Bye, Gone

by Catherine Cusick

Just after the turn of the twentieth century, the Star Theatre was torn down. Using time-lapse photography, American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. transformed thirty days worth of photographs into a two-minute film of the demolition (remember, this was over a hundred years ago, in 1902 — fancy footwork for a first-time film foray). Over the course of those two eerie minutes, viewers play peek-a-boo with the edifice: now you see it, now you don’t. The building is long gone, what happened inside is forgotten. As Strasberg writes in A Dream of Passion, "One of the great defects of the theatre is that what is created in it is written in melting snow, and that only memories remain of the experience."

Though a camera only captures that which is fleeting and ephemeral, a film paints a picture of what once was. A photograph provides something more than memories, and it is through the camera's lens that Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater, 1850–1970 manages to introduce over a century of little-known Great White Way heritage, amply proving that pictures of the past have their place in the present.

With text and captions by Leonard Jacobs, and over 240 commemorative images from the Billy Rose Theatre Division at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Historic Photos of Broadway chronicles some of the famous thoroughfare's forgotten landmarks and showbiz superstars; its bygone hits and the moguls that mounted them. "There's a whole world that's connected to the theatre that I will never experience firsthand the way that it was," said Jacobs. "What I enjoyed about working on this book was being able to focus on a time when the theatre was really it. It was the predominant cultural form of mass entertainment up until maybe the First World War. What was that like? I'll never know."

Yet the bygone need not be forgotten. Though we have lost contact with the primacy of the primary source of experience, we aren't without our secondary sources — nor our mind's eye. "We must know that all we really have is our imagination," writes Jacobs, "our ability to picture things as they were in the New York light, to not forget what once stood where." "This is why photography for me is a window into a theater world of people, places, and plays I can never completely know," writes Jacobs. "Through photography one can get pretty close."

The Star Theatre film clip shortens what once was a feat of modernist film: the original was twice as long and featured not only the demolition, but also its fantastic sequel – the footage in reverse. That imaginary reconstruction speaks to how freely art lends itself to imaginative recreation, and it's clear that in the making of Historic Photos of Broadway, Jacobs's imagination, for one, went wild.

During our interview, Jacobs zeroed in on a photograph of the Empire, which stood at 40th Street and Broadway, and let his curiosity narrate: "Look at all these people waiting outside the theatre. This is what New York looked like. This is what people wore in the wintertime . . . and this bicycle sort of leaning up against the curb . . . It's a window into society that fascinates the daylights out of me."

As Jacobs notes in one of his introductions, points of fascination in this book are plentiful. It's sure to interest a wide range of theatre aficionados, from the bespectacled historian to the Comedy Central crowd: "Some pictures are as postmodern-ironic as anything on The Daily Show." Today's Surreal Life demographic, for instance, would have no trouble imagining a modern-day Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), once described by biographer Jane S. Smith as "famous long after most people remembered quite why," just as the “celebutants” of today are know of elusive reasons.

Celebutants aside, there is a slew of niggling details in some of these photos that one could puzzle over for hours. For example, the incongruous hammer John Drew, Jr. held out so nonchalantly before a gigantically-sleeved Maude Adams one hundred thirteen years ago while they were playing a scene from Madeleine Lucette Ryley's Christopher, Jr. ("What is that hammer doing there?!"—Jacobs.) There is something worth poring over on every page. Not the least of which are the countless narratives laced throughout the captions, which are filled with production histories, True Broadway Stories biographies, quotes, conjectures, anecdotes, musings—all informative, and often charming.

There are also the irrevocable losses, the trail of rubble left in the wake of so many demolitions. Like the Star, Jacobs noted that nearly three quarters of the theaters pictured in Historic Photos of Broadway are gone. Leaf through the pages and the parentheses accumulate, sounding death knells: the Star (demolished in 1902); the New Theatre (demolished in 1929); the Casino Theatre (demolished in 1930); the Fourteenth Street Theatre (demolished in 1938); the Garrick Theatre (demolished in 1932) whose site is now occupied by "a fascinating parking garage."

Even though the Times Square Theatre, which opened in 1920, is still extant, "It remains standing, landmark protected, glaringly empty."

In one sense, Historic Photos of Broadway can be read as "a long lament for a New York theater that is lost forever—the commanding frontage of the Academy of Music; the inviting façade of Niblo's Garden; the dramatically lit half of the proscenium arch of the Fifth Avenue Theatre."

"We are a city that continually reinvents itself, that knocks things down and puts things up," said Jacobs, who has become particularly sympathetic to issues of preservation. He notes that the cycle of continuous reinvention fosters irreverence. Our eagerness to build, our out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new attitude "makes it very difficult for preservationists to get a toehold."

"What I would love for the book to do," said Jacobs, "even in a subtle way, is awaken people to this thing called theatre heritage. All theatre people, whatever your relationship is to the business or the art form, have a responsibility to be mindful of preservationist concerns." Luckily, many of these theaters are now landmarks — we're not going to lose any of the remaining Broadway theatres — but, as Jacobs said, "That's the message if there is one: we have to be more mindful than we are."

As Jacobs says, "Read, enjoy — give it to Grandma, give it to Mom and Dad — put it on your coffee table and if you don't have a coffee table, buy one." Allow Jacobs to take you on a page-turning tour of the places, pictures, productions, and people "that helped to make Broadway the epicenter of the theatrical world."

"These images ask us not to judge and not to linger," writes Jacobs. "They simply ask us to pay a visit, tip our hats in respect, and take the full measure of our present moment in the theater by sneaking a quick peek through that metaphorical window to the past."