Home > 1900's: Overview > Important Events of the 1900s

Important Events of the 1900s

1900

Movies
Adventures of Jones (series), produced, directed and acted by James White for Edison; Battle of Mafeking, Filipinos Retreat from the Trenches, and Panorama of the Paris Exposition from the Seine, filmed and produced by James White for Edison; Beheading a Chinese Prisoner and Chinese Massacring Christians, produced by Sigmund Lubin; Cinderella, produced and directed by Georges Méliès; The Clown and the Alchemist and A Visit to the Spiritualist, produced and filmed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith for Vitagraph; The Downward Path, produced by Wallace McCutcheon and filmed by Arthur Marvin for Biograph; Faust and Marguerite, produced and directed by Edwin S. Porter; Fire Engines at Work, The Gans-McGovern Fight, and Something Good—Negro Kiss, produced by William Selig; Love in the Suburbs, filmed by G. W. "Billy" Bitzer for Biograph; Maude's Naughty Little Brother, produced and filmed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith for Vitagraph.
Fiction
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars; Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim; Stephen Crane, Whilomville Stories; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories; Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooleys Philosophy; Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South; Booth Tarkington, Monsieur Beaucaire; Harriet Prescott Spofford, Old Madame and Other Stories; Mark Twain, The Man that Corrupted Hadley-burg
Popular Songs
"A Bird in a Gilded Cage," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Arthur Lamb; "I Can't Tell Why I Love You, But I Do," music by Charles Previn, lyrics by Gus Edwards; "Rosie, You Are My Posie (Ma Blushin' Rosie)," music by John Stromberg, lyrics by Edgar Smith; "Voodoo Man," music and lyrics by Bert Williams and George Walker.
  • The approval of the New York City audience has become the standard by which theater professionals measure their work—the rest of the nation is merely "the Road." More than five hundred New York shows go on the road in 1900.
  • Theatre Magazine, edited by Arthur Hornblow, begins publication.
  • The novelty of the "moving picture" phenomenon of the 1890s has worn off. The public is bored with the uninspired menu of news events, sight gags, panoramas, and camera tricks.
  • Eastman Kodak introduces the Brownie Box camera at one dollar; Americans embrace the new hobby of amateur photography.
  • The trademark and painting His Masters Voice first appears on record labels of the firm that later becomes the Victor Company.
  • Brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson compose "Lift Every Voice and Sing," a musical inspiration for black Americans.
3 Jan.
Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida (1871) is performed in New York.
5 Feb.
Clyde Fitch's drama Sappho premieres in New York; police close it after twenty-nine performances, citing "immorality."
23 Apr.
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show opens at Madison Square Garden.
30 Apr.
Railroad engineer Casey Jones is killed when he jams on the brakes of his wreck-bound train. His passengers' lives are saved, and Jones's exploit becomes the stuff of immediate legend when Wallace Saunders, a black fellow worker, composes a song about him.
May
Poet-dramatist William Vaughn Moody publishes "An Ode in Time of Hesitation" in Atlantic Monthly magazine. It is a thoughtful comment on American imperialism.
22 May
Inventor Edwin S. Voter patents the "pneumatic piano attachment"; the Pianola, or player piano, soon becomes popular.
28 May
Posthumous exhibit of American landscape painter Frederic Church's works is mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
15 June
Ignacy Paderewski, Polish pianist, composer, and statesman, sets up a $10,000 fund for best orchestral works by American composers.
15 Oct.
Mark Twain returns from a nine-year hiatus abroad. Boston's twenty-five-hundred-seat Symphony Hall opens.
12 Nov.
Florodora, one of the most popular stage musicals of the decade, has its debut in New York. It has a run of 505 performances.
16 Nov.
German conductor Fritz Scheel directs the first concert of the newly formed Philadelphia Orchestra at the Philadelphia Academy of Music.
19 Nov.
The Harvard Theatre Collection is opened; it is the oldest dance and theater-research collection in the world.
20 Nov.
Sarah Bernhardt arrives for her first American tour since 1886. At age fifty-six, she plays Hamlet.

