Journal Notes

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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. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the incomparable Charlotte Cushman.

It was a cold evening in the early spring of 1859 when the well-known actress Charlotte Cushman debuted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco. The city’s most wealthy and influential people arrived by carriage. Throngs of curious bystanders eager to see the aristocrat hovered around the walkway leading into the building. The fine, brick edifice rivaled the most notable on the East Coast.

Inside, the grand hall was fitted with the most ornate fixtures and could seat comfortably upwards to a thousand people. From the private boxes to the gallery, every part of the immense building was crowded to excess. Charlotte Cushman was recognized by theatre goers as the “greatest living tragic actress,” and everyone who was anyone wanted to see her perform. Several women had won fame with their impersonations of male characters in various dramas, but critics and fans alike regarded Charlotte as the best of them all.

In 1845, a theatrical reviewer in London had written about one of Charlotte’s performances in glowing terms. “Miss Cushman’s Hamlet must henceforth be ranked among her best performances. Every scene was warm and animated, and at once conveyed the impression of the character. There was no forced or elaborate attempt at feeling or expression. You were addressed by the whole mind; passion spoke in every feature, and the illusion was forcible and perfect.”

The audience that flocked to see the exceptionally talented Charlotte in California was not only treated to a “forcible and perfect” interpretation of Hamlet, but that evening they were also treated to a display of the actress’ temper.

 To learn just what caused Charlotte’s temper to explode, how her acting career began, and about the other talented performers of the Old West read

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

Enter to win a copy of the book

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. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the immensely talented Lillian Russell.

If a woman gets the reputation of being a professional beauty, it is hard work to live up to it.

Lillian Russell, The Theatre Magazine, 1905

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 any other 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.

To learn more about Lillian Russell and about the other talented performers of the Old West read

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

Enter to win a copy of the book

Entertaining Women:

Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

“I intend to play westward, and to appear in the town in which I was born—Sacramento.”

Mary Anderson’s comments to a reporter at the San Francisco Call, 1886

The angry hawk clenched its talons on the heavy leather gauntlet, stabbing the delicate wrist beneath. Wings bated, the half-wild bird glared fiercely into the large gray eyes of his captor. Mary Anderson stared back with steely determination. This unruly bird would be tamed, she resolved, and would become a living prop for her performance of the Countess in Sheridan Knowles’s comedy, Love. A stuffed bird would not provide the realism she intended, and what Mary Anderson intended usually came to be. Mary wrote in her memoirs:

There is a fine hawking scene in one of the acts, which would have been spoiled by a stuffed falcon, however beautifully hooded and gyved he might have been; for to speak such words as: “How nature fashion’d him for his bold trade, /Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad, /His wings of glorious spread to mow the air, /And breast of might to use them’ to an inanimate bird, would have been absurd.

Always absolutely serious about her profession, Mary procured a half-wild bird and set to work on bending its spirit to her will. The training, she explained, started with taking the hawk from a cage and feeding it raw meat “hoping thus to gain his affections.” She wore heavy gloves and goggles to protect her eyes. The hawk was not easily convinced of her motives, and “painful scratches and tears were the only result.”

She was advised to keep the bird from sleeping until its spirit broke, but she refused to take that course. Persevering with the original plan, Mary continued to feed and handle the hawk until it eventually learned to sit on her shoulder while she recited her lines, then fly to her wrist as she continued; then, at the signal from her hand, the bird would flap away as she concluded with a line about a glorious, dauntless bird. The dauntless hawk and Mary Anderson were birds of a feather.

Born July 28, 1859, at a hotel in Sacramento, California, Mary’s earliest years were unsettled. Her mother, Antonia Leugers, had eloped with Charles Henry Anderson, a young Englishman intent on finding his fortune in America. It was a love match not approved by Antonia’s parents. The young couple arrived in Sacramento in time for Mary’s birth but too late to scoop up a fortune from the nearest stream. The easy pickings of the 1849 Gold Rush were gone.

To learn more about Mary Anderson and about 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

Actress Jeanne Eagels was an attractive, petite entertainer with delicate features. According to her friends and peers she was childish, adult, reasonable, unreasonable – usually one when she should be the other, but always unpredictable. The Oscar nominated actress was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. She was the second of four children born to Edward Eagles, a carpenter, and Julia Sullivan Eagles.* Edward and Julia were from Kentucky and both had an ancestry that could be traced back to France and Ireland.

As a child Jeanne was frail, but mischievous. There wasn’t a boy on the block that wasn’t afraid of her. According to the sole biography written about the famed thespian by Edward Doherty and entitled The Rain Girl, Jeanne was a tomboy. She liked to climb onto the roofs of barns, swing from the limbs of trees, walk fences, and skip from rafter to rafter in the attics of the buildings in the neighborhood.

