Category Archives: Reprints

Reprints

Swearing at Props, 1884

The following is the second part of an article which appeared in an 1884 issue of the Bismarck Weekly Tribune. The first part was posted last week:

“Writing letters is another important duty of the property man. The letters which people read on the stage are all written for them by him. Actors do not commit them to memory, but simply read them when they are handed to them upon the stage. In the multiplicity of his cares the property man sometimes forgets to write one of these letters, and when the actor to whom it is handed opens it he finds only a blank sheet of paper. His wits must serve him then, and if he knows the general purport of the letter he can improvise it. If not he can only affect to read and exclaim when he has finished: ”Tis well.’

Swearing at Property Men.

“More fault is found with the property man than with all the other attaches of the stage put together. A property man is expected to know how to make anything and everything. If there is a crown and scepter required, if a golden goblet is needed, or if there is a demand for a handsome drawing-room mantel, the property man must make them all, and no one outside of the profession can have any idea of the skill with which a first-rate property man can make a most deceptive imitation of almost anything. Turkeys and chickens, either with their feathers on or dressed and roasted for the table; fish and vegetables of all kinds, pies and cakes—all are within the resources of his art, as indeed it would be hard to name anything that is not.

Several days before the production of a new play there is given to the property man a complete list of all the properties required therein, and it is his duty to see that they are all ready in their proper places at the proper time. Many of these things, of course, he already has in his extensive collection in the property-room. Others he will borrow, if he can, from other theatres or from stores which deal in the articles required. China and glassware, furniture, fancy riding whips, paintings and bric-a-brac are always borrowed from stores, the dealers being glad to loan them for the sake of obtaining free admission to the theatre and of having their name on the house programme.”

“The Property Man”, The Bismarck Weekly Tribune, Oct 31, 1884, pg 2. Reprinted from The Philadelphia Times.

Reprints

The Property Man, 1884

2 Comments

The following appeared in an 1884 issue of the Bismarck Weekly Tribune:

One of the Most Important Individuals About a Theatre

“One of the most useful and important functionaries about a theatre is the property man,” said one who has grown gray in the business the other day. “By the property man is meant the person whose duty it is to furnish the properties for all the plays produced, and to see that they are placed conveniently at hand to be ready when wanted. Properties are everything used in a play except the scenery. The carpets, furniture and curtains, guns and pistols, pocket-books, money, candles, matches, cigars, pianos, pictures, food and drink, letters, musical instruments—all these and countless other things come under the head of properties.

The Property-Room

“Every theatre has what is called a property-room where these things are kept. It has very much the appearance of a pawn-broker’s shop, except that nothing is wrapped up and there is no counter. Come in here and see for yourself,” he continued, as he led the way into a dingy room at the back of the stage, where there was a most heterogeneous collection of such articles as he had named.

“Few people have any idea of the care and responsibility of a property man. He has more on his mind than anybody else about a theatre. There are 150 different things, large and small, that he must remember, and woe betide him if he forgets any one of them or fails to have it in its proper place at the right time. People who visit the theatre have no idea how dependent they are on the property man for their pleasure, for if he forgets anything or does not have everything just as it should be it will give rise to a contretemps, which will retard the action of the scene and mar its whole effect.

A Choice of Pistols

“For example; It is part of his duty to attend to all the fire-arms used on the stage. In the most critical part of the play the leading man is to rescue the leading lady from the tolls of the villain by killing him with a pistol shot. The property man selects the best pistol in his collection, cleans and loads it carefully, fires it off in the property-room to make sure that it won’t miss fire, loads it again, and in a perfectly comfortable frame of mind gives it to the leading man as he goes on for his great scene. The critical moment arrives. The leading man cries out in his most terrible voice: ‘Die villain!’ and pulls the trigger, but the pistol doesn’t go off, so the villain must either fall and die without having been shot, or else he must live on, succeed in abducting the beautiful maiden and thus ruin the play.

I am sorry to say that property men, being somewhat given to profanity, divide their firearms into three classes—the sure, the very sure, and the d****d sure. The first are given to the most unimportant of the supers, the second are given to those of somewhat greater importance, while only the last are ever given to the people who play important parts and whose guns must go off in order to carry out the plot of the play.

“The Property Man”, The Bismarck Weekly Tribune, Oct 31, 1884, pg 2. Reprinted from The Philadelphia Times,

Reprints

Minor Details Aren’t Unnoticed, 1895

The following article first appeared in the San Francisco Call in 1895: 

An exceptionally good performance was that given of “Diplomacy,” at the Columbia Theater last week. The leading parts, particularly those of Beach and Richman, were in the hands of actors who made them artistic pictures, and even the minor characters were finished studies.

The propertyman made the performance of “Diplomacy” remarkable by some rather clever compromises, which showed that he desired to give the French coloring and at the same time did not intend to lose his hold on local interest.

For instance, in the English embassy in Paris the newspaper which the unhappy husband snatched up in his despair and affected to read in the lull glare of the footlights was unmistakably a French journal, for the people in the stalls could read the type of that politest of languages, though they were a little staggered to see that the British diplomat was consoling one of the most trying moments of his life by studying Le Franco-Californien. Perhaps the propertyman wished to convey the impression that if Dora’a conduct forced her husband to fly to happier climes he could not do better than turn his steps to California.

