The Tik-Tok Man of Oz

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Lenore Peters, More Than a Chorus Girl

The autobiography of Lenore Peters.

Once in a while, during my writing of All Wound Up, I ran across lovely surprises. One such instance was the case of Lenore Peters (1890–1984), chorus girl with The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

Research led me to interviews with Lenore Peters and her daughter and others involved in the 20th century modern dance scene. I learned that following Peters’s stint with The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, she developed an influential modern dance career as director of the Peters-Wright School of Dancing in San Francisco. I discovered that Peters had published several books, including an autobiography, Looking Back While Surging Forward.

I wondered whether Peters’s autobiography included information about The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. I doubted the book would contain much, if anything, about the show. Peters didn’t discuss her chorus girl days in interviews. Her few years as a chorus girl seemed to be a minor blip in the landscape of her subsequent celebrated dance career. If she mentioned The Tik-Tok Man of Oz at all in her book, such mention might easily consist of no more than a footnote or one title in a list.

I could only find one copy of her autobiography for sale—at $200. I wasn’t about to spend so much money on a book that might yield nothing useful.

The power of interlibrary loan came to the rescue just in time. For nearly two years, Covid restrictions had halted interlibrary loan at my city system. So frustrating! I’d finished writing the text of All Wound Up and was well into book design when, at last, the restrictions dropped and interlibrary loan returned. I requested a copy of Peters’s biography through my local library branch. When I received notice of the book’s arrival, I hurried to the library and checked it out. I didn’t bother about driving home first—I sat in my car in the library parking lot, flipping through the pages, searching for any mention of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

Lenore Peters in 1940.

Jackpot! Lenore Peters didn’t simply mention the show, she devoted several pages to it. She wrote about auditions, touring, lyrics, and gossip. She provided new details. She confirmed conjectures I’d made about the show from piecing together clues gathered elsewhere. She even gave a cogent analysis of why the Broadway-bound show never reached New York. Lenore Peters’s autobiography became a valuable resource for my book All Wound Up, and I’m grateful I found it.

A sidenote of interest: Peters began writing her autobiography, Looking Back While Surging Forward, during a week in 1958 while teaching dance to a convention of Unitarians meeting at Asilomar, California, a well-known retreat center on the Monterey peninsula. Asilomar is also where Oz Con International, the longest-running annual celebration of Oz and L. Frank Baum (then known as the Winkie Convention), met for nearly thirty years. I attended that convention at Asilomar many times, never suspecting that I was walking in the footsteps of a cast member of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Baum's Opera House

My presentation at Oz Con International, July 2024.

At Oz Con International in July 2024, I gave a presentation on Baum’s Opera House. That’s the theatre in Richburg, New York, that L. Frank Baum co-managed with his uncle John Wesley Baum for ten weeks in 1881-82.

For decades, a lot of false information has accumulated about Baum’s early theatrical career. Falsities include the idea that L. Frank Baum’s father gave Baum “a string of opera houses,” that L. Frank Baum produced his own plays at Baum’s Opera House, and that L. Frank Baum ever belonged to a “Shakespearean troupe” of actors. I intended my groundbreaking presentation to blast away many of the false accretions—those pesky Hanging Munchkins—and present the truth about Baum’s Opera House.

But I wanted to present more than that. I wanted to identify the spot where Baum’s Opera House once stood.

Early in the morning of March 8, 1882, Baum’s Opera House burned beyond repair, thus ending Baum’s theatre management career. The building was never rebuilt and its location was lost.

Newspaper ads for the theatre’s productions never included an address. Baum’s 1881-82 correspondence provides no street address for his theatre. Even the letterhead on Baum’s Opera House stationery lacks a street address. I doubt the theatre ever had an official address. One wouldn’t have been necessary for the single legitimate theatre in the small village of Richburg in the early 1880s.

Baum's letterhead as manager of Baum's Opera House.

Past historians have assumed that Richburg’s second theatre—named Brown’s Opera House—was built on the same spot where Baum’s Opera House stood. My research proved that assumption incorrect.

Newspaper reports from 1881-82 indicate the theatre’s proximity to other vanished landmarks, but that info provides only a general location, not a specific one.

The red rectangle shows my original best guess for the theatre's location.

