American entertainment management and production partnership (1888–1919)
the partnership's 1901 production of Ben Hur, Chicago
Klaw and Erlanger was an entertainment management and production partnership of Marc Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger based in New York City from 1888 through 1919. While running their own considerable and multi-faceted theatrical businesses on Broadway, they were key figures in the Theatrical Syndicate, the lucrative booking monopoly for first-class legitimate theaters nationwide.
Klaw and Erlanger joined in partnership in 1888. Starting from the purchase of an existing booking agency, the partners gradually gained control of the southern territory, anchored in New Orleans. They ran allied businesses, produced Broadway shows, and owned a number of theaters. They were part owners of the new Iroquois Theater in Chicago, which suffered a catastrophic fire in 1903 that resulted in more than 600 deaths and brought Klaw & Erlanger bitter criticism. In the same year they opened their flagship New Amsterdam Theater in New York, where the Aerial Gardens became the longtime stage for the Ziegfeld Follies.[1]
From 1896, Klaw and Erlanger joined with others to form the Theatrical Syndicate which held an effective monopoly over the booking of stage performers into first-class legitimate theaters across the United States. Its control of the theater market was brief. As the Syndicate attempted to bring vaudeville from its "lowbrow associations by presenting only the finest, class acts", pressure from the independent Shubert family and accusations of trust building forced the Syndicate to lose much of its market power in 1910.[2] After 1910, Klaw and Erlanger continued to play a role in the syndicate, which still sparred with the Shuberts for market share for years. Klaw and Erlanger also ran their own productions, experimented with vaudeville, and embarked on film production from 1913 to 1916. They dissolved their partnership in 1919, remaining independently active afterward.
The partners
Marc Klaw
All the members of the Theatrical Syndicate brought in geographic territories, sections of a national, networked chain of theaters in the United States. The strength of Klaw and Erlanger came from its dominance in the south.
Marc Klaw (1858-1936) was born in Paducah, Kentucky in 1858. He received his law degree from Louisville Law School and practiced law while maintaining a role within the theater industry as a part-time critic.[3]
A. L. Erlanger (1860-1930) came from Cleveland, beginning as treasurer of the Euclid Avenue Opera House. In his 20s Erlanger worked for Joseph Jefferson and others as business manager for touring theater companies. He was known for his bullish personality.
After a meeting in San Antonio, in 1888 Klaw teamed with Erlanger to purchase the former H.S. Taylor Theatrical Exchange in New York. Through Klaw's personal contacts with theater owners, they expanded it to assert control over southern touring routes,[4] but with operational control and a major theatrical presence in New York City. The partners also ran a number of allied subsidiary businesses, including the "Klaw and Erlanger Opera Company", "Klaw and Erlanger's Costume Company", and a construction company.[5]
Erlanger throughout his career was known for underwriting shows such as The Great Metropolis (1889) and producing large numbers such as Pink Lady (1911) and Honeymoon Lane (1926).[3] The partners produced the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907 at the rooftop "Jardin de Paris" in New York City.[6]
Abraham Lincoln Erlanger 1909
As partners Klaw & Erlanger remained involved—dominant—in the affairs of the Theatrical Syndicate after its peak.
Theaters
Klaw and Erlanger's own operations encompassed running the Syndicate's booking operations for over 500 theaters across the country, regular Broadway productions, direct ownership of a number of houses in New York and New Orleans,[7] and the occasional commissioning of entirely new theaters.
