015
A Manual of Shoemaking, William H. Dooley. Brown, Little & Co., 1912
Victoria and Albert Museum, The Story of Music Halls
Turtle Bunbury, The Irish Family Who Founded Rayne's Shoes
eng.shoe-icons.com