1901

Movies
Bluebeardy produced by Georges Méliès; Couche Dance on the Midway and Wedding Procession in Cairo, produced by Sigmund Lubin; Coaching Party and Yosemite Valley, filmed by Robert K. Bonine for Biograph; The Finish of Bridget McKeen, Kansas Saloon Smashers, and Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog, filmed and designed by Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming for Edison; In the Forbidden City, filmed by C. Fred Ackerman for Biograph; Opening—Pan-American Exposition, President McKinleys Speech at the Pan-American Exposition, and Complete Funeral Cortege [McKinley] at Canton, Ohio, produced by James White for Edison; Stock Yard Series (Stunning Cattle, Koshering Cattle, Dressing Beef etc.), produced by William Selig.
Fiction
Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkak-Sa) Old Indian Legends; Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition; Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Fanatics; Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooleys Opinions; Henry James, The Sacred Font; Rudyard Kipling, Kim; Frank Norris, The Octopus; Alice Hegan Race, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.
Popular Songs
"Book Book," music and lyrics by Allan M. Hirsch; "Hello Central, Give Me Heaven, For My Mama's There," music and lyrics by Charles K. Harris; "I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," music by T. MacLaglen, lyrics by William H. Lingard; "Just A-Wearyin' For You," music and lyrics by Carrie Jacobs Bond; 'The Maiden With the Dreamy Eyes" and "My Castle on the Nile," music by J. Rosamond Johnson, lyrics by Robert Cole and James Weldon Johnson; "Mighty Lak a Rose," music by Ethelbert Nevin, lyrics by Frank L. Stanton; "Tell Me Pretty Maiden," music by Leslie Stuart, lyrics by Owen Hall and Frank Pixley.
  • The American Federation of Musicians passes an antiragtime resolution, calling for "every effort to suppress and discourage … such musical trash."
  • The Rudolf Wurlitzer Company announces a new coinoperated music machine, the Tonophone.
  • Clyde Fitch, the first American playwright to become a millionaire in his profession, has four plays appearing on Broadway simultaneously in 1901.
  • Autobiographies of black American leader Booker T. Washington (Up From Slavery) and of immigrant reformer Jacob Riis {The Making of an American) are published.
  • Experimental composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) continues work on his Songs and completes his Symphony No. 2; it is not premiered for sixty years.
2 Feb.
Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca (1900) debuts in New York.
4 Feb.
Clyde Fitch's Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines opens on Broadway for 192 performances, making twenty-one-year-old Ethel Barrymore a star.
21 Feb.
Vaudeville performers organize and strike to protest the inclusion of moving pictures on vaudeville bills. The Eastern Association of Vaudeville Managers adds more films to replace the striking acts.
13 Mar.
Andrew Carnegie, steel baron and philanthropist, gives $2.2 million to fund a New York public library system.
14 Apr.
Police enforce New York City's blue laws by arresting actors at the Academy of Music for appearing in costume on Sunday.
1 May
The Pan-American Exposition opens at Buffalo, New York.
24 June
Pablo Picasso's first exhibition opens at Galeries Vollard, Paris.
29 July
Rudyard Kipling, popular chronicler of life in British colonial India, speaks against Britain's conduct of the Boer War.
16 Oct.
New President Theodore Roosevelt invites author Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. Much of the nation is shocked; within two weeks race riots occur in New Orleans. Thirty-four people are killed.
20 Oct.
The New York Times celebrates fifty years in publication.
10 Dec.
Sweden awards the first Nobel Prizes; French poet Sully Prudhomme is honored for literature.

1902

Movies
Alphonse and Gaston (series), filmed by Robert K. Bonine for Biograph; Appointment by Telephone and How They Do Things on the Bowery, filmed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; Cake Walking Horse and Feeding the Rhinoceros, produced by Sigmund Lubin; "Foxy Grandpa" (series), starring Joseph Hart and Carrie De Mar for Biograph; The Great Sword Combat on the Stairs (excerpt from the stage play A Gentleman of France), starring Kyrie Bellew, filmed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith for Vitagraph; Prizefight in Coontown, produced by William Selig; Robinson Crusoe and A Trip to the Moon, produced and filmed by Georges Méliès.
Fiction
Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"; Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles; Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods; Finley Peter Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley; Hamlin Garland, The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop; Ellen Glasgow, The Battleground; Joel Chandler Harris, Gabriel Tolliver, A Story of Reconstruction; Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Hagars Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice and Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest; Henry James, The Wings of the Dove; Rudyard Kipling, Just-So Stories; Jack London, "To Light a Fire" and A Daughter of the Snows; Edith Wharton, The Valley of Decision; Owen Wister, The Virginian.
Popular Songs
"Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home?," music and lyrics by Hughie Cannon; "Down Where the Wurzburger Flows," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan; "In the Good Old Summer Time," music by George Evans, lyrics by Ren Shields; "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Vincent P. Bryan; "The Mansion of Broken Hearts," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb; "Please Go Way and Let me Sleep," music and lyrics by Harry von Tilzer; "Under the Bamboo Tree," music by J. Rosamond Johnson, lyrics by Bob Cole.
  • For the first time, a well-known stage actor, Kyrie Beilew, agrees to appear in a motion picture.
  • In Dahomey, a musical written and acted by blacks, scores a hit on Broadway.
  • Helen Keller publishes The Story of My Life. The autobiography of the twenty-two-year-old woman, blind and deaf since the age of nineteen months, becomes a best-seller.
  • McClure's magazine begins publishing Ida Tarbell's and Lincoln Steffens's "muckraking" treatments of the oil industry and municipal corruption.
  • Appalachia, a musical composition by British American Frederick Delius, introduces American folk-song motifs.
  • Frederic Remington completes his Comin' Through the Rye, a bronze sculptural tribute to the American cowboy.
  • Sheet music and player pianos gain nationwide popularity; Broadway scores and ragtime songs reach a wide market.
  • Photographer Edouard (later Edward) Steichen opens a one-man show in Paris.
  • Works such as The Hand of Man and The Flat-iron Building establish Alfred Stieglitz as the foremost art photographer in America.
4 Jan.
The Carnegie Institute is founded for research in the humanities and sciences.
13 Jan.
The well-known British actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell makes her first performance in America.
7 Mar.
J. Pierpont Morgan purchases the Garland collection of oriental porcelain, keeping it in the United States.
18 Mar.
Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso and U.S. recording engineer Fred Gaisberg produce the tenor's first phonograph recording.
16 Apr.
Tally's Electric Theater, the first theater expressly for the purpose of showing motion pictures, opens in Los Angeles.
30 Apr.
Claude Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande premieres in Paris with Scots American Mary Garden singing the soprano lead.
1 May
Georges Méliès's science-fiction fantasy film, A Trip to the Moon, enchants Paris audiences.
29 Sept.
Emile Zola (b. 1840), whose writing influenced American naturalist writers, dies in Paris.
4 Oct.
Chicago's New Orpheon Theatre opens with the musical Chow-Chow.
23 Oct.
Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the "Gibson Girl," whose looks dominate women's fashion in the early part of the decade, accepts a $100,000 contract to draw tor Life and Collier's magazines.
8 Nov.
Barnum and Bailey's Circus ship returns to the United States after a European triumph.
3 Dec.
David Belasco premieres his spectacular melodrama The Darling of the Gods in New York at a cost of $78,000.
21 Dec.
Chicago's La Salle Theatre opens. Guglielmo Marconi sends the first wireless signals across the Atlantic Ocean.
29 Dec.
The Sultan of Sulu, a George Ade musical, is one of the few shows to move successfully from Chicago to Broadway. The spoof of U.S. cultural imperialism enjoys an eight-month run.