The most lavish of these was the flagship New Amsterdam Theatre, opened October 23, 1903. The architects were Herts & Tallant, working in a hard-to-classify fin-de-sciele style, with integrated sculpture and murals from artists the caliber of George Grey Barnard and Roland Hinton Perry. The New Amsterdam featured the largest playhouse on Broadway (1,702 seats), new office headquarters for the firm, and, in a prompt expansion upward a year later, creation of the Aerial Gardens rooftop theater with its notorious see-through staircase, home of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1913 through 1920. Designer and architect Joseph Urban became the scenic designer for the Follies shows at the New Amsterdam starting in 1915.[8]
Life magazine cartoon, January 21, 1904, subject of libel case
The Iroquois Theater in Chicago opened weeks later, in November, after a rushed construction schedule. The new theater burned during a holiday matinee on December 30, 1903, with the loss of more than 600 lives, among the worst fires in American history. The Iroquois fire brought intense criticism to Klaw and Erlanger. The team retained the brilliant Chicago attorney Levy Mayer to defend against the resulting wave of criminal and civil litigation.[9] Most prominent among its critics in the press was James Metcalfe, drama critic and editor of the old Life magazine, whose attacks on Klaw & Erlanger persisted for years and ranged into ugly anti-Semitic caricature. Metcalfe's "special vendetta against the syndicate"[10] led to the January 1904 publication of a cartoon showing a skeleton, costumed as Bluebeard, guarding the padlocked door of a theater exit, with the caption "Messrs. Klaw and Erlanger Present Mr. Bluebeard, Late of the Iroquois Theater." For that, Klaw & Erlanger presented Life with its first libel suit, for $100,000 in damages. After considering that the partners had owned 25% of the Iroquois, managed its bookings, and had owned the production of "Mr. Bluebeard," the jury dismissed their libel suit after five minutes' deliberation.[11]
Other KE theaters in New York included the Gaiety Theatre, the Liberty Theatre, and the New York Theatre. In New Orleans the partners owned and operated the Tulane and the Crescent.
The Syndicate
The Rogers Brothers in Klaw and Erlanger's "Reign of Error" 1898-99
The partners became founding parties to the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896. The other members were Charles Frohman, J. Fred Zimmerman Sr., Samuel F. Nixon and Al Hayman. Another loosely associated figure was William Harris of Rich & Harris in Boston. Taking advantage of their physical chain of theaters, the syndicate developed a standardized booking process, and brought efficiency to an otherwise fragmented and wasteful scheduling system.
The system was opposed—by their main competitors, the Shubert brothers. Sam Shubert began to compete through the billing of "independent theater," an appeal that soon broke the Syndicates' playhouse monopoly and began the diversification of Broadway theater.[12] But the Klaw & Erlanger booking system was also decried and challenged by performers such as the prominent actor Richard Mansfield, the husband-and-wife team of Harrison Grey Fiske and Minnie Maddern Fiske, among many others.
Its monopoly was broken in 1910, but the Theatrical Syndicate continued in operation with considerable holdings. As late as October 1924—after the partners' brief foray into the film business circa 1915, after Marc Klaw ended his partnership with Erlanger in 1919 and opened his own Klaw Theatre on Broadway in 1921—A.L. Erlanger was still reported as the most powerful member of the Theatrical Syndicate. In fact, poised to take over the complete operation and its multifaceted benefits:
Mr. Erlanger, who was the most powerful member of the anti-unionists, has wearied of conducting the famous Theatrical Syndicate without assistance while dividing the profits with the heirs and assigns of the other original members; so, he has arranged the matter in such fashion that hereafter he, himself, will be all there is of the Syndicate... The combination took life in 1896...with a view of avoiding conflict and confusion, fixing responsibility for broken engagements and disregarded contracts, and incidentally of determining the drawing-power and consequent sharing-terms of plays and starts. The scheme, Mr. Erlanger long ago told me, originated not with him, but with the late Al Hayman...[13]
A.L. Erlanger died in 1930.
Amsterdam Theater - 42nd St. - New York Vity 1905 crop
Vaudeville productions
Klaw & Erlanger were primarily producers for legitimate theaters, as opposed to vaudeville. Vaudeville had its own parallel chains of theaters, and its own dominant booking monopoly in the east, called the United Booking Office, run by E.F. Albee—set up in 1900 in conscious emulation of the Theatrical Syndicate.
The partners did cross over into the vaudeville business territory occasionally. The biggest foray was in April 1907, in concert with none other than Lee and J.J. Shubert. Together they established a new vaudeville booking operation called the United States Amusement Company, promising "Advanced Vaudeville", reportedly capitalized with $100 million. The Shuberts had hoped to fill up their oversupply of theater seats. The motivations of Klaw & Erlanger became clear seven months later when they and the Shuberts sold out the entire operation to Albee in November. Albee also paid a bonus fee $250,000 for the promise to stay out of vaudeville for another ten years.[14]
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air.
The Shubert Organization is a theatrical producing organization and a major owner of theatres based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by the three Shubert brothers — Lee, Sam, and Jacob J. Shubert — in the late 19th century. They steadily expanded, owning many theaters in New York and across the United States. Since then it has gone through changes of ownership, but it is still a major theater chain.
The Shubert family was responsible for the establishment of Broadway theaters in New York City's Theater District, as the hub of the theatre industry in the United States. Through the Shubert Organization, founded by brothers Lee, Sam, and Jacob Shubert, they dominated the legitimate theatre and vaudeville in the first half of the 20th century.