“She was six or seven when she fell from a fence she and her sister were walking on,” Doherty wrote about Jeanne. “She broke her right arm and ran home to her mother. A doctor was called, but he wasn’t the best in the world. He set the arm, but it pained her all the rest of her life, especially when it was wet. And it was wet every night and every matinee for five years when Jeanne performed in her most recognizable stage role, that of Sadie Thompson in the play Rain.”

Throughout the duration of her career, Jeanne told newspaper and magazine reporters that she had broken her arm while traveling with the circus. She claimed she’d fallen off a white horse she was riding around the ring. It was the first of many stories she herself would contribute to the legend of Jeanne Eagels.

To learn more about Jeanne Eagels and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read

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

Enter to win a copy of the book

Entertaining Women:

Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

My life has run in strange places. My years have been full of color. I have known the heights of success, but likewise I have known the depths of despair.”

Leslie Carter, Liberty magazine, 1927

Catherine Louise Dudley Carter sat at her desk and clutched a pen in her hand. Nothing was left of her life but the raw will to do the only quasi respectable thing open to a woman in her circumstances. She had lost the wealthy position and standing in society that she had taken for granted for so long. She’d been kicked out of her palatial home. She had failed in her divorce case and in obtaining the money to maintain her lifestyle; her nine-year-old son had been ripped from her arms, and her once good name had been scandalously linked to actor Kyrle Bellew and New York Senator James F. Pierce.

The scandal didn’t bother her too much—small-minded persons, including her husband, just did not understand. “There is great romance, there is great love, there is great passion—all things difficult to guide—and some men and women reserve the right to have these things, regardless of that sharp dividing line which makes it legal,” she later wrote, dramatically justifying her choices.

Unfortunately, she’d fallen to the wrong side of that sharp legal and moral dividing line and now knew the cost. Her husband, wealthy industrialist Leslie Carter, had won everything in what the New York Times, in June 1889, called the “most indecent and revolting divorce trial ever heard in the Chicago courts.” Louise Carter considered herself virtually penniless, her reputation shredded to ribbons by the press, while her husband gloated over winning his countersuit charging her with adultery.

She shuddered at the memory of the witnesses against her, a veritable parade of chambermaids, housekeepers, hotel guests, and other traitors her husband had somehow coerced into telling the most awful tales about her. He had taken everything from her. She decided to take the one thing he’d given her that could most embarrass him: his name.

The plan she conceived to become an actress did not stop short of stardom. Her name—no, his name—would be blazoned in lights for all to see. She would, forevermore, be known as Mrs. Leslie Carter. That, she thought, would make her husband’s impassive face show some expression. “Nothing ever happened to Leslie Carter; consequently, nothing ever happened to his face,” she recalled. The day would come she vowed, when the name she hated would be on marquee lights and his humiliation would be as great as hers was now.

Dreaming of revenge would not make it happen. Images of poverty and squalor rose in her mind. Somehow she must triumph over this ugly trick of fate that her husband and a jury had played. The theater offered the only way out, with the added attraction of mortifying her ex-husband. Shrugging away the fact that her first attempt at becoming an actress had been unsuccessful, she concocted a new plan to succeed.

Dipping her pen into a small bottle of ink, she wrote to a man who had promised to help. The plea Louise Carter sent to wealthy meatpacker Nathaniel K. Fairbank resulted in an offer to assist her to become an actress, and his influence secured an appointment with New York theatrical manager E. G. Gilmore, who agreed to handle her career.

 To learn more about Leslie Carter and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read

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

Enter to win a copy of the book

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

The pliant figure leaned over the ship’s rail, expressive eyes intent on the blue-green waters of the harbor. A mass of wavy light-brown hair with tints of gold lifted and curled with every breeze, its arrangement a matter of complete indifference to the angler. Suddenly the slender form froze, breath held, and then, with a quick yank and a breaking smile, lifted the rod and hauled a wriggling fish aboard the Cabrillo. Exclaiming in French, dark eyes sparkling with pleasure, Sarah Bernhardt ordered her catch, small as it was, to be prepared for dinner.

It was May 19, 1906, and the farewell production of Camille was scheduled for a few hours later at the ocean auditorium built on the water at Venice, California. Sarah stayed, and fished, at the hotel built like a ship, and she performed in the adjacent theater on the wharf at the seaside resort, Venice of America. Having caught a fish, Sarah wended her way to her quarters. Piled high in her dressing room were the results of a recent shopping trip to the Oriental bazaar nearby: silk and crepe matinee coats of pink and pale blue and mauve, all embroidered with butterflies and bamboo designs.

The tiny window in the dressing room provided a sparkling view of the ocean, and the streaming sunshine picked out details of the furnishings: a repoussé silver powder box, containers of pigment, eyebrow pencils, silver rouge pots, and scattered jewelry twinkling in the light. The tragedienne who attracted huge audiences wherever she went swooped up a small tan and white fox terrier, wriggling with joy at her return, and snuggled it close for a moment as she related the happy details of her fishing venture to a visiting reporter. Then she put down the small dog and closed her mind to the fun waiting outside the porthole.