1903

Movies
American Soldier in Love and War, produced by Biograph; The Divorce, produced by Wallace McCutcheon and Frank Marion for Biograph; Don Quixote, produced by Pathé; The Great Train Robbery, starring G. M. Anderson and Justus D. Barnes, produced and filmed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; Kit Carson and The Pioneers, starring Kit Carson and produced by Wallace McCutcheon for Bio-graph; "I Want my Dinner," starring Ross McCutcheon (age two), produced by Wallace McCutcheon and Frank Marion for Biograph; The Kingdom of the Fairies, produced by Georges Méliès; Panoramic View of Multnomah Falls, produced by William Selig; Rip Van Winkle, starring Joseph Jefferson, produced by Bio-graph; The Runaway Match; or, Marriage by Motorcar, produced by British Gaumont; Sorting Refuse at Incinerating Plant, New York City, produced and filmed by Edwin S. Porter and J. Blair Smith for Edison; Uncle Tonis Cabin, produced and filmed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison.
Fiction
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Of One Blood, or, The Hidden Self; Paul Laurence Dunbar, In Old Plantation Days; Henry James, The Ambassadors; Frank Norris, The Pit; Jack London, The Call of the Wild and People of the Abyss; Kate Douglas Wiggin, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Popular Songs
"Bedelía," music by Jean Schwartz, lyrics by William Jerome; "Congo Love Song," music by J. Rosamond Johnson, lyrics by Robert Cole; "Dear Old Girl," music by Theodore F. Morse, lyrics by Richard and Henry Buck; "Good-Bye Eliza Jane," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling; "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider," music and lyrics by Eddie Leonard; "Something Doing," music by Scott Joplin, lyrics by Scott Hayden; "Sweet Adeline," music by Harry Armstrong, lyrics by Richard H. Gerard; "Under the Anheuser Busch," music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling.
  • The sixteen-story Ingalls building in Cincinnati is the first skyscraper built with a reinforced concrete infrastructure.
  • Gertrude Stein moves to Paris.
  • W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.
  • The Manhattan Opera House is completed.
  • John Knowles Paine composes an American opera, Azora.
  • British American designer Frederick Carder founds the Steuben Glass Works. Carder's coloring techniques soon rival Louis Comfort Tiffany's work.
  • The Great Train Robbery, a twelve-minute, nine-scene film by Edwin S. Porter, shows audiences the potential of the moving picture. Its effective narrative and cinematic techniques make it the most popular movie of the decade and revitalize the motion picture industry.
  • Professor George Pierce Baker offers the first playwriting and theater classes at Radcliffe College.
Jan.
The first issue of Alfred Stieglitz's photography journal, Camera Work, appears.
21 Jan.
The musical version of The Wizard of Oz debuts on Broadway; it runs for 293 performances.
1 Feb.
Eugene Heitler Lehman, son of a Colorado tobacco wholesaler, is the first American recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship.
6 May
Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" (1883) is affixed to the Statue of Liberty.
6 Aug.
Twenty-eight circus people are killed when two railroad cars collide in Durand, Michigan.
15 Aug.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer gives $2 million to establish the Columbia University School of Journalism; a portion of the donation is used to establish the Pulitzer Prizes, which are first awarded for literature in 1918.
12 Sept.
Scott Joplin's ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor, begins a Midwest tour. Internal difficulties cause cancellation in less than six weeks.
13 Oct.
Victor Herbert's operetta Babes In Toyland opens in New York; it becomes one of the season's biggest hits.
27 Oct.
Richard Jose, onetime minstrel singer, records "Silver Threads Among the Gold" for the Victor Talking Machine Company.
11 Nov.
Hiawatha, a cantata composed by English composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor and based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, premieres in Washington, D.C.
21 Nov.
Enrico Caruso debuts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; he appears regularly at the Met until 1920.
30 Dec.
The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago claims 602 lives.

