THE JOURNAL OF

AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE

Volume 18, Number 2 Spring 2006
Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve
Guest Editors:
HeatherS. Nathans and Robert Vorlicky
Editor: David Savran
Managing Editor: Ken Nielsen
Editorial Assistant: Peter Zazzali
Circulation Manager: Louise McKay
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
Professor Daniel Gerould, Executive Director
Professor Edwin Wilson, Chairman, Advisory Board
Jan Stenzel, Director of Administration
Frank Hentschker, Director of Program
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY CENTER
OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YoRK
EDITORIAL BOARD
Philip Auslander
Una Chaudhuri
William Demastes
Harry Elam
Jorge Huerta
Stacy Wolf
Shannon Jackson
Jonathan Kalb
Jill Lane
Thomas Postlewait
Robert Vorlicky
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THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE
Volume 18, Number 2 Spring 2006
CONTENTS
H EATHER S. NATHANS AND ROBERT VORLICKY
Introduction
K ATHERINE E. EGERTON
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cross:
Arhur Miller's Resurrection Blues
SUSAN C. W ABBOTSON
The Dangers of Memory in Arthur Miller's I Can't Remember A!!Jthing
VALERIE M. JOYCE
You Can't Get a Man With a Gun-But You Can Get an Audience:
Marketing Annie Oakley
MARK COSDON
"Serving the Purpose Amply":
The Hanlon Brothers' Le Vqyage en Suisse
CONTRIBUTORS
5
9
27
41
71
101
JOURNAL OF AMERlCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 18, N0.2 (SPRlNG 2006)
"POPULAR"
ADMIRED. WELL-LIKED. TRENDY. IN STYLE. ALL THE RAGE.
POPULAR PLAYWRIGHTS. POPULAR PERFORMERS. POPULAR
ENTERTAINMENT. POPULAR CULTURE.
INTRODUCTION
HEATHERS. NATHANS AND ROBERT VORLICKY
The legacy of Arthur Miller was long established in United
States letters prior to his death at the age of ninety-nine on February 10,
2005. From the resounding reception for his early play All My Sons in
1947 to the world premiere in Chicago of his last play, Finishing the Picture,
in 2004, Miller was one of America's most produced playwrights during
his astonishingly prolific lifetime. Miller's theatre is considered by many
to be a vital theatre of its times, of its century: urgent, passionate,
provocative, responsible, and political. His are foundational works in the
canon of modern United States drama. His work is "popular" in the
truest sense of the word-it is for and about "the people" of a nation he
never stopped trying to guide, to shape, and to help.
Participating in the first wave of evaluating Miller's contributions
to the American theatre since his death, Katherine Egerton and Susan
Abbotson examine two of the major writer's later plays. In ''A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Cross," Egerton critiques the multi-
ple versions and stagings of Miller's recent Resurrection Blues (2002), a trag-
ic farce in which a present-day crucifixion becomes the object of an
advertising executive's dream. This collision of pain, pleasure, and profit
in Miller's tale echoes the centrality of moral questions in well over a half-
century of this visionary's dramas. Yet Egerton examines Miller in a new
light, exploring his long-untapped gift for comedy. Egerton argues for the
efficacy of returning to this text and its revisions in order to appreciate
fully the author's ever-present dramaturgical skills as he further deepened
the play's thematic clarity, characterology, and dynamic theatricality.
Two one-acts comprise Miller's 1987 piece, Danger: Memory!
Susan Abbotson analyzes the curtain raiser in her essay, "The Dangers of
Memory in Arthur Miller's I Can't Remember Atrything." Like Resurrection
Blues, I Can't Remember Arrything underwent alterations by Miller that
resulted in the publication of revised texts (this, during a period in which
6
Miller was critically out of favor, or less popular with a nation reluctant
to accept reminders of its political and moral failings). Such revision is a
feature that these two plays share with few others in Miller's oeuvre. As
Abbotson's close reading reveals, Miller's revisions of this piece docu-
ment his determination to avoid easy answers and solutions for his char-
acters, and his efforts to draw his audience's attention to the intricate
process of truth-telling. Moreover, as Abbotson notes, in typical Miller
fashion, revelation does not bring release--only more questions.
