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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

On a warm spring day in 1921, more than two thousand women gathered at the Fox Hollywood Studio to film the all-female chariot race for the silent picture the Queen of Sheba. As the story centered around the ill-fated romance between Solomon, King of Israel, and the Queen of Sheba the majority of the cast were dressed in Biblical garb. The women who were to be driving the chariots were adorned in colorful tunics, leather helmets, and tall, period style boots. Each were focused on the four-horse team fastened to a yoke and attached to the vehicles.

Western cowboy actor and director Tom Mix belted out instructions to the camera crew to standby to begin filming and then prompted the drivers to take their places. Among the skilled chariot drivers was World Champion All-Around Horsewoman Lorena Trickey. Trickey caught the attention of studio head, William Fox during preproduction talks for the picture. He’d read an article about the twenty-eight-year-old’s talent in the saddle and believed she would be a perfect stuntwoman. In addition to setting records in relay racing, she was also an accomplished Roman style racer. In Roman riding the rider stands atop a pair of horses, with one foot on each horse. Before the shoot was over, Mix would call on Lorena to give a demonstration for the cameras.

Not long after filming had completed on the Queen of Sheba, the rodeo star lent her expertise to a picture with Mary Pickford entitled Through the Back Door. Pickford played a young woman who moves to America from Belgium just prior to WWI to search for her mother. Most of the horseback riding stunts in the picture were performed by Trickey.

To learn more about cowgirl actress and stuntwoman Lorena read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

The green, silk robe shimmered in the light of the dressing room.  Adjusting the neckline, Lillian Russell glanced into the mirror and considered the interviewer’s question about beauties never appreciating their good looks.  “I think they do,” she countered.  “They are glad to have it, as they are grateful for the gift.  I am pleased and gratified when someone says I look nice.”

Looking “nice” was a part of the job that the corn-fed beauty from America’s heartland never forgot.  The costume she wore in the second act of Lady Teazle showed off her abundant charms to perfection.  The green silk, the large, plumed hat, and the ebony walking stick adorned with orange ribbons were but a pretty frame for the statuesque blond performer whose sumptuous exterior diverted attention from a sharp mind and a warm heart.

As she continued dressing for the second act of the play, she answered questions from Miss Ada Patterson, longtime reporter for The Theatre Magazine.  How, asked Patterson, had a girl from Iowa earned the name “America’s Beauty”? “I came away from Clinton when I was six months old, and I don’t remember much about it,” she told the reporter.  A backward glance over a smooth, white shoulder gave a glimpse of the famous smile, curving perfect lips.  A spark of mischief flashed in the beautiful, blue eyes framed by long, thick eyelashes as she added, “Although there are Tabbies who say they remember my life there when I was six months old sixty years ago.”

The feature later published in The Theatre Magazine of February 1905 never came right out and said that America’s most famous beauty was now forty-three years old.  Behind her lay phenomenal success as well as heartbreak and failure, yet none of it dimmed the glow.  The interviewer that day compared the throat and shoulders rising from the green silk to the Venus de Milo.  The pure soprano voice still hit high C with ease, and, after more than twenty-three years on stage, the name Lillian Russell still drew people to the theater.

Lillian was not only beautiful but she had an amazing voice. The following is a link to an early recording of her voice.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/media/recordedsound/Come-Down-Ma-Evenin-Star_Lillian-Russell.mp3

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

A frigid wind blew hard past the weather-beaten exterior of the Palace Garden Theatre in Dawson City, Alaska.  It was the spring of 1900, and gleeful patrons were tucked warmly inside, waiting for the “Flame of the Yukon” to take the stage.

A fiery, red-headed beauty glided out before the crowd, her violent eyes smiling.  The men went wild with applause.  The music began, and the entertainer swayed with the beat, placing a gloved hand to her breast and a fingertip to her lips and then, stretching her arm out, beckoning her admirers.  The elaborate red-sequin dress she was wearing was form-fitting, and the long black cape that draped over her shoulders clung to her alabaster skin.