1904

Movies
Annie's Love Story, Cowboys and Indians, Barnums Trunk, and In the Strike, produced by Pathé; Avenging a Crime, or, Burned at the Stake, Just Like a Girl, and Trials and Troubles of an Automobilist, produced by William Paley and William F. Stiener; The Barber of Sevilla and An Impossible Voyage, produced by Georges Méliès; Boxing Horses—Luna Park, Coney Island, Elephants Shooting the Chutes at Luna Park, Opening Ceremonies, New York Subway, October 27, 1904, produced by Edison; Buster Brown and His Dog Tige (series), filmed and produced by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; The Child Stealers, produced by British Gaumont; The Ex-Convict, produced by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; Girls in Overalls, Tracked by Bloodhounds, or, A Lynching at Cripple Creek, and The Hold-Up of the Leadville Stage, produced by William Selig; The Hero of Liao-Yang, The Moonshiner, Personal, The Suburbanite, and The Widow and the Only Man, produced by Biograph; The Kidnapped Child and Meet Me at the Fountain, produced by Sigmund Lubin.
Fiction
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo; Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Heart of Happy Hollow; Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), Red Hunters and the Animal People; Henry James, The Golden Bowl; O. Henry, Cabbages and Kings; Jack London, The Sea-Wolf; Gene Stratton Porter, Freckles; Edith Wharton, The Descent of Man.
Popular Songs
"Alexander, Don't You Love Your Baby No More?" music by Harry von Tilzer, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling; "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy," music and lyrics by George M. Cohan; "Good Bye My Lady Love," music and lyrics by Joe Howard; "He Done Me Wrong, or, the Death of Bill Bailey," music and lyrics by Hughie Cannon; "Meet Me in St. Louis," music by Kerry Mills, lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling.
  • The "kickapoo" dance craze sweeps the nation.
  • Chicago's $1 million Orchestra Hall is completed in the French Renaissance style by architect Daniel Burnham.
  • Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens creates the General Sherman Memorial for Central Park, New York City.
  • The National Academy of Arts and Letters is established; many creative artists oppose its conservative views.
  • Ruth St. Denis abandons a theater career to concentrate on achievements in modern dance.
  • The first two-sided record disks are put on the American market by Columbia; they retail at $1.50.
5 Jan.
Owen Wister's stage adaptation of The Virginian, starring Dustin Farnum, opens in Manhattan. It runs more than seventeen weeks.
17 Jan.
Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard debuts in Moscow.
1 Feb.
Enrico Caruso makes his first phonograph recording in the United States.
22
Mar. The first newspaper color photograph is published by the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.
2 Apr.
The musical Piff Paff Pouf!, starring popular comic actor Eddie Foy, opens on Broadway.
30 Apr.
The Saint Louis World's Fair opens.
23 May
The musical play The Southerners, score by black composer Will Marion Cook, premieres in New York with a mixed-race cast.
15 July
Anton Chekhov dies at age forty-four in Badenweiler, Germany.
1 Sept.
Helen Keller graduates from Radcliffe College.
3 Sept.
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch opens on the New York stage, proving to be as popular a play as it was a novel.
4 Oct.
French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty, dies in Paris.