If Miller is "popular" in the original sense of the word, meaning
"of t he people," nineteenth-century performers Annie Oakley and the
Hanlon Brothers troupe were popular in the more familiar contemporary
meaning of the term. e b s t e r ~ Dictionary defines "popular" as "adapted to
or indicative of the understanding and taste of the majority" or "com-
monly liked and approved." Both of these definitions certainly apply to
Oakley and the Hanlon Brothers who delighted theatre audiences in nine-
teenth-century America. As Valerie Joyce meticulously maps in "You
Can't Get a Man With a Gun-But You Can Get an Audience," Annie
Oakley built an astounding career in Wild West shows through a timeless,
unbeatable combination of sharp-shooting talent, physical attractiveness,
and, perhaps most importantly, an incredible marketing savvy. Playing
with and on the radical edges of both masculine and feminine perform-
ance strategies, Oakley captured the piqued imagination of her audiences,
which in turn catapulted her into legendary, celebrity status. By examin-
ing the way in which Oakley staged her visual representation (she was
photographed hundreds of times throughout her life and those images
were widely circulated to her adoring public), Joyce builds a case for the
organic relationship that existed between the performer's live, popular
entertainments and the photographic renderings of her "act," or persona,
which, together, led to the calculated marketing of a star. As Joyce argues,
much of Oakley's popularity rested on her ability to persuade an audience
that it was acceptable for an innocent Victorian lady to excel at a most
unladylike pastime. Her carefully staged photographic images brought
these two seemingly incompatible notions together.
While Annie Oakley was winning the hearts of nineteenth-cen-
tury Americans, a troupe of British-born brothers were captivating ador-
ing fans throughout England and France with their acrobatic and aerial-
ist skills. In "'Serving the Purpose Amply': The Hanlon Brothers' Le
V V'age en Suisse," Mark Cosdon focuses on the extremely popular Hanlon
Brothers, who, he argues, were forerunners of much of the slapstick
comedy of early American fllm-inspiring artists such as Buster Keaton
(who trained with the Hanlon troupe as a child) and the zany antics of
7
the Marx Brothers. Cosdon traces the Hanlon's reinvention of the art of
acrobatic performance. They transformed it from straightforward stunts
to evening-long pantomimes filled with "breath-taking acrobatics with
trick scenery, novel illusions, and wild, often violent, knockabout come-
dy." Their most lasting, revered popular entertainment: Le VtzYage en Suisse,
which premiered in the United States in 1881 and lasted until1913. It also
spawned countless imitators and multiple lawsuits. Like Joyce's look at
Oakley, Cosdon closely examines archival sources in order to document
and analyze of one of the most popular plays-and troupes-in
American theatre history.
The Hanlon Brothers, Annie Oakley, and Arthur Miller ... all
have made enduring marks on the last centuries of United States popu-
lar culture. Each has also altered the notion of the "popular"- offering
American audiences both what they wanted and what they needed,
whether it was an evening of laughter, a hero to admire, or a moral fable
to ponder.
The essays in this spring issue of JADT come from articles sub-
mitted by American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) members whose
selected publications were presented this last year at such conferences as
the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), the Association for
Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Modern Language
Association (MLA), and the American Literature Association (ALA). We
would like to thank David Savran and the editorial board of JADT for
their sustained commitment to a yearly special issue edited by officers and
the Publications Committee of ATDS. Finally, our appreciation to
William Demastes and Jonathan Chambers for their assistance in the
preparation of this publication.
jOURNAL OF AMERJCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 18, N0.2 (SPRJNG 2006)
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE CROSS:
ARTHUR MILLER'S RESURRECTION BLUES
KATHERINE E. EGERTON
In his penultimate play, &surrection Blues, Arthur Miller traps the
audience between competing interpretations of crucifixion. In a present-
day South American military stronghold, the capture of a Christ-like rev-
olutionary named Ralph sets off a perfect media storm. But this event,
which promises to captivate a world-wide television audience and leads
an advertising firm to pay seventy-five million dollars for broadcast
rights, has little support on the ground. The plan is spearheaded by Skip
Cheeseboro, an American executive who does not believe in anything.
His sole interest in creating this sensation is to advance his career by
delivering the goods. Miller described Resurrection Blues as both "tragic
farce"! and "a satiric comedy-you're supposed to laugh."
2
In this envi-
ronment, the audience should not be surprised when no cruciftx.ion ever
takes place. Because there is no resurrection, only the blues remain when
the curtain comes down.
