La Chauve-Souris (French: The Bat) was the name of a touring revue during the early 1900s. Originating in Moscow and then Paris, and directed by Nikita Balieff, the revue toured the United States, Europe, and South Africa. The show consisted of songs, dances, and sketches, most of which had been originally performed in Russia. [1] The revue was enormously successful in the U.S., and one of its legacies is the popularization of the jaunty tune The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by Leon Jessel.
In 1906, Russian-Armenian actor Nikita Balieff moved to Moscow, and took a job at the Moscow Art Theatre under Constantin Stanislavski. After years of only non-speaking roles, and with a desire to perform comedy rather than drama, Balieff, along with theatre devotee Nikolai Tarasov, co-created his own theatre group in a basement near the Moscow Art Theatre. He named the cabaret and troupe The Bat, after a well-known cabaret in Vienna called Fledermaus.
The Bat enjoyed much success and popularity in Moscow, until the Russian Revolution in 1917. Balieff then went into exile in western Europe, and began presenting vaudeville shows there with other Russian émigrés. La Chauve-Souris opened in Paris in December 1920. The spectacle was noticed by the British theatrical producer Charles B. Cochran, who brought Balieff and his troupe and show to London.
In 1922 La Chauve-Souris made its first tour to America, through an arrangement with the producer Morris Gest. La Chauve Souris performed on Broadway from February 1922 to June 1922 (153 performances) and January 1925 to March 1925 (61 performances) in productions produced by F. Ray Comstock and Morris Gest. Balieff and his company also toured from Washington, D.C. to California for 65 consecutive weeks.
Between 1922 and 1929, Balieff returned to America to tour six times, appearing on Broadway in 1922, 1923, 1925, 1927, and 1929, with one final show billed as New Chauve-Souris in 1931. [2] In 1927 Balieff was featured on the cover of Time magazine. [3]
The shows consisted of songs, dances, and sketches, most of which had been originally performed in Russia. Balieff, as master of ceremonies for the show, was known for his feigned lack of English on stage. His monologues and introductions were delivered in a mix of Russian, French, and English language and slang coupled with much gesticulation. However, in private Balieff's English was better than that of his stage persona.
One of La Chauve-Souris's most popular acts, The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers , which used the delightful Leon Jessel tune "Die Parade der Zinnsoldaten" ("The Parade of the Tin Soldiers"), referenced a story regarding Tsar Paul I. The legend claims the Tsar left his parade grounds without issuing a "halt" order to the marching soldiers. Without one, the soldiers marched to Siberia before being remembered and ordered back. The Balieff vaudeville version with its popular tune was a mainstay in Chauve-Souris, and later became part of The Rockettes repertoire as well in their Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Chauve-Souris "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" was also filmed, and premiered on April 15, 1923 at the Rivoli Theater.
La Chauve-Souris also toured Europe and South Africa, appearing in major capital cities.
In 1934 Balieff created a new Chauve-Souris production, which proved to be his last theatrical venture.
Several recordings were made of Sauve-Chouris numbers.
Part of the La Chauve-Souris revue was recorded by British Columbia Graphophone Company, AX 2717, 2719 - 9220, speed 80 rpm, under the title Chauves Souris:
"Was Macht Der Maier Am Himalaya?" ("Where Is My Meyer?") (Fritz Rotter, Otto Stransky, Anton Profes) was recorded electrically in German in March 1928 by the Manhattan Male Quartet for Edison, issued as diamond disc 57027-R.
The duet for Lisa and Pauline in Tchaikovsky's "Pique Dame" ("The Queen of Spades") Act 1, Scene 2, was recorded on a French 78rpm disc Col. DFX 134, also UK Col. DX 440. It was sung by Eugenie Safanova and Finaida Erchova, two members of "La Chauve-Souris," with the Cambridge Theatre Orchestra conducted by Archangelsky. The other side of the disc was an 'air populaire' entitled "La Fille du Rémouleur," sung by the company in French under Balieff's direction, with Archangelsky conducting the same orchestra. The recording was made on 6 January 1933.
Lee DeForest filmed Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (to the music Die Parade der Zinnsoldaten by Leon Jessel), a popular segment from the stage production performed by Nikita Balieff and La Chauve-Souris, in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on film process.