1905

Movies
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Escape from Sing-Sing, Monsieur B eaucaire, and The Servant Girl Problem, produced by Vitagraph; The Burglars Slide for Life, produced by Edison and featuring Mannie the Edison dog; The Bold Bank Robbery, Dog, Lost, Strayed or Stolen, The Sign of the Cross, A Policeman's Love Affair, and Tramp's Revenge, produced by Sigmund Lubin; Everybody Works But Father, The Miller's Daughter, On a Good Old Five Cent Trolley Ride, and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dogy filmed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; The Faithless Lover, A Father's Honor, The Pastry Cook's Practical Jokes, and The Mining District, produced by Pathé; The Gentle Highwayman, The Lost Child, and Tom, and Tom the Pipers Son, produced by Biograph; The Launching of the USS "Connecticut," filmed by Wallace McCutcheon, G. W. "Billy" Bitzer, and A. E. Weed for Biograph; The Palace of the Arabian Knights and Rip's Dream, produced by Georges Méliès.
Fiction
Willa Cather, The Troll Garden; Charles Waddell Chesnutt, The Colonel's Dream; Thomas Dixon, The Clansman; Ellen Glasgow, The Deliverance; Mary J. Holmes, Lucy Harding; Grace King, Stories from Louisiana History; Jack London, White Fang; Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.
Popular Songs
"Daddy's Little Girl," music by Theodore F. Morse, lyrics by Edward Madden; "Everybody Works but Father," music and lyrics by Jean Havez; "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "Mary's A Grand Old Name," music and lyrics by George M. Cohan; "I Don't Care," music by Harry O. Sutton, lyrics by Jean Lenox; "In My Merry Oldsmobile," music by Gus Edwards, lyrics by Vincent Bryan; "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree," music by Egbert Van Alstyne, lyrics by Henry Williams; "I Want What I Want When I Want It" and "Kiss Me Again," music by Victor Herbert, lyrics by Henry Blossom; "My Gal Sal," music and lyrics by Paul Dresser; "Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nellie," and "What You Gonna Do When the Rent Comes 'Round?" music by Albert von Tilzer,lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling; "Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?," music by Ernest R. Ball, lyrics by James J. Walker.
  • William Randolph Hearst acquires Cosmopolitan magazine for $400,000.
  • The Institute of Musical Art, later renamed the Julliard School, is established in New York.
  • Isadora Duncan opens an academy of modern dance in Berlin.
  • Variety, the show-business weekly, begins publication in New York.
  • Gertrude "Ma" Rainey gains fame as the first black minstrel star to sing "the blues."
  • L. A. Coernes's Zenobia is the first American opera produced in Europe.
9 Jan.
George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell succeeds in New York; three other Shaw plays open in New York this year.
3 May
The Metropolitan Opera chorus strikes.
5 May
The Chicago Defender, the first important black newspaper, begins publication.
13 May
Broadway entrepreneur Sam Shubert dies in a railway accident outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
June
The nickelodeon era gets under way when entrepreneur Harry Davis's Pittsburgh movie theater offers continuous showings and frequent program changes. By 1909, eight thousand nickel-admission movie theaters are in operation.
6 June
Real estate at Broadway and Wall Street in New York City is offered at four dollars per square inch.
23 Oct.
Edwin Milton Royle's The Squaw Man, a drama attempting serious treatment of the American Indian, premieres in New York City.
31 Oct.
Bernard Shaw's play Mrs. Warrens Profession opens and doses in New York; critics call its treatment of prostitution "unfit," "indecent," and "vicious."

The Earl and the Girl, a musical starring Eddie Foy, opens on Broadway.

14 Nov.
David Belasco's atmospheric melodrama The Girl of the Golden West opens on Broadway; it plays for three years.
25 Nov.
In New York Alfred Stieglitz inaugurates the first show at the "Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession." The avant-garde gallery soon exhibits a variety of advanced art and come to be known by its address, 291.
23 Dec.
Joseph Stella's drawings of immigrants at Ellis Island are published in Outlook magazine.