At the end of a career constructed on moral certainty, Miller
challenges audiences in &surrection Blues by refusing to decide whether or
not the lack of a sacrifice is a good thing while leaving the audience to
fend for themselves in the media-driven wasteland he portrays. As a
result, &surrection Blues overflows with schadenfreude while simultane-
ously suffusing the audience with guilt when a plan to televise the cruci-
fixion of a political prisoner is at once a jackpot for advertisers and a har-
binger of the apocalypse. An audience that can flip comfortably between
All My Sons in the theatre and Survivor on television may have a hard time
perceiving the difference between outrage and entertainment. Writing, as
1
Rohan Preston, "The Lion in Summer," Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 4 August,
2002.
2 Arthur Miller, quoted in "Resurrection Blues," Intermission: NeJvs/etterof the Guthrie
Theatre 3 no. 1 (2002): 4.
10
EGERTON
always, for the times in which he lived, Miller makes this ambivalence the
heart of his satire. Our discomfiture creates the laughs because our moral
vacuity is the butt of the joke. Resurrection Blues stands out in the Miller
canon as a satirical comedy from the author of "Tragedy and the
Common Man," as a meditation on Christian mystery by a non-religious
Jew, and as a script Miller uncharacteristically revised several years after
its first performance. The next major production of the play after Miller's
death in 2005, directed by famed American film director Robert Altman,
further altered the text to a degree l'vfiller probably would not have
approved. Perhaps coincidentally, Resurrection Blues, unlike many other
plays from the latter half of his career, was received far less favorably in
London than it had been in America.
THE POLITICS OF SATIRE
1\filler spent his career turning pain into art, but in this play, he
questions both the price and the efficacy of that transformation, won-
dering if trifles can succeed where earnest beseeching has failed. In a
1992 op-ed for the New York Times, Miller proposed in Swiftian fashion
that "[t]he time has come to consider the privatizing of executions."
3
He
sketched a macabre public electrocution ritual in Shea Stadium, complete
with residual fees paid to all parties involved, before suggesting that by
making execution into a publicly available entertainment, we would make
the deaths of criminals into a merely overexposed spectacle along the
lines of the Super Bowl halftime show: Only then we might "begin ask-
ing why it is that Americans commit murder more often than any other
people."
4
The idea of irreversible action as the impetus for catharsis and
then social change underlies this modest proposal, and it provides a foun-
dation for Resurrection Blues. By turning capital punishment into a show,
and interrupting its drama with remedies for "athlete's foot, sour stom-
ach, constipation, anal itch,"S he implies that we might finally abandon
execution, not out of moral repugnance, but from boredom.
During a 1984 interview at the Royal National Theatre, Miller
was asked "What moral issue that is significant today deserves a play by
Arthur Miller?" He responded: "What I've become more and more fas-
3 Arthur Miller, "Get It Right: Privatize Executions," in Echoes Down the
Comaor: Collected Essf!YS 1944-2000. (New York: Penguin, 2000): 237-39.
4
Ibid., 238.
5 Arthur l\1iller, Res11mction Bl11es (New York: Penguin, 2006): 20.
ARTHUR MJU. ER'S REsURRECTION BLUES 11
cinated by is the question of reality and what it is, and whether there is
any, and how one invites it into oneself. That's a moral issue, finally, but
I don't want to get into theology here."6 Throughout Resurrection Blues,
this same conundrum obsesses Henri Schultz, the part-time philosopher
and reluctant pharmaceutical magnate. He, too, prefers a philosophical,
rather than theological, vocabulary. Henri, finding the crucifixion idea
abhorrent, tries to convince General Felix Barriaux, who happens to be
his cousin, to abandon the plan because it will "[bring] on a bloodbath."?
Once his direct appeal has failed to convince Felix, Henri reverses the
terms of his argument in an effort to convince Skip that the plan to tele-
vise the crucifixion will work precisely against the media's interests.
I have spent a lifetime trying to free myself from the
boredom of reality .... The imagination is a great hall
where death, for example, turns into a painting, and a
scream of pain becomes a song. The hall of the imagi-
nation is really where we usually live; and this is all right
except for one thing-to enter that hall one must leave
one's real sorrow at the door and in its stead surround
oneself with images and words and music that mimic
anguish but is really drained of it-no one has ever lost
a leg from reading about a batde, or died of hearing the
saddest song .... This is why this man must be hunted
down and crucified; because-he still really feels everything.
Imagine, Mr. Cheeseboro, if that kind of reverence for
life should spread!B
While he revised several other sections of the play after the 2002 Guthrie
premiere,9 Miller left these ontological speeches practically untouched.
Regardless of the fashion of the times, Miller has always said what he
believed to be important. In his 1999 lecture "The Crucible in History," he
6 Arthur Miller, interview by Christopher Bigsby, "3 July 1984, Lyttelton
Theatre," Plaiform Papers No. 7: Arthur Miller (London: Royal National Theatre, 1995): 11.