The piano player accelerated his playing, and Kate Rockwell gyrated gracefully in and out of the shadow of the colored lights that flickered across the stage.  After a moment, with a slight movement of her hand, she dropped the cape off her shoulders and it fell to the floor.  The glittering diamonds and rhinestones around her neck sparkled and shined.  Ever so seductively, she picked up a nearby cane adorned with more than 200 yards of red chiffon and began leaping, while twirling the fabric-covered walking stick.  Around and around she fluttered, the chiffon trailing wildly about her like flames from a fire, the material finally settling over her outstretched body.  The audience erupted in a thunderous ovation.  She was showered with nuggets and pouches filled with gold dust.  This dance would make her famous.

To learn more about Kate, the fortune she made entertaining, and what happened to her earnings read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. This month the curtain goes up on women entertainers who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the immensely talented star of Peter Pan and The Lost Child, Maude Adams.

“I wish you could have seen Maudie that night. She was simply wriggling with excitement. It was all I could do to keep her in her dressing-room until the cue came for her to go on…. Just before the curtain went up I made her repeat her first-act lines to me. She had learned them like a parrot, to be sure, but she spoke them like a true little actress.”

Annie Adams’s comments about her daughter Maude’s first full performance at the age of 5 in November, 1877 at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco.

The Palmer Theatre House in New York was jammed to the doors by a curious clientele all there to see the new actress working opposite the most celebrated actor of the day, John Drew. It was October 3, 1892 when the stunning, elfin-like Maude Adams took to the stage in the play “The Masked Ball.” At the end of the evening Drew would be congratulated on his admirable acting job, but Maude would score a hit that would be greater than his entire career. Her performance was so successful the applause lasted for a full two minutes after she made her exit. She was on her way to becoming a star and local newspapers predicted her talent would be talked about for years to come.

“Her performance (in the Masked Ball) was a revelation. There is one scene in the second act where in order to punish her husband for some ante nuptial remarks of his she has to pretend that she is drunk. It was just touch and go whether the scene ruined the play or not. It would have been hard to devise a more crucial test for an actress of even the wildest experience and the greatest skill. In order to carry off this scene successfully it was necessary for the wife to appear to be drunk and yet be a gentlewoman at the same time. Miss Adams achieved this feat. If Miss Adams had done nothing else throughout the entire play than that one scene it would have stamped her as a comedienne of the first order forever.” The New York Daily News – October 4, 1892

Maude Adams’s stage career began at the tender age of nine months. The play was called “The Lost Child” and the baby that was playing the lead became fussy and could not continue in the show after the first act. Maude’s mother, Annie, who was the female lead in the production, suggested her daughter take the child’s place. Maude was so good that the other baby received her two weeks notice immediately after the play ended. For the remainder of that season all the infant roles were played by little Miss Maude.

To learn more about Maude Adams and the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

The Royal Aquarium in Westminster, England, was a hub of activity on April 6, 1876. Many members of London’s wealthy aristocratic society were on hand for the gala opening of the magnificent structure built entirely underwater.

Dignitaries, barristers, popular sculptors, artists, and photographers were there to witness the occasion and to be inspired by the colorful coral reefs, graceful marine life, and crystal-blue waters. Their attention, however, was drawn away from the oceanic scenery when a tall, curvaceous young woman with Titian red hair entered the room. She was adorned in a simple black gown. Her azure eyes scanned the faces staring back at her, and she smiled ever so slightly. Within moments of her arrival, visitors descended upon the woman to admire her beauty.

Eminent portrait painters and photographers approached the unassuming woman and asked her to sit for them. Poets sought introductions and then recited blank verse about her arresting features. By the end of the evening, Lillie Langtry was the toast of Great Britain-a Professional Beauty to be reckoned with.

Emile “Lillie” Charlotte LeBrenton was born to William Corbet and Emilie Martin LeBreton in October of 1853 on the Isle of Jersey, a few miles off the coast of Saint-Malo, France. She was the only daughter in a family of six children. Beauty alone was responsible for Lillie Langtry’s initial renown. Her photographs were printed in England and American newspapers, and by the time she was twenty-seven years old she was as famous in those countries as she was in her own.

The writer Oscar Wilde, whom Lillie had met at society parties, convinced her that the theatre was her calling and helped her get her start in the business. Lillie took the stage for the first time on December 15, 1881, in the play She Stoops to Conquer at the Theatre Royal. She was an instant hit.

To learn more about Lillie Langtry read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West