The short film premiered 15 April 1923 as part of a program of 18 Phonofilms at the Rivoli Theater in New York City, and then in England, Japan, and Australia. The film, shown under the title Parade of the Wooden Soldiers with two-color Technicolor sequences, is now in the Maurice Zouary collection of the Library of Congress. [4]
La Chauve-Souris inspired a parody called No Sirree! (subtitled "An Anonymous Entertainment by the Vicious Circle of the Hotel Algonquin"), written and performed by Robert Benchley and other members of the Algonquin Round Table for one night only in April 1922. [5]
No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein, which served as something of a salon for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin Hotel. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Alexander Woollcott, John Peter Toohey, George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Franklin P. Adams, and Benchley, with violinist Jascha Heifetz providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped," a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert E. Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Ruth Gillmore, Lenore Ulric, and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By - An A. A. Milne Play." [6]
The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American drama critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality.
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.
Franklin Pierce Adams was an American columnist known as Franklin P. Adams and by his initials F.P.A.. Famed for his wit, he is best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio's Information Please. A prolific writer of light verse, he was a member of the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s and 1930s.
Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian-American actor of film, stage, and television. One of the premier character actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tamiroff appeared in at least 80 motion pictures in a career spanning 37 years, developing a prolific career despite his thick accent.
Tatiana Mikhailovna Riabouchinska was a Russian American prima ballerina and teacher. Famous at age 14 as one of the three "Baby Ballerinas" of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1930s, she matured into an artist whom critics called "the most unusual dancer of her generation."
Morris Gest was an American theatrical producer of the early 20th century.
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
Tamara Geva was a Soviet and later an American actress, ballet dancer, and choreographer. She was the daughter of art patron and collector Levko Gevergeyev and she was the first wife of the well-known ballet dancer/choreographer George Balanchine.
Leon Jessel, or Léon Jessel was a German composer of operettas and light classical music pieces. Today he is best known internationally as the composer of the popular jaunty march The Parade of the Tin Soldiers, also known as The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. Jessel was a prolific composer who wrote hundreds of light orchestral pieces, piano pieces, songs, waltzes, mazurkas, marches, choruses, and other salon music. He achieved considerable acclaim with a number of his operettas — in particular Schwarzwaldmädel, which remains popular to this day.
Sir Charles Blake Cochran, generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noël Coward and his works.
Nikita F. Balieff, was a Russian Armenian born vaudevillian, stage performer, writer, impresario, and director. He is best known as the creator and master of ceremonies of La Chauve-Souris theater group.
The Treasurer's Report (1928) is a comedy sketch, made into a short film, written and performed by Robert Benchley. The film, made in the then-new Fox Movietone, documents an assistant treasurer of an organization struggling to present its yearly report. This was the first of Benchley's 46 comedy short films, with six made for Fox, one each for Universal Pictures and RKO Radio Pictures, 29 for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and nine for Paramount Pictures.
The Parade of the Tin Soldiers, also known as The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, is an instrumental musical character piece, in the form of a popular jaunty march, written by German composer Leon Jessel, in 1897.
Willie Howard and Eugene Howard, billed as the Howard Brothers, were Silesian-born American vaudeville performers of the first half of the 20th century. They were two of the earliest openly Jewish performers on the American stage.
F. Ray Comstock was an American theatrical producer and theater operator. He pioneered the intimate musical comedy, staging several successful comedies at his Princess Theatre in Manhattan. He also produced spectacular musicals, variety shows and serious plays by authors such as Henrik Ibsen and Maxim Gorky.
Nikolai Lazarevich Tarasov was an Armenian–Russian oil-industrialist and dandy, who was a devotee of the theatre.
Mikhail Vavich was a Russian actor, operetta and singer.
The Théâtre Fémina or Salle Fémina was an entertainment venue located at 90 avenue des Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. It was inside the Hôtel Fémina, designed by the architect Henri Petit.
Nicolas Koline (1878–1973) was a Russian stage and film actor. He established himself in Russia as a stage performer with the Moscow Art Theatre. He emigrated from Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 and came to France with La Chauve-Souris cabaret run by Nikita Balieff. In Paris he then joined Joseph Ermolieff's film company at Montreuil. He appeared in numerous French and German films during his career, initially often as a leading player during the silent era and later in supporting roles.