7 Arthur Miller, Rmtrrection Blues, 17.
8 Ibid., 76.
9 Miller first began to work on Resu"ection Blues in the late 1990s. He discussed
the play with David Esbjornson, who would direct the world premiere at the Guthrie
Theatre in Minneapolis, in early 2001. A pre-production text was published by the
Guthrie in a non-commercial edition at the time of the premiere in August, 2002, but
Miller continued to develop the script in rehearsals. Two more American productions
12 EGERTON
acknowledged that "hardly a week that passes when I don't ask the unan-
swerable-what am I now convinced of that will turn out to be ridicu-
lous? And yet one can't forever stand on the shore; at some point, even
filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump
in or concede that life is forever elsewhere."IO In Resurrectz"on Blues, Miller
once again jumps in, showing his customary bravery in pursuing an argu-
ment many in the modern world would consider absurd: that there might
be a down side to avoiding the torturous execution of a revolutionary
spiritual leader.
While the other characters debate his eventual fate, Ralph him-
self never physically appears on stage. As Jean Kerr observed, "for all
practical purposes in the theatre, God is a lousy part."ll Instead, Ralph,
the condemned revolutionary, emits a shining light that occasionally spills
onto the playing space, and those who talk to him are bathed in his
reflected glory. Felix cannot explain Ralph's glow, or, indeed, his ability to
remove himself from prison by walking through walls, but he resists
reading any sort of spiritual significance into it: ''All right, I don't under-
stand it!" he admits. "Do you understand a computer chip? Can you tell
me what electricity is? .... So he lights up; it's one more thing, that's all."
1
2
His concern is all for the wealth and development that can be brought
into the country from the developed world. Whatever emerges from the
mountain villages, even a savior, seems to him merely evidence of shock-
ing provincialism. Felix's regular travels to Miami-to see his dentist, his
analyst, his whores, and his American military advisors- help him remain
flrrnly disinterested in whatever is produced at home. When Henri
laments the fallen state of the country for which they both once fought,
Felix brings him up short: "Listen, after thirty-eight years of civil war
followed in 2003 (Wilma Theatre, Philadelphia) and 2004 (The Old Globe Theatre, San
Diego). In March 2006, the play was published by Penguin and Methuen, Miller's com-
mercial publishers; the publication coincided with the opening of the play's London pro-
duction at the Old Vic Theatre, directed by Robert Altman. The Old Vic promoted this
final text as having been extensively revised by Miller before his death on February 11,
2005. The 2006 Penguin text is quoted throughout this essay unless otherwise indicated.
IO Arthur Miller, "The Cmcible in History," The Cmcibk in History and Other Esst!]S
(London: Methuen, 2005): 54-55.
II Jean Kerr, "I Don't Want to See the Uncut Version of Af!Yihing, "How I Got
loBe Perfect (New York: Doubleday, 1978): 185.
12 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 25.
ARTHUR MILLER'S RESURRECITON BWES 13
what did you expect to find here, Sweden?"t3 After the combat deaths of
two of his own brothers, Felix has learned to ignore dead babies on the
streets in favor of new shops in the town, and he only takes interest in
Ralph's supposedly supernatural abilities when he sees in them a poten-
tial cure for his own impotence.
Miller never clarifies exactly how Henri and Felix have come to
lead such different lives after spending their childhoods together, but
their family has excellent imperialist credentials. Henri claims that they
have been "in this country since the Conquistadors ... Cortez had a
German doctor."
14
Henri's daughter Jeanine, it turns out, is also follow-
ing in the family footsteps by taking up arms for the people because Felix
and Henri were once both Marxist revolutionaries. Whereas Henri has
leveraged the wealth and class privilege of the family's pharmaceutical
firm into a life full of culture, education, and European decadence, Felix
has remained engaged in the struggle, albeit from the government's side.
One of Miller's persistent targets in Resurrection Blues is the United States
government's support of dictators like Felix through activities of the CIA
and the School of the Americas. According to Christopher Bigsby, in a
very early version of the play, "The CIA obligingly [swept] government
buildings on a regular basis" as "a reminder of where power actually
resides."