Within moments Sarah became Marguerite Gautier, filled with the sadness and torment of the beautiful French courtesan in Camille, the play by Alexandre Dumas that became her signature role, performed all over the world more than three thousand times. Sarah’s ability to sink fully into the character of the play made the tragic death scene so convincing that it became a trademark for “the Divine Sarah.”

No one played tragedy with such believable intensity as Sarah Bernhardt, and no one brought as much passion and enthusiasm to the pursuit of pleasure. From fishing on the Southern California coast to bear hunting in the woods outside Seattle, on every western tour the French actress indulged in some kind of adventure. Sarah Bernhardt threw herself into life with the same characteristic energy she put into her stage appearances. Yet she often slept in a coffin, preparing for that final sleep.

To learn more about Sarah Bernhardt and about the other talented performers of the

Old West read 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.

For a chance to win a copy of Entertaining Women enter here now.

The first place winner of the Holiday Giveaway is Dorothy Feeler!  Dorothy has won a copy of all the books I’ve penned along with a $50 Amazon gift certificate.

Second place winner of the Holiday Giveaway is John Mohler!  John has won his choice of ten books from the catalog of books I’ve penned along with a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

The third place winner of the Holiday Giveaway is Coi E. Drummond-Gehrig!  Coi has won five books from the catalog of books I’ve penned along with $15 Amazon gift certificate.

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all who entered the giveaway.

End the Year With a Book

Join Chris Enss in her Biggest Giveaway EVER!

GRAND PRIZE: Win a copy of ALL of my books in print including: Entertaining Women: Actresses, Singers, and Dancers of the Old West, Hearts West: Mail Order Brides of the Frontier, The Young Duke: The Story of John Wayne’s Early Life, The Cowboy and the Senorita: The Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Happy Trails: A Pictorial of Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Trigger, Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman, and fifteen other titles about women of the Old West. For a total of 20 books!! PLUS a western book bag and $50 Amazon gift card! Now is that a prize or what??

Second prize: You choose TEN of my books and a $25 gift Amazon gift card.

Third prize: You choose FIVE of my books and a $15 gift Amazon gift card.

All you have to do to enter is using form below. You must be a subscriber of the blog (signed up to the email newsletter) to win.

Easy enough, right? If you want to comment and tell me where you’d put that big collection of books in your home, I’d love to hear about it.

Here’s a sample of just one of the books in the collection

Wicked Women: Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws, gamblers, soiled doves, and other wicked women by award-winning Western history author Chris Enss offers a glimpse into Western Women’s experience that’s less sunbonnets and more six-shooters. During the late nineteenth century, while men were settling the new frontier and rushing off to the latest boom towns, women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory. Prostitutes and female gamblers hoped to capitalize on the vices of the intrepid pioneers. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it will include famous names like Belle Starr and Big Nose Kate, as well as lesser known characters.

Winners will be chosen on Thursday, December 31.

Ready, set, GO!

End the Year With a Book

Join Chris Enss in her Biggest Giveaway EVER!

GRAND PRIZE: Win a copy of ALL of my books in print including: Entertaining Women: Actresses, Singers, and Dancers of the Old West, Hearts West: Mail Order Brides of the Frontier, The Young Duke: The Story of John Wayne’s Early Life, The Cowboy and the Senorita: The Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Happy Trails: A Pictorial of Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Trigger, Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman, and fifteen other titles about women of the Old West. For a total of 20 books!! PLUS a western book bag and $50 Amazon gift card! Now is that a prize or what??

Second prize: You choose TEN of my books and a $25 gift Amazon gift card.

Third prize: You choose FIVE of my books and a $15 gift Amazon gift card.

All you have to do to enter is using form below. You must be a subscriber of the blog (signed up to the email newsletter) to win.

Easy enough, right? If you want to comment and tell me where you’d put that big collection of books in your home, I’d love to hear about it.

Here’s a sample of just one of the books in the collection

Love Lessons from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women

From Calamity Jane’s relentless pursuit of Wild Bill Hickok to Emma Walters, who gave it all up for the dashing Bat Masterson—and learned to regret it, these romantic stories from the Old West are still familiar and entertaining to readers today. Meet Agnes Lake Hickok, the intrepid wife of Wild Bill Hickok and learn about the last love letter he sent before being dealt the dead man’s hand. Learn the story behind the charming performer Lotta Crabtree’s heartaches. And discover the tale of the dashing Kit Carson and his beautiful bride. This collection features the lessons learned by and from the antics of the women who shaped the West.

Winners will be chosen on Thursday, December 31.

Ready, set, GO!