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Frank Coltman: Trouper from Tidioute
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
The reach of the American theatre between 1870 and 1900 was truly extraordinary, for those were the years when touring combinations crisscrossed the land, finding a ready welcome in countless opera houses, academies of music, and village halls. William Winter, one of the most long-lived of theatrical critics, estimated that by 1880 there were in the United States and Canada about 3,500 towns in which theatrical performances were habitually given in some 5,000 theatres. These hosted more than 250 theatrical companies employing some 5,000 actors. It was a “stirring” theatrical climate, giving employment to countless utility men and women, walking gentlemen, ladies in waiting, second old men and women, soubrettes and comedians—not to mention actors and actresses laying claim to stellar rank.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1975
References
1 The Wallet of Time (1913; rpt. New York, 1969), p. 23Google Scholar.
2 This “oil region” community and its theatre are the subject of a monograph by the author, The Grandin Opera House, or Theatre on the Kerosene Circuit, 1872–1904, Northwestern Pennsylvania Historical Study No. 4, 1973Google Scholar.
3 Program of Don Caesar and subsequent home talent productions in the collection of the author. Factual citations are from the pages of The Weekly News, whose offices were located in the Grandin Opera House block, directly beneath the theatrical portion of the structure. The paper's editor, Charley White, was a longtime Coltman fan and booster.
4 The Footlights Fore and Aft (Boston 1911), p. 168Google Scholar.
5 The Weekly News, 15 April 1887, p. 3.
6 In the collection of the author.
7 Unfortunately, the scrapbook's maker was more interested in preserving the text of the review than in documenting the source or date of the paper in which it appeared. Accordingly, all citations from reviewers are to the Coltman scrapbook.
8 Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew (New York, 1899), p. 122Google Scholar.
9 One means of determining the seasons when he was not trouping was by searching the daybooks of the drugstore located on the ground floor of the opera house block. Coltman's name and almost daily charges for cigars are an obvious locator.
10 Hubert, Philip G. Jr., in The Stage as a Career (New York, 1900), pp. 159–160Google Scholar, writes: “To the actor, however, a notice is a notice. Whether it is written by the foremost critic in the country or by some callow reporter from the backwoods, it goes into his scrapbook to be pored over with a thrill of delight if it is favorable; if it is not favorable, it is, of course, the work of some bitter enemy, to be preserved as proof of what envy and malice can be guilty of.”
11 Reproduced in the issue for 15 April 1898, p. 3.
12 Grau, Robert in Forty Years Observation of Music and the Drama (New York, 1909), p. 147Google Scholar, calls Murphy a player “gifted with a wealth of artistic thought and conception.” He notes Murphy began his career in the varieties, being a favorite at Tony Pastor's theatre. He specialized in imitations of stars of the period. Grau links him with Nat C. Goodwin as “a real mimic.”
13 ln these years he was the moving force behind a revival of a previous home talent success, Niobe, offered on 25 December 1903, and of a 26 January 1904 production of The Liars. The latter was apparently the final production of Coltman's faithful followers. Very possibly the publicity following the Iroquois Theatre fire on 30 December 1903 influenced the Grandins to close their theatre to all but very occasional use.
14 Interview with Mrs. Wallace R. Brown (Mary Dawson), 23 February 1972.
15 Letter to the author dated 15 May 1972.
16 Appeared 21 June 1919.