1906

Movies
And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or The Author's Dream, Automobile Thieves, Foul Play, and The Jailbird and How He Flew, produced by Vitagraph; The Bank Defaulter and The Secret of Death Valley, produced by Sigmund Lubin; The Black Hand, The Lone Highwayman, The Silver Wedding, The Subpoena Server, Trial Marriages, and Wanted: A Nurse, produced by Biograph; Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer Days in America and Kathleen Mavourneen, filmed by Edwin S. Porter and produced by Edison; Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, produced by Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon for Edison; Dr. Dippy's Sanatorium, Mr. Butt-In, and Married for Millions, produced by Biograph; The Female Highwayman and The Tomboys, produced by William Selig; The Female Spy, produced by Pathé; Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (animation experiment), filmed by J. Stuart Blackton, produced by Vitagraph; The Life of Christ, produced by British Gaumont; Oh! That Limburger: the Story of a Piece of Cheese and Please Help the Blind; or, A Game of Grafi, produced by Vitagraph; Terrible Kids and Three American Beauties, produced by Edison; Venetian Tragedy, produced by Pathé; World Series Baseball, produced by William Selig.
Fiction
Rex Beach, The Spoilers; Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book; O. Henry, The Four Million and "The Gift of the Magi"; Finley Peter Dunne, Dissertations by Mr. Dooley; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, By the Light of the Soul; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; Harriet Prescott Spofford, Old Washington; Booth Tarkington, The Conquest of Canaan; Owen Wister, Lady Baltimore.
Popular Songs
"The Bird on Nellie's Hat," music by Alfred Solman, lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb; "I Just Can't Make My Eyes Behave," music by Will D. Cobb, lyrics by Gus Edwards; "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag," music and lyrics by George M. Cohan; "Love Me and the World is Mine," music by Dave Reed Jr., lyrics by Ernest R. Ball; "Mandy," music by Bob Cole, lyrics by James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson; "Rosalie," music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by George Grossmith; "Virginia Song," music and lyrics by George M. Cohan; "Won't You Come Over to My House," music by Egbert Van Alstyne, lyrics by Harry H. Williams.
  • Photographer Arnold Genthe records the aftermath of the San Francisco quake. Although his own studio and library are demolished, his photographs of Chinese immigrant life are saved.
  • The American stage is host to foreign talent in 1906: Russian actress and recent immigrant Alla Nazimova debuts in Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and Irish dramatist Bernard Shaw has four plays on Broadway.
  • Nickelodeons proliferate across the country; the storefront theaters are expressly for showing films and charge a nickel admission. Among the those who succeed in the nickelodeon business are William Fox and the Warner brothers, who later found the Hollywood movie studios named after them.
  • The first radio program of voice and music is broadcast in the United States by R. A. Fessenden.
8 Jan.
Protesters distribute pamphlets at the opening of the play The Clansman (based on the novel by Thomas Dixon) at New York's Liberty Theater. The pamphlets call attention to the play's racism; distributors are dispersed by police.
11 Apr.
Russian novelist Maksim Gorky arrives in the United States to raise money for Russia's revolution; Mark Twain heads a funding committee.
14 Apr.
President Theodore Roosevelt publicly chastises "muckrakers." He takes this term from Pilgrim's Progress, in which John Bunyan wrote of the man who never looked up to finer things because he was intent on applying his muckrake to the ground.
21 June
In London more than sixty theater people gather to honor Theater Syndicate entrepreneur Charles Frohman.
July
Ruth St. Denis introduces modern dance to the United States; she begins her American tour with the Eastern-inspired Radha. The young dancer, who has had little formal training, is praised for her artistic vision.
7 July
Courts rule that Bernard Shaw's play Mrs. Warrens Profession is appropriate for New York audiences.
11 Aug.
A patent for a talking film is issued to Eugène Lauste in France.
28 Aug.
President Roosevelt proposes that "simplified spelling" be used in federal documents. The proposal, if accepted, would alter the mechanics of American English to achieve a spelling more synchronous with pronunciation; thus, for example, through would be spelled thru.
17 Oct.
A German scientist, Arthur Korn, uses a telegraph wire to send a photographic image over a thousand miles; Korn has built on the work of Italian physicist Luigi Cerebotani.
30 Oct.
The U.S. Supreme Court bans "simplified spelling" in federal documents.
3 Nov.
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns makes his New York debut.

1907

Movies
All's Well That Ends Well and What a Pipe Did, produced by Selig Polyscope; An Awful Skate and His First Ride, produced by Essanay; The Bandit King, The Girl from Montana, and Western Justice, directed by G. M. Anderson for Selig Poly-scope; Athletic American Girls, "The Bad Man"—A Tale of the West, produced by Vitagraph; Bargain Fiend; or, Shopping A La Mode, starring Florence Lawrence and Florence Turner, produced by Vitagraph; The Boy, the Bust and the Bath, produced by Vitagraph; College Chums, directed by Edwin S. Porter, produced by Edison; The Doings of a Poodle and The Policeman's Little Run, produced by Pathé; Dolls in Dreamland, Crayono, and The Tired Tailors Dream (all with object animation) directed by Joseph A. Golden, produced by Biograph; The Hypnotist's Revenge and Terrible Ted, directed by Joseph A. Golden, produced by Biograph; John D. and the Reporter, The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy, Too Much Mother-in-Law, and When Women Vote, produced by Sigmund Lubin; The Masher and The Matinee Idol, produced by Selig Polyscope; The Rivals and "Teddy" Bears, produced by Edison; The Wrong Flat, starring William Delany, produced by Vitagraph; Work for Your Grub, produced by Filmograph.
Fiction
Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (autobiography); F. Marion Crawford, A Lady of Rome; Charles Alexander Eastman, Old Indian Days; Ellen Glasgow, The Wheel of Life; Elinor Glyn, Three Weeks; O. Henry, "The Last Leaf; Frances Little, The Lady of the Decoration; George Barr McCutcheon, Jane Cable; John Milton Oskison, "The Problem of Old Harjo"; Edith Wharton, Madame de Treymes; Kate Douglas Wiggin, New Chronicles of Rebecca.
Popular Songs
"Harrigan," music and lyrics by George M. Cohan; "Heart of My Heart," music and lyrics by Andrew Mack; "Honey Boy," music by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Jack Norworth; "The Little Church Around the Corner," music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by M. E. Rourke; "Marie from Sunny Italy," music by Nick Nicholson, lyrics by Irving Berlin; "School Days," music by Will D. Cobb, lyrics by Gus Edwards.
  • Alfred Stieglitz produces his best-known photograph, The Steerage.
  • Wealthy arts patron and sculptress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney opens her Greenwich Village studio to exhibits by fellow artists.
  • John Sloan paints The Haymarket, The Wake of the Ferry, and The Hairdresser's Window.
  • Hungarian composer Franz Lehar's experimental opera The Merry Widow is produced in New York; among its nontraditional elements are the waltz and the cancan.
  • The De Forest Radio Company begins New York broadcasts.
  • Edwin S. Porter hires D. W. Griffith as an actor at ten dollars a day.
26 Jan.
J. P. Morgan's daughter, a member of the New York Metropolitan Opera Board of Directors, advocates the closing of the Oscar Wilde-Richard Strauss opera Salome for indecency.
18 Mar.
In San Francisco the Alcazar Theater, designed by G. H. Corwin, opens; it is one of many theaters that are rebuilt or reopened after the devastating earthquake of 1906.
10 June
In France motion-picture pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière announce they have developed a method for making color film.
8 July
Florenz Ziegfeld's musical revue, the Ziegfeld Follies, opens at the New York Roof Theater; the Follies become an annual theater event, continuing until 1927.
24 Aug.
New York galleries are featuring the works of Mary Cassatt, American Impressionist.
7 Sept.
Oscar Hammerstein announces he will build four opera houses in New York City.
8 Nov.
Photographs can now be reproduced by cable, owing to new advances in the field.
3 Dec.
Mary Pickford makes her stage debut in The Warrens of Virginia.