1
5 In this early typescript, the American blood money came not
from the invented fum of Thompson, Weber, Macdean and Abramowitz
but from Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne, the company for which
Miller provided radio scripts early in his career. Bruce Barton was a right-
wing media tycoon who, Bigsby explains, "described Christ as the great-
est advertiser of his day and the world's greatest salesman."t6 Miller even-
tually changed the name, but kept the strategy. Also, as Jeffrey D. Mason
suggests, "Miller is tracing the distance from the 1950s, when the [House
Un-American Activities] Committee denounced propaganda as the tool
of subversives, to the present moment, when propaganda serves the
interests of the power elite."
17
In either case, from Miller's viewpoint,
13 Ibid., 15.
14
Ibid., 40.
IS Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller: A Critical Stut!J (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005): 425.
16 Ibid., 428.
17 Jeffrey D. Mason, "Arthur Miller's Ironic Resurrection," Theatre journal 55
(2003): 667.
14 EGERTON
craven self-interest rules the day and the powers of propaganda are por-
trayed as solidly in the hands of the corrupt.
The Americans who threaten both this regime and the revolu-
tion it suppresses are not, finally, CIA agents but advertising types who
routinely make their fortunes by exploiting the world's panoramic vistas
in order to sell Alka-Seltzer. To complicate matters, Miller immediately
divides the Americans into two camps: the executive whose job it is to
seal the deal, and the director who has been rushed onto a plane with no
foreknowledge of the work ahead. Skip Cheeseboro invokes the power
of his company's fortune and does everything in his power to bring the
broadcast home on time and under budget, including threatening Emily
Shapiro, his director, with multiple lawsuits and professional ruin once
she declares that "somebody actually dying in my lens would melt my eye-
ball."18 Emily's conundrum drives her otherwise inexplicable choice later
in the play to have sex with Felix. If she indulges his fancy and restores
his libido, he will, she hopes, abandon the whole goofy scheme of cruci-
fying the messiah/ terrorist/ scapegoat he cannot even keep in a jail cell.
Many critics, including Bigsby and Robert L. King,19 have been quite
harsh in their assessment of Emily's character and motives, but in a story
where women seem only to be able to act by throwing their bodies in the
paths of men, Emily's strategy to prevent Ralph's execution is at least
more successful than Jeanine's more explicitly self-destructive failure.
At the end of the play, Ralph/Charley not only skips death, he
also removes his light from the stage. Those left behind are glad to avoid
the death that would show god to be paradoxically human. By giving him-
self to death, he might disperse his power among the people. Miller con-
tends we do not want the power of faith or salvation. By abjuring these
things rather than indulging in them, we choose to live in "the con-
temptible country."
2
0 When Ralph abandons them all, paradoxically
favoring his humanity over his divinity, they are relieved. In the creations
of the present moment, they flnd even a glimpse of compassion para-
lyzing. Ralph is not a demanding savior. An overview of his main mes-
sage is "don't do bad things. Especially when you know they're bad.
18 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 40.
19 Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller: A Critical Study, 430; Robert L. King,
"Politics, Television, and Theatre," North American Review 289 (September-October 2004):
37-42.
20 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 23.
ARTHUR MlLLER'S RESURRECflON BWES 15
Which you mostly do."
21
Of course, we do mostly know, and we do bad
things anyway, and so we become Miller's targets. Any public intellectual
who lectures on tragedy- be it Henri Schultz or Miller himself-can
make the point that execution is unconscionable and that those who
watch will be damaged in turn. But those who do bad things are a reliable
source of entertainment and Resurrection Blues tries, reliably, to entertain.
That this entertainment is not what audiences expect from a Miller play
is a complication, but not a fatal one.
THE WAY OF THE CROSS
In her 2003 book, Regarding the Pain if Others, Susan Sontag
explores the complex relationship between the victims of televised vio-
lence and those who watch:
The imaginary proximity to the suffering inflicted on
others that is granted by images suggests a link between
the faraway sufferers-seen close-up on the television
screen-and the privileged viewer that is simply untrue,
that is yet one more mystification of our real relations
to power. So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not
accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy
proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To
that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an
impertinent-if not an inappropriate- response. To set
aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and
murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges
are located in the same map as their suffering, and
may- in ways we might prefer not to imagine-be
linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may
imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the
painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.22
Throughout Resurrection Blues, Miller highlights this juxtaposition of the
voyeurs' feelings and the victim's pain. Beyond merely "setting aside sym-
pathy" by focusing his satire on those who make the media, Miller seeds
21
Ibid., 64.
22 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and
Giroux, 2003): 102-03.