I contacted Melanie Johnston of the Richburg-Wirt Historical Society, who provided further theatre location clues. Combining all my gathered information, I came up with a guess for the location—an educated guess, but a guess, nonetheless. That’s what I offered in my Oz Con International presentation last July.

Several months later, I visited Richburg, New York, in person for the first time. On the evening of October 6, at the Richburg-Wirt Historical Society, I gave my Baum’s Opera House presentation, slightly revised. I included new information pertinent to residents of the Richburg area and removed references aimed primarily at Oz fans. I again presented my best guess for the theatre’s location. Still, it remained a guess.

About to give my presentation in Richburg.

Melanie Johnston of the Richburg-Wirt Historical Society arranged my appearance and attended. I thanked her again for the information she’d provided. As the audience listened, she and I briefly discussed problems with determining the location of Baum’s Opera House.

After my presentation, Melanie and her husband showed my partner, theatre historian David Maxine, and me around the cozy Richburg-Wirt Historical Society museum. David spotted on one wall a large old photograph of Richburg in its oil boom days, tall derricks sprouting across the landscape. Across the bottom of the photo appeared words clearly written on the original negative: March 1882. That’s the month Baum’s Opera House burned. Was the photo taken before or after the fire? We studied the photo to find Baum’s Opera House or its remains. We couldn’t, and the hour was growing late, so David took phone photos of the Richburg photo on the wall.

Next morning, during daylight, David and I visited the general area where Baum’s Opera House once stood. After more than one hundred and forty years, we didn’t expect to find any remains of Baum’s theatre, but we wanted to examine the spot of my best guess. We walked up and down the sidewalks and street, staring around, debating. We compared what we saw to David’s phone shots of the old Richburg photo from March 1882. In the photo, some distance to the right of my location guess, I recognized a house that still stands today. To the left of that house in the photo, David noticed a puzzling area, unlike anything else in the photo. Neither of us could figure out what it pictured, until David suggested it showed the burned remains of a building.

A portion of a photograph of Richburg, New York, clearly marked March 1882. The area within the white rectangle is enlarged in the image immediately below.

Enlargement of portion of the Richburg photograph above. The large building on the left is the Academy, sitting at the far edge of Academy Park. The fully visible building in the upper right still stands today. What appear to be the fire-ravaged remains of a large building stand just left of center, including a substantial portion of the damaged front facade and a dark doorway at the facade's bottom center. Park Row runs from center of the photo toward the bottom right corner.

Eureka! (And I don’t mean the kitten.) We’d found the location of Baum’s Opera House!

We compared the location of the burned remains to our current reality. There stood a residential house, 115 Griffin, and its detached garage, across the street from Bolivar-Richburg Elementary School.

I no longer had to guess. Baum’s Opera House stood in Richburg, New York, on the northwest side of Griffin Street where Park Row "T"s into Griffin, one block northwest of Main Street (New York State Route 275).

The location of Baum's Opera House on Griffin Street in Richburg, New York. The building that stands just past the bend in Griffin Street is also visible in the March 1882 photo of Richburg.

Imagine yourself in Richburg, New York, on a frosty evening in late December 1881, turning the corner from Main Street into Park Row. As you stroll along, Academy Park lies on your left, lined at the street with an evenly spaced row of trees, their leafless branches spreading high against the evening sky. From ahead, at the end of the street, float the growing strains of a band playing the pre-show concert in front of Baum’s Opera House, a large wooden clapboard building, newly erected. A tall young man, well-dressed, with neatly combed brown hair and a handle-bar mustache, steps out of the theatre’s front door. It’s Louis F. Baum, the theatre’s manager. He beckons to the gathering crowd. Tonight’s show starts soon. Don’t miss it!

[For more about L. Frank Baum's theatrical career, see David Maxine's blog VintageBroadway.com]

I thank Sam Milazzo and David Maxine for permission to use their photos. Thanks also to Oz Con International and the Richburg-Wirt Historical Society.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Coincidental Oz

Joseph Kline Emmet, Sr.

The Tik-Tok Man of Oz composer Louis F. Gottschalk, early in his career, acted as musical director for the tour of the play Fritz in Ireland. The show starred Joseph K. Emmet, Jr., carrying on his father’s legacy as the well-known character Fritz. In 1870, Emmet, Jr.’s father, Joseph Kline Emmet (1841–1891), made Fritz famous in the show Fritz, Our Cousin German and played the character for the rest of his life. His son took up the role after his father’s death.