1908

Movies
After Many Years, Behind the Scenes, and The Fatal Hour, directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by Edison; As You Like It, adapted from William Shakespeare, produced by Kalem; The Cattle Rustlers and The Count of Monte Cristo, filmed by Francis Boggs for Selig; A Christmas Carol, adapted from Charles Dickens, produced by Essanay; The Cowboy Escapade, produced by David Horsely's Centaur Film Manufacturing Company; The Devil and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, produced by Edison; Fireside Reminiscences, directed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison; The Girl and the Outlaw, The Greasers Gauntlet, The Fight for Freedom, and The Red Girl, directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by Biograph; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth, produced by Vitagraph; The Music Master, produced by Biograph; Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker, scripted by D. W. Griffith, directed by Wallace McCutcheon, produced by Biograph; Saved by Love, produced by Edison; The Welcome Burglar, directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by Edison.
Fiction
Rex Beach, The Barrier; Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Shuttle; John Fox Jr., The Trail of the Lonesome Pine; Ellen Glasgow, The Ancient Law; Zane Grey, The Last of the Plainsmen; O. Henry, The Voice of the City; Jack London, The Iron Heel; Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Circular Staircase; Edith Wharton, The Fruit of the Tree.
Popular Songs
"I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," music by Will M. Hough and Frank R. Adams, lyrics by Joseph E. Howard and Harold Orlob; "Cuddle Up A Little Closer," music by Karl Hoschna, lyrics by Otto Hauerbach; "She Was a Dear Little Girl," music by Ted Snyder, lyrics by Irving Berlin; "Shine On Harvest Moon," music and lyrics by Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth; "Smarty," music by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Jack Norworth; "Sunbonnet Sue," music by Will D. Cobb, lyrics by Gus Edwards; "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," music by Albert von Tilzer, lyrics by Jack Norworth; "The Yama Yama Man," music by Karl Hoschna, lyrics by Collin Davis.
  • D. W. Griffith directs his first one-reel film, The Adventures of Dolly; his cameraman is the expert G. W. "Billy" Bitzer. Griffith directs one hundred films in the next year.
  • The Motion Picture Patents Company, the first movie monopoly, is formed. Edison, Lubin, Selig, and other producers believe films should be limited to one reel because audience attention span falters after ten minutes.
  • Female ushers, orange drink, and drinking-cup dispensers are introduced at the Shubert-owned Casino Theater.
  • Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery publishes the novel soon to be among America's favorites, Anne of Green Gables.
  • The New Society of American Artists is founded in Paris by Edward Steichen and others.
  • Movie actress Florence Lawrence quits Vitagraph Studios and goes to work for Biograph; her salary goes up ten dollars to twenty-five dollars a week.
  • The first "documentary" records are released by Edison, who has recorded the campaign speeches of William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft.
11 Jan.
Italian soprano Louisa Tetrazinni makes her U.S. debut.
14 Jan.
A theater fire in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, kills 150.
Feb.
"The Eight," painters Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and Arthur B. Davies, exhibit together in New York, protesting the conservative National Academy of Design.
11 Feb.
Thomas Edison and his film-producing partners win a series of patent-infringement lawsuits.
20 Feb.
Thomas Edison and Leo Tolstoy exchange gifts: Edison sends Tolstoy a phonograph; Tolstoy later sends Edison a recording of his voice.
Mar.
The Original Independent Show, organized in New York, includes works by painters George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and Rockwell Kent.
30 Mar.
Tetrazinni signs a five-year contract with Oscar Hammerstein; she appears at the new Manhattan Opera House.
5 May
Courts rule that moving pictures be placed under copyright laws; royalties will be paid to the owners of the copyrights.
7 July
French courts extend motion-picture copyright laws.
6 Sept.
Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot opens in New York City; the title becomes an internationally recognized description of the United States.
5 Oct.
The American Idea, a George M. Cohan musical, opens in New York.
16 Nov.
Italian opera conductor Arturo Toscanini makes his American debut with Verdi's Aida at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
22 Dec.
New York's Herald Square Theater is damaged by fire; the successful run of Three Twins, starring Bessie McCoy, is halted until a new location is found.