16 EGERTON
the territory between victim and voyeur with a host of clearly responsi-
ble people. Early on, for example, Skip Cheeseboro and Emily Shapiro
seriously debate whether giving the intended victim pain medication will
ruin or amplify the television viewers' potentially transcendent experi-
ence. Miller mocks the argument that recording an atrocity might turn the
tide against such practices by having Skip randomly manufacture similar
excuses in a vain effort to keep his director from abandoning him on the
mountaintop. The ad executive hectors Emily, telling her "If I were
moralistic I'd even say you have a duty to shoot this! In fact, it could end
up a worldwide blow against capital punishment, which I know you are
against as I passionately am."23 At the same time, Skip never forgets the
delicate sensibilities of the paying customers. "The camera," he explains
to Felix, "tends to magnify everything and screaming on camera could
easily seem in questionable taste."24
Through the medium of commercial television, Skip hopes that
everyone might have a chance to watch the crucifixion from the comfort
of their homes, reveling in its redemptive symbolism while conveniently
failing to be concerned with the deliberate torture and execution of a fel-
low human being. Henri could earn a great deal of money by selling more
remedies for jock itch, money which he will probably spend on another
Steinway for his wife rather than on the betterment of the poor. Even
those same poor people in this country's mountain villages are hoping
their location will be picked for the crucifixion for the development,
"maybe even a casino and theme park,''ZS that could follow world-wide
media exposure. Members of the theatre audience who watch television
and wear deodorant may even begin to feel that even they could be
responsible for the tortuous execution of a living saint. Resurrection Blues
is full of jokes, but the satirical premise lies very close to the bone. Skip
repeatedly claims not to be recreating the crucifixion of Christ, but he
constantly invokes that representational tradition. Ralph, on the cross,
must be transcendent and without suffering, just as the stunning land-
scapes Skip and Emily appropriate to sell sport utility vehicles must be
pristine and without roads.
Henri believes that the act of televising the crucifixion will trig-
ger some sort of global crisis, yet Felix maintains that within the coun-
23 Arthur Miller, &mrreclion Blues, 39.
24
Ibid., 49.
25 Ibid., 101.
ARTHUR MILLER'S RESURJI.ECflON BLUES 17
try's own borders "a crucifixion always quiets things down"26 in ways that
no ordinary sort of modern violence can begin to match. Henri, it turns
out, wants to circumvent this execution not only for high-minded rea-
sons, but because his pharmaceutical company distributes the hygiene
products whose makers will buy commercial time during the broadcast.
His money implicates him, and his personal guilt, as much or more than
his disinterested morals, has led him to intervene. ''And for me personal-
ly," he tells Felix, "it's ... it's the end!"
HENRl. As your men drive nails into his hands and
split the bones of his feet the camera will cut away to ..
. god knows what ... somebody squirming with a burn-
ing asshole! You must let the fellow go .. . !
FELIX. He's not going anywhere, he's a revolutionary
and an idiot.
HENRl. You're not visualizing, Felix! People are des-
perate for someone this side of the stars who feels their
suffering himself and gives a damn! The man is hope!
FELIX. He is hope because he gets us seventy-five mil-
lion! My god, we once had an estimate to irrigate the
entire eastern half of the country and that was only thir-
teen million. This is fantastic!2
7
Miller's satirical mode ensures that, at least early on, Felix's enthusiasm
will trump Henri's righteous indignation. The way he takes the end of
Henri's line- "the man is hope!"-and turns it in the service of his own
argument guarantees him the laugh, and whoever gets the laugh wins the
point. As this scene progresses, Henri becomes more earnestly beseech-
ing while Felix keeps up the patter, escalating his side of the argument
only when forced. Finally, Henri delivers his overripe, jackpot line when
he tells Felix that Ralph has "left me with one idea that I can't shake off
.... That I could have loved. Slight pause. In my life."ZS In his objections
to the crucifixion, Henri occupies all of the moral high ground, but he
does it in such a vacuous and self-centered manner that the audience is
left sympathizing with Felix, who is at least entertaining.
2
6 Ibid., 18.
27 Ibid. , 22-23.
28 Ibid., 25.
18
EGERTON
The iconography of the cross dominates the images that both
publishers and producers have attached to the play. In particular, an Inge
Morath photograph that illustrates the cover of the 2006 Methuen edi-
tion of Resurrection Blues was also printed inside the front cover of the
London production's program. Benedict Nightingale, writing in the Times,
tells the story behind the image:
In the early 1960's someone-nobody knows who-
sent Arthur Miller a DIY crucifixion kit, complete with
a little