It was a patriotic inspiration, too, to decorate the Parisian office of her Britannic Majesty with three large and handsome maps of the United States. Great rareties they must have been considered in Paris, too, for everyone who is familiar with that giddy capital knows that the outside world cuts very little figure in its geographies. You can buy “France in Provinces,” “France in Departments,” “France With Railroads” — canals, mountains, hedges and ditches— if you choose, but anything outside of France is always represented as of microscopic dimensions, scarcely visible to the naked eye.

Such little touches of local coloring apart, the staging of “Diplomacy” was finished and handsome, as is always the case at the Columbia Theater.

The San Francisco call. (San Francisco [Calif.]), 29 Sept. 1895. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1895-09-29/ed-1/seq-20/>

Reprints

The Elephant Kicks, 1891

1 Comment

This article first appeared in an 1891 newspaper. The elephant discussed here was built by famed Met Opera technical director Edward Siedle.

Update: I found another article which claims this elephant was built by Woolson Morse. I now think Siedle built the elephant for the 1904 remount of this show.

Actor DeWolf Hopper’s big elephant that drinks a quart of beer every night and on Saturday afternoons at the Broadway Theater, threatens to become troublesome to the management, says the New York Sun. The elephant has been kicking vigorously for a week past. The kick comes from the elephant’s hindquarters. In order to understand the full significance of the insubordinate behavior it is necessary to explain that in private life the “Wang” elephant is Mr. James Flynn and Mr. Mike Stevens Holahan. Mr. Flynn is the accomplished front legs and beer-drinking trunk of the elephant, and Mr. Holahan is the hind legs, and it is he who initiated the kicking. Mr. Flynn shows a disposition to join in the protest, and favors an elephantine strike.

When he is not the hind legs Mr. Holahan is the property-man of the opera company. He has to look after the costumes and wax candles, spears, bits of cut paper, Wang’s treasure-chest, and a lot of other miscellaneous stuffs used in the stage production. He was requested the other night to work on Sundays, too, and look after the distribution of display posters along Broadway on that day, and to paste the posters on the bill-boards. He intimated that this was crowding him a trifle too much, and that he did not propose to dabble in paste-pots at all. The matter was compromised by hiring a professional bill-poster to do the work.

Mr. James Flynn’s complaint is based on the plain ground of overwork. Mr. Flynn is a strong man, but he asserts that it is getting to be pretty tough work on hot nights carrying Mr. de Wolf Hopper on his head, and working the trunk of the elephant at the same time. Mr. Hopper is about seven feet high and weights in proportion to his towering stature. Mr. Flynn says this weight, combined with a Turkish bath atmosphere inside the papier-mache head of the elephant, and the necessity of keeping track of the innumerable pulleys that operate the rubber trunk of the elephant, gives him a headache every night. Moreover, he says that after he escapes from his half-hour imprisonment in this oven, he has to appear as a dancing master, and lead a dance of Emperor Wang’s twelve Siamese daughters-in-law, and later he has to climb on stilts and become a high priest—considerably higher, in point of fact, than Mr. Hopper himself. Mr. Flynn says that he quits the performance completely played out after his triple achievement. Manager Ben Stevens said last night that he thought he could square matters temporarily by allowing Mr. Flynn to partake of a bumper of beer as generous as that consumed every night by the elephant.

A funny thing in connection with the discontented elephant is that any number of children and adults, too, have written to Manager Stevens to find out whether the elephant is really alive. A Broadway merchant made a bet a fortnight ago, after he had seen the elephant drink its beer, that it was really a live baby elephant. He bet a new white tile on the point.

“The Elephant Kicks.” The Morning Call [San Francisco] 8 June 1891: 7. Print.

Reprints

Grand Opera Beyond the Curtain Line, 1915

The following originally appeared in a 1915 issue of Theatre Magazine:

Grand Opera Beyond the Curtain Line

by Mercy Gorham

“Every night is a first night with us,” observed Edward Siedle, Technical Director of the Metropolitan Opera House, as he watched a scene “break” in “Koenigskinder.” He stood talking of that mysterious realm beyond the footlights, always an enigma to the average operagoer, and he talked entertainingly, too, as a man is apt to do when his work is his hobby…

“I suppose the ‘property’ department is most popular with the laity, doubtless because it is better understood than the rest. It is a very important division, too, as will be seen when one takes into consideration the enormous number of properties used in all the operas and the vital importance of each in its turn. Take the matter of floor coverings alone, such as carpets, medallions and stage cloths, for in every scene the stage is covered with a cloth in keeping with the ensemble, and one can compass in a small measure the enormous amount of material there is to be cared for.

“Each scene calls for its own equipment. If it is a garden then there is earth and grass, benches and marbles to be provided. A street scene calls for paved ways; palaces for tesselated floors; the small parlor for its hard-wood floors and modern rugs and carpets; doors and windows for curtains and draperies; tables for pedestals and bric-a-brac; gardens for trees and flowers and rock scenes for their practical rocks.

“As the scenes of operas are laid in every part of the world, there must be a great variety of settings provided. Not a few illustrate mythological subjects, while others are Oriental in spirit. The properties of each require not only care in the handling, but a lot of research, trouble and expense in the making. These have all to be listed in their plots, showing precisely where they are placed when on the stage. Those not on the stage, but which are brought on during the performance, must also be carefully marked on the plot.”

Gorham, Mercy. “Grand Opera Beyond the Curtain Line.” The Theatre Magazine Jan. 1915: 21. Google Books. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.