In May 1884, the senior Emmet, through his manager, Phil H. Lehnen, bought “two beautiful Jersey cattle” from the Syracuse, New York, area farm of Benjamin W. Baum, the father of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz writer L. Frank Baum. Lehnen paid $1000 for the cattle and sent them to Albany, New York, where they joined the “many attractions on and about” Joe Emmet’s property.

How’s that for an unexpected connection to The Tik-Tok Man of Oz?

Notes

“Joe Emmet Buys Two Cows,” Syracuse (NY) Standard, 19 May 1884, 4; “Amusements,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans, LA), 9 January 1893, 3; “This and That,” Buffalo (NY) Enquirer, 25 March 1893, 5. Image credit: Harry T. Peters "America on Stone" Lithography Collection.

Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Blue Mule

The Democratic National Convention looked different back in 1932 than it looks this week. Both conventions were held in Chicago, Illinois. But back then the convention welcomed a delegate from the Land of Oz—Hank the Mule.

Former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels met Hank the Mule at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, as you can see in the photo. Daniels was a delegate at large from North Carolina. Hank was played by Tex Morrissey, third wife of the originator of the role, Fred Woodward. Morrissey played Hank throughout the USA from the late 1920s until the early 1950s.

Hank the Mule impressed then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt so greatly that Roosevelt asked Hank to accompany his presidential campaign. No surprise that a mule—even a foreign mule from the Land of Oz—would be a Democrat.

Friday, July 5, 2024

A Melody Played in a Penny Arcade

I recently re-watched the motion picture Paper Moon. Such an excellent movie. Director Peter Bogdanovich tells the story with admirable confidence and restraint. The acting of both Tatum O'Neal and Ryan O'Neal in the leading roles is superb.

What's Paper Moon got to do with The Tik-Tok Man of Oz?

Toward the end of the movie, when Tatum O'Neal's character, Addie, has at long last reached her aunt's house, clearly visible on the piano in the aunt's parlor is a copy of the sheet music of "Forgotten," a song which basso Eugene Cowles as Ruggedo the Metal Monarch interpolated into The Tik-Tok Man of Oz on opening night.

I've noticed the appearance of "Forgotten," by Flora Wulschner and Eugene Cowles, in Paper Moon before, and I associate it strongly with the end of the movie. Seeing the movie again prompted me to post about it.

The "Forgotten" sheet music visible in two Paper Moon camera shots is the standard cover seen here. Notice it first in the background when the camera enters Addie's aunt's house. And it's prominent enough during the moment Addie faces her final big decision, that the title and Eugene Cowles's name are perfectly legible.

A lot of period music can be heard in Paper Moon. But not "Forgotten." It's inappropriate, since it dates from about three decades before the time of the story. However, as an old piece of sheet music, it's appropriate for the setting of the aunt's home. And most importantly, as foreshadowing of a possible future for Addie's relationship with Ryan O'Neal's character Moze, it's spot on.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Eugene Cowles as the Metal Monarch

Throughout All Wound Up: The Making of the Tik-Tok Man of Oz and its two companion volumes (script and score), I included all the photos I could find of the actors costumed as their characters in the original 1913-14 production of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

But I didn't find all the available photos before publication. I missed this lovely image of Eugene Cowles as Ruggedo, the Metal Monarch. Here it is for you now. Notice the detail of the costume, particularly the Magic Belt.

I suspect this photograph was shot during the same session as the photos of the Metal Monarch on pages 92 and 103 in All Wound Up. Those photos were originally published in newspapers. It looks to me as if the designer who prepared those newspaper-published photos misinterpreted the Metal Monarch's crown and left in protuberances that weren't actually part of the crown.

Friday, May 10, 2024

Ice Skating in The Winsome Widow

Click to enlarge.

In 1912, the composer of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, Louis F. Gottschalk, worked on his final Broadway project before his permanent household move to Los Angeles, California. That final show was A Winsome Widow, touted for its third act scene featuring the chorus ice skating on real ice, as seen in the photo above.

A Winsome Widow, directed by Wizard of Oz director Julian Mitchell, was a new musical version of the longest-running Broadway show at that point, Charles Hoyt's 1891 A Trip to Chinatown, which Mitchell had also directed.

I discuss A Winsome Widow in the context of composer Gottschalk's life and career on page 325 of my book All Wound Up: The Making of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz.

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