1906 - Theater, Film

Theater, Film

Theater: And Pippa Passes (Und Pippa tanzt!) by Gerhart Hauptmann 1/19 at Berlin's Lessingtheater; The Marquis of Bradomin (El marqués de Bradomin) by Ramón del Valle-Inclán 1/25 at Madrid's Teatro de la Primers; Lee and J. J. Shubert take over New York's huge Hippodrome on Sixth Avenue at the start of the season and use the world's largest theater to mount a three-part spectacle that includes a large band of genuine Sioux in war paint performing a Ghost Dance, a two-ring circus with clowns and a procession of elephants, and a three-scene romantic extravaganza featuring a giant water tank and hundreds of chorines costumed to represent every variety of fish; Captain Brassbound's Conversion by George Bernard Shaw 3/20 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Shakespearean actress Ellen (Alicia) Terry, now 59 (Shaw has written it especially for her), Frederick Kerr, Edmund Gwenn; Caesar and Cleopatra by Shaw 3/31 at Berlin (in German), 10/31 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with Forbes Robertson, Gertrude Elliott, 49 perfs.; The Hypocrites by Henry Arthur Jones 8/30 at the Hudson Theater, with Richard Bennett, Doris Keane, 209 perfs.; Clothes by Cleveland-born playwright Avery Hopwood, 24, 9/11 at New York's Manhattan Theater, with Douglas Fairbanks, 113 perfs.; the Astor Theater opens 9/21 at 1537 Broadway (corner of 45th Street) with a revival of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (the theater will become a movie house in 1925) The Silver Box by John Galsworthy 9/25 at London's Royal Court Theatre; The Great Divide by Indiana-born poet-playwright William Vaughn Moody, 37, 10/3 at New York's Princess Theater with James Kirkwood, Alabama-born actor Henry B. Walthall, 28, Laura Hope Crews, Henry Miller (who has directed the play and makes it a success), 238 perfs.; The Three of Us by Illinois-born playwright Rachel Crothers, 28, 10/17 at the Madison Square Theater; The New York Idea by Philadelphia-born playwright Langdon (Elwyn) Mitchell (who uses the pen name John Philip Varley), 44, 11/19 at the 3-year-old Lyric Theater, with Mrs. Fiske, London-born actor George Arliss (originally Augustus George Andrews), 38, 66 perfs.; The Doctor's Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw 11/20 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with William Farren Jr., Harley Granville-Barker; Spring's Awakening (Frühlings Erwaken) by Frank Wedekind 11/20 at Berlin's Kammerspiel Deutchestheater; The Puppet Show (Balaganchik) by poet Aleksandr Blok 12/30 at St. Petersburg's Kommissarzhevskaya Theater; Caught in the Rain by William Collier and New York-born fellow actor Grant Stewart, 40, 12/31 at New York's Garrick Theater, with Collier, Stewart, 161 perfs.; Brewster's Millions by Winchell Smith and Byron Ongley (who have adapted the 1902 George Barr McCutcheon novel) 12/31 at New York's New Amsterdam Theater, with a cast that includes "George Spelvin," a name that first appeared 20 years ago in the cast list of Charles A. Gardiner's Broadway play Karl the Peddler and that Smith has used to designate a player who doubles in another role (the British equivalents of George Spelvin will be Walter Plinge, Mr. F. Anney, and Mr. Bart), 163 perfs.

Providence, R.I.-born Harvard English professor George Pierce Baker, 40, begins teaching a course in playwriting (English 47) whose 47 Workshop puts on plays for audiences.

Circus magnate James Bailey of Barnum & Bailey dies of acute erysipelas at his home near Mount Vernon, N.Y., April 11 at age 59; playwright Henrik Ibsen at Kristiania (Oslo) May 23 at age 78. A stroke in 1900 ended his career, and he is given a state funeral; tragedienne Adelaide Ristori dies at Turin October 8 at age 84.

Films: Alice Guy's The Life of Christ (La Vie du Christ). Guy this year and next will direct about 100 short films using Léon Gaumont's Chronophone, a device that synchronizes filmed images with sound recorded on wax cylinders. She will marry Gaumont cameraman Herbert Blaché next year and follow him to the United States (see Solax Co., 1910).

German-born Oshkosh, Wisconsin, clothing firm bookkeeper Carl Laemmle, 39, sees a Chicago nickelodeon on Milwaukee Avenue, recognizes its potential, uses his meager savings to convert a clothing store into a theater, paints it a brilliant white, equips it with 120 folding chairs rented from an undertaker, opens for business in February, and by year's end has opened two movie theaters, acquired a partner, and begun distributing films to other theaters in the area (see 1909).

New York's Vitagraph Studios hires local film hopeful Florence Turner, 19, as actress and wardrobe mistress at $18 per week. She will become known as the Vitagraph Girl as she stars in a series of movies.