1909

Movies
The Aborigine's Devotion, produced by World Pictures; An Alpine Echo, produced by Vitagraph; The Bride of the Lamermoor, adapted from Sir Walter Scott, produced by Vitagraph; Brother Against Brother, produced by Selig; A Change of Complexion, produced by the Powers Company; The Convict's Sacrifice, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Stephanie Longfellow, Gladys Egan, James Kirk-wood, and Henry Walthall, produced by Biograph; A Corner in Wheat, directed by D. W. Griffith, produced by Biograph; The Escape from Andersonville, produced by Kalem; Faust, produced by Edison; The Girl Spy, scripted by and starring in by Gene Gautier, produced by Kalem; Hiawatha, produced by Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Picture Company; King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream, produced by Vitagraph; The Lonely Villa, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Mary Pickford, Gladys Egan, and Adele De Garde, produced by Biograph; Napoleon, Man of Destiny, The Life of George Washington, and The Life of Moses, produced by Vitagraph; Pippa Passes, produced by Biograph; The Prince and the Pauper, starring Miss Cecil Spooner in the double role, produced by Edison.
Fiction
Mary Austin, Lost Borders; The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce; Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman, Wigwam Evenings; Edith Maude Eaton, "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of A Eurasian" and Mrs. Spring Fragrance; Frank Norris, The Third Circle (posthumous); Jack London, Martin Eden; Gene Stratton Porter, Girl of the Limber lost; Gertrude Stein, Three Lives.
Popular Songs
"By the Light of the Silvery Moon," music by Edward Madden, lyrics by Gus Edwards; "Casey Jones," lyrics by Wallace Saunders; "Every Little Movement," music by Karl Hoschna, lyrics by Otto Harbach; "That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune," music and lyrics by Irving Berlin; "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet," music by Stanley Murphy, lyrics by Percy Wenrich; "Yiddle on Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime," music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.
  • Modernist poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams publish collections.
  • George Bellows paints Both Members of the Club.
  • D. W. Griffith features sixteen-year-old Mary Pickford in his films. The former Gladys Smith now makes forty dollars a week starring in Biograph pictures.
  • "The movies" are now a $40-million-a-year industry employing more than one hundred thousand artists and craftspeople. There are ten thousand moving-picture theaters in the United States.
  • W. C. Handys Memphis Blues is the first blues song to be written down.
  • Mack Sennett is employed by Biograph as an actor-writer; he tries to convince D. W. Griffith that a film about comic policemen would be successful; years later his Keystone Kops prove him right.
  • The first fully animated film is released; Gertie the Dinosaur stars.
19 Jan.
Eugene Walter's controversial drama The Easiest. Way, about a woman who chooses to live "immorally," opens at the Belasco-Stuyvesant Theater in New-York. The New York Times defends the play.
1 Mar.
An adaptation of American author Bret Harte's The Luck of the Roaring Camp opens in London.
9 Apr.
Enrico Caruso makes a radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House to the home of Lee De Forest, the inventor of the vacuum tube.
1 May
The works of American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent are among the most impressive to be seen at the 141st annual Royal Academy of Art Show in London.
15 June
The Ziegfeld Follies features chorus girls costumed as glittering mosquitoes; Nora Bayes introduces "Shine On Harvest Moon."
11 Oct.
George M. Cohan premieres The Man Who Owned Broadway at the New York Theater.
28 Oct.
The nine-hundred-seat Cort Theater opens in Chicago; the theater's Italianate design is by E. O. Pridmore.
4 Nov.
Composer Sergey Rachmaninoff makes his American debut at Smith College.
29 Dec.
The first known "goddamn" is uttered on the American stage. Clyde Fitch's The City has been banned in Boston but plays in New York without police interference. Several people, including a theater critic, are said to have fainted on hearing the words "You're a goddamn liar."