Lee Shubert was a Lithuanian-born American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family.
Jacob J. Shubert was an American theatre owner/operator and producer and a member of the famous theatrical Shubert family.
Starting in 1896, the Theatrical Syndicate was an organization in the United States that controlled the majority of bookings in the country's leading theatrical attractions. The six-man group was in charge of theatres and bookings. The Syndicate's power would peak in 1907.
Marc Klaw, was an American lawyer, theatrical producer, theater owner, and a leading figure of the Theatrical Syndicate.
Abraham Lincoln Erlanger was an American theatrical producer, director, designer, theater owner, and a leading figure of the Theatrical Syndicate.
The New Amsterdam Theatre is a Broadway theater at 214 West 42nd Street, at the southern end of Times Square, in the Theater District of Manhattan in New York City. One of the first Broadway venues to open in the Times Square neighborhood, the New Amsterdam was built from 1902 to 1903 to designs by Herts & Tallant. The theater is operated by Disney Theatrical Productions and has 1,702 seats across three levels. Both the Beaux-Arts exterior and the Art Nouveau interior of the building are New York City landmarks, and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Ned Wayburn(néEdward Claudius Weyburn; 30 March 1874 – 2 September 1942) was an American choreographer.
Edward Franklin Albee II was an American vaudeville impresario.
Martin Beck was a vaudeville theatre owner and manager, and theatrical booking agent, who founded the Orpheum Circuit, and built the Palace and Martin Beck Theatres in New York City's Broadway Theatre District. He was a booking agent for, and became a close personal friend of the prominent magician, Harry Houdini.
Al Hayman, also known as Raphael Hayman, was the business partner of the better-known Charles Frohman who together with others established the Theatrical Syndicate. In addition to the financial backing, ownership and construction of new theaters and the early monopolisation of the booking networks, the Syndicate also produced a number of Broadway shows.
The Merle Reskin Theatre is a performing arts venue located in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Originally named the Blackstone Theatre it was built in 1910. Renamed the Merle Reskin Theatre in 1992, it is now part of DePaul University, and is also used for events and performances of other groups. It serves as the home of the Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences series produced by The Theatre School of DePaul.
Emma Carus was an American contralto singer from New York City who was in the cast of the original Ziegfeld Follies in 1907.
John Cort was an American impresario; his Cort Circuit was one of the first national theater circuits. Along with John Considine and Alexander Pantages, Cort was one of the Seattle-based entrepreneurs who parlayed their success in the years following the Klondike Gold Rush into an impact on America's national theater scene. While Considine and Pantages focused mainly on vaudeville, Cort focused on legitimate theater. At one time, he owned more legitimate theaters than anyone else in the United States, and he eventually became part of the New York theatrical establishment. His Cort Theatre remains a fixture of Broadway.
The Liberty Theatre is a former Broadway theater at 234 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1904, the theater was designed by Herts & Tallant and built for Klaw and Erlanger, the partnership of theatrical producers Marc Klaw and A. L. Erlanger. The theater has been used as an event venue since 2011 and is part of an entertainment and retail complex developed by Forest City Ratner. The theater is owned by the city and state governments of New York and leased to New 42nd Street. Brookfield Asset Management, which acquired Forest City in 2018, subleases the venue from New 42nd Street.
John Frederick Zimmerman Sr. (1843–1925) was an American theatre magnate. He was one of the members of the Theatrical Syndicate, which monopolized theatrical bookings in the United States for several years.
Samuel F. Nixon, born Samuel Frederic Nirdlinger was an American theater owner. He was known as one of the organizers of the Theatrical Syndicate, which monopolized theatrical bookings in the United States for several years.
The Vaudeville Managers Association (VMA) was a cartel of managers of American vaudeville theaters established in 1900, dominated by the Boston-based Keith-Albee chain. Soon afterwards the Western Vaudeville Managers Association (WVMA) was formed as a cartel of theater owners in Chicago and the west, dominated by the Orpheum Circuit. Although rivals, the two organizations collaborated in booking acts and dealing with the performers' union, the White Rats. By 1913 Edward Franklin Albee II had effective control over both the VMA and WVMA. In the 1920s vaudeville went into decline, unable to compete with film. In 1927 the Keith-Albee and Orpheum chains merged. The next year they became part of RKO Pictures.
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