WORDS & PHOTOS IN THE BURR McINTOSH-MONTHLY • August 1905

This is the fourth in a summer series designed to edify and entertain you with the camera and the pen of the multi-talented Burr McIntosh. This post focuses on:

The Burr-McIntosh Monthly • Vol. 8, No. 29 • August 1905

(Carla's Note: "Blurbs" in this issue are longer than in previous issues. As they lack the sweet teasing  and romantic whimsy of Mr. McIntosh's  previous texts, I believe they were written by someone else .)

E. S. WILLARD, one of the best known actors on the English stage, was brought to this country by the late A. M. Palmer, and made his American debut at what was then known as Palmer’s Theater (Wallack’s), at the corner of 30th Street and Broadway. He presented The Middleman which scored an immense success. Subsequently he produced The Professor’s Love Story and other plays that he has retained in his repertoire and which he revived only last season when he returned to America in Wilson Barrett’s play, Lucky Durham, which proved to be another unsuccessful actor-made play and whose non-success necessitated his putting on other plays to fill in the time allotted him in New York. For many years after leaving A. M. Palmer, he starred under his own management. He plans to return to America this coming season.

MARGUERITE CLARKE, who enjoys the reputation of being one of the youngest actresses on the American stage, is a Boston girl. She made her real debut in The Isle of Champagne when she was understudy for Elvira Croix-Seabrooke, playing the latter’s role one night in Boston when she (Croix-Seabrooke) became ill. Her success was instantaneous. She made a great hit in The Burgomaster and has always been a great favorite in Chicago where she has appeared in many musical comedies. She was under George Lederer’s management for awhile in The Blonde is Back, appeared one season on the New York Roof, and for the past three years has been with DeWolf Hopper, playing in both Mr. Pickwick and the revival of Wang. It is expected that she will have a prominent part in the new piece in which the elongated comedian will star this coming year, Elysia, by Reginald DeKoven and Frederick Rankin.

ELSIE DeWOLFE, who is one of the few society women who have adopted the stage as a career, was first of all a society entertainer and reader, giving numerous Browning matinées and readings on other like subjects. She scored her first important success in Catherine in the support of Annie Russell. Then, after playing in several pieces, she starred in Clyde Fitch’s ill-fated The Way of the World. This being unsuccessful, she gave up her stellar ambition for a period and played instead leading roles. Then she secured Hubert Davies’ Cynthia (this clever Englishman is best remembered as the author of Cousin Kate in which Ethel Barrymore starred the season before last). Despite the cleverness of the play, Cynthia failed to appeal to New York theatergoers, and was withdrawn. Then Miss DeWolfe went into Augustus Thomas’s play The Other Girl.  After this clever comedy left New York, Miss DeWolfe left the stage and the past year has been engaged in selecting decorations for the homes of wealthy New Yorkers.

ETHELLE EARLE played a prominent part in Augustus Thomas’s dramatization of the series of Gibson pictures entitled The Education of Mr. Pipp at the Liberty Theater, New York. For several weeks before the end of the theatrical season 1904-05, Miss Earle played the role of Julia Pipp, one of the Gibson girls in the production, being selected for the role on account of her conforming to the ideals of the great American artist. She came to New York from Boston, where she had served an apprenticeship in the Castle Square Stock Company.

MILLIE JAMES is the daughter of Louis James. She served her apprenticeship in stock companies. Then she appeared with James J. Corbett, the ex-heavyweight champion of the pugilistic world, in the latter’s first starring vehicle, Gentleman Jim. Then she appeared in farce and in the melodrama Wine and Women. It was, however, in Lovers’ Lane as Simplicity Johnson, that she made her first great success. After Lovers’ Lane she was featured by Charles Dillingham in The Little Princess, that delightful child’s play by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett. So successful was she in this play that Charles Froh-man secured her to play what was virtually a stellar role in Clyde Fitch’s ill-fated Glad Of It, a satire on department stores and various other things. It was produced in 1903 at the Savoy Theater, New York, but it had only a short life. Following this, Miss James married and retired from the stage, although it is expected that this coming season will see her acting once more.

ROSELLE KNOTT is an actress who is extremely well known throughout the country, better in fact than she is in New York City. She has been very successful in playing roles which Julia Marlowe has created; for instance, in The Cavalier, When Knighthood Was in Flower, etc., appearing in these in parts of the country where Miss Marlowe’s tour did not take her. She made her first big success playing the role of Lygia in Quo Vadis at the Fifth Avenue Theater, when the latter place was devoted to legitimate dramatic productions and had not become one of the Proctor vaudeville houses. Miss Knott has also played in a piece called The Empress Josephine with William Humphreys, and this past season she played throughout the country, under Frank Perley’s management, Cousin Kate, the vehicle used the year before last by Ethel Barrymore for starring purposes.

MAY McKENZIE has passed most of her stage life in the little music hall on Broadway which for so many years was under the direction of the actor-managers Joseph Weber and Lew Fields. When the partners separated she elected to stay with Weber and was given a part in Higgledy-Piggledy and The College Widower of greater importance than any she had played before. She has also achieved a certain measure of popularity by contributing, under the name of Maid Marian, to the local theatrical daily, chatty gossip relative to the chorus-girl world.

LOUISE DREW is the daughter of John Drew, that well known star of the American stage. Following in her father’s footsteps and that of other members of the famous Drew family, she determined to adopt the stage as a career and made her debut in Arthur Wing Pinero’s Iris in support of Virginia Harned. This was in 1902. Then she appeared in the short-lived dramatization of Lady Rose’s Daughter, made at the Garrick Theater, New York, and also appeared in the support of Fay Davis in Whitewashing Julia, the English comedy which likewise had so short a career. Last spring she went into Strongheart in support of Robert Edison when this piece left New York for the road. She has been playing during the summer in William Harcourt’s Stock Company at Albany. She has always been a great chum of her cousin, Ethel Barrymore.

BESSIE McCOY, whose name is inseparable from that of her sister, Nellie, because for many years they were known only as the McCoy Sisters, comes naturally by her ability as an actress and dancer, for she was born and brought up on the stage. Her parents were circus performers, although her mother afterwards became a character actress. For a long while the McCoy Sisters were featured in the production of Charles Hoyt’s farces by the late Sam Schubert, who secured his real start producing these revivals of the Hoyt farces. The girls were so successful that Mr. Schubert advised their separating and seeking distinction as individual players. Daniel Frohman, who became very much interested in the sisters, sent Bessie to Charles Dillingham, who put her in the revival of Fatinitza in the support of Fritzi Scheff last winter. She subsequently went to the Hippodrome, where she now is playing the role of the soubrette Aurora. Her sister, Nellie, has been very successful in The Earl and the Girl, the Schubert musical comedy that is to come into the rebuilt Casino this month.

TRULY SHATTUCK is a California girl. She has for many years been a very prominent figure in the vaudeville world. When Sousa’s marches were first coming into popularity she created something of a furore by having words written to the music of these marches and singing them in music halls like Koster & Bial’s, New York. Although she is more closely identified with the vaudeville stage, she has played in musical comedies. She played the leading woman’s role in King Dodo in support of Raymond Hitchcock, and afterward appeared in other productions made by Henry W. Savage. She was in An English Daisy and last season had a prominent part in George Cohan’s production, Little Johnnie Jones. She is the wife of Stephen Douglas, a New York promoter. Truly Shattuck also appeared for a number of seasons in Lillian Russell’s roles in road productions of Weber & Fields’ burlesques, as it was formerly the custom to send these burlesques on the road, inasmuch as the original music-hall company did not leave New York.

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