Jarrett & Palmer was an American theatrical production partnership, prominent and influential in the 1860s and 1870s.
The partners were Henry Clay Jarrett (1828–1903) and Harry Palmer (born Henry David Palmer; 1833–1879). The partnership produced the hugely successful Broadway show The Black Crook in 1866; the first transcontinental touring theatre show in the U.S. in 1876; and, in 1878, the first theatrical show in Britain that presented a company of black performers.
Jarrett was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1828, and in early life worked as an actor. In 1851 he bought the Baltimore Museum, before becoming manager of the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. He made his first visit to Europe in 1856 and attempted but failed to persuade English theatres to use companies of American performers in theatre shows. He then worked in several theatres in the United States, becoming manager of the Boston Theatre in 1864. [1] [2]
Palmer was a former actor and employee of P. T. Barnum. He also acted as an agent for many leading singers and actors, including Matilda Heron, and became a Wall Street broker. [3] [4]
Jarrett and Palmer established a production partnership in the mid-1860s. In 1866, they travelled to Europe and engaged the Parisienne Ballet Troupe to perform at the Manhattan Academy of Music in a spectacular show that also incorporated elements of an English pantomime they had seen. [5] When the theatre burned down before the show's opening, Jarrett and Palmer negotiated with William Wheatley, the manager of Niblo's Garden, a Broadway theatre, for the company to perform instead as part of the melodrama The Black Crook . [2] They took over the show's production, and to make it even more spectacular replaced much of the original play with their own tableaux, "transformations" of scenery, and dances involving dozens of performers. [5] The unprecedented show that resulted was hugely successful, running on Broadway for over 15 months and 475 performances, [5] and has been claimed as the birth of American musical theatre. [6] In 1868, Jarrett became the manager of Niblo's Garden, [1] but the follow-up production there, The White Fawn, was less successful. [3]
In the mid-1870s, Jarrett and Palmer managed the Booth's Theatre, where they produced Shakespeare's Henry V . With the first transcontinental railroad having been completed in 1869, Jarrett and Palmer came up with the idea of transporting the entire theatrical presentation, including the scenery, props, and actors, by rail from New York to San Francisco. The exercise, officially called "Jarrett & Palmer's Special Fast Transcontinental Train" but widely dubbed the "Lightning Express", was well publicized. Setting off on June 1, 1876, the train moved at high speed, with stops minimized and other trains diverted out of the way; several towns had firework displays to mark its passing. [7] The show was transported almost continuously from coast to coast by the "Black Fox" locomotive, in under three and a half days, twelve hours ahead of schedule. [7] The trip was a "national source of pride and celebration", [7] "an unqualified success [that] paved the way for transcontinental travel". [8] [9]
Jarrett and Palmer produced a revival of Uncle Tom's Cabin at Booth's Theatre in 1878. They advertised for "100 octoroons, 100 quadroons, 100 mulattoes, and 100 decidedly black men, women, and children capable of singing slave choruses," [10] and a script was commissioned from the actor and writer George Fawcett Rowe. The show opened in New York before moving to Philadelphia and Washington D.C.. Compared with earlier productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rowe's script required the participation of many more African Americans. Palmer thought that "slave life, as it existed in the South in ante-war days, had never been truthfully depicted in Europe", and came up with the idea of taking the production across the Atlantic, where such a large cast of black performers (as opposed to white performers in blackface) had never previously been seen. [11] In August 1878, the company left New York to sail to Europe on the Collins Line steamship Adriatic, and were seen off by large crowds. Among the performers were a vocal group, the Sable Quintette, who insisted on higher quality accommodation on the ship than the other performers. [12]
The show was advertised as featuring "scores of genuine freed negro slaves", [10] contained spectacular on-stage visual effects, and included a group of Jubilee Singers performing spirituals, as well as banjo players including the noted performer Horace Weston, comedians, dancers, and the vocal quintet. [12] [11] In England, they met with great success, and, under Palmer's overall direction after Jarrett returned to the U.S., were able to mount three performances in different theatres at the same time. As well as performances in London, the show toured provincial theatres in England, and elsewhere in Europe, over a period of more than eighteen months. One result of the tour was that the use of black performers started to become accepted in English theatres. [13]
Palmer died in London in July 1879, while the company was touring there. [3] [14] [15] The company continued in Germany and France for a time before returning to the U.S., where the show continued to be staged at Booth's Theatre. [16]
Jarrett later retired to England and died in London in 1903. [17]
John Johnstone Wallack, was an American actor-manager and son of James William Wallack and Susan Johnstone. He used the stage name John Lester until October 5, 1858, when he first acted under the name Lester Wallack, which he retained the rest of his career.
The Black Crook is a work of musical theatre first produced in New York City with great success in 1866. Many theatre writers have cautiously identified The Black Crook as the first popular piece that conforms to the modern notion of a musical. The book is by Charles M. Barras. The music, selected and arranged by Thomas Baker, consists mostly of adaptations, but it included some new songs composed for the piece, notably "You Naughty, Naughty Men". The story is a Faustian melodramatic romantic comedy, but the production became famous for its spectacular special effects and skimpy costumes.
Sam Lucas was an American actor, comedian, singer, and songwriter. Sam Lucas's exact date of birth is disputed. Lucas's year of birth, to freed former slaves, has also been cited as 1839, 1841, 1848 and 1850.
Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. In the West, they include Romanticism, melodrama, the well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou, the farces of Feydeau, the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism, Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk, Gilbert and Sullivan's plays and operas, Wilde's drawing-room comedies, Symbolism, and proto-Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen.
The Chatham Theatre or Chatham Street Theatre was a playhouse on the southeast side of Chatham Street in New York City. It was located at numbers 143-9, between Roosevelt and James streets, a few blocks south of the Bowery. At its opening in 1839, the Chatham was a neighborhood establishment, which featured big-name actors and drama. By the mid-1840s, it had become primarily a venue for blackface minstrel shows. Frank S. Chanfrau restored some of its grandeur in 1848.
George Washington Lafayette Fox was an American actor and dancer who became known for his pantomime Clown roles, and who based the characterizations for these roles on his inspiration Joseph Grimaldi.
William Wheatley was an American stage actor.
Tom show is a general term for any play or musical based on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel attempts to depict the harsh reality of slavery. Due to the weak copyright laws at the time, a number of unauthorized plays based on the novel were staged for decades, many of them mocking the novel's strong characters and social message, and leading to the pejorative term "Uncle Tom".
A number of film adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin have been made over the years. Most of these movies were created during the silent film era. Since the 1930s, Hollywood studios have considered the story too controversial for another adaptation. Characters, themes and plot elements from Uncle Tom's Cabin have also influenced a large number of other movies, including The Birth of a Nation (1915), while also inspiring numerous animated cartoons.
Pauline Markham was an Anglo-American dancer and contralto singer active on burlesque and vaudeville stages during the latter decades of the 19th century. She began by performing juvenile rôles in Manchester, made her debut on the London stage at 20 and a year later New York as a member of the British Blondes which introduced Victorian burlesque to America, where for a few years she would find phenomenal success before her career settled into a long steady decline.
The Boston Museum (1841–1903), also called the Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, was a theatre, wax museum, natural history museum, zoo, and art museum in 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts. Moses Kimball established the enterprise in 1841.
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Imre Kiralfy and Bolossy Kiralfy were highly influential burlesque and spectacle producers in Europe and the United States toward the end of the 19th century. The brothers paved the way for many of our modern day spectacles. With backgrounds in music and dance, these performers turned producers dazzled New York City with theatrical wonders. The brothers had a long and successful partnership and even continued to have success in their individual careers. From folk dancing in Europe to directing and producing in the United States, the Kiralfys spent their lives astounding audiences with unseen visual phenomenon and were never afraid to push the boundaries earning them a special place in entertainment history.
Emily Rigl was a 19th-century stage actress who primarily performed in the United States. Although not a major star, she was considered to be a talented actress.
Abbey's Park Theatre or Abbey's New Park Theatre was a playhouse at 932 Broadway and 22nd Street in what is now the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City. It opened as the New Park Theatre in 1874, and was in use until 1882 when it burned down and was never rebuilt as a theatre.
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George Curtis Fawcett Rowe, was an English actor, manager and dramatist, whose career began in Australia as George Fawcett; later he was billed as George F. Rowe and worked in Britain and America, where he died. Well known for his portrayal of Wilkins Micawber in his own version of David Copperfield, he was a talented, but "impatient", playwright and actor.
Richard Marston (1847–1917) was an English scenic designer who had a prominent career as a designer for Broadway productions from the 1860s into the early 20th century. After designing new sets for the very first musical, The Black Crook, at Niblo's Garden in 1867, Marston served as the resident scenic designer at first the Union Square Theatre and later the Madison Square Theatre. He was particularly admired for his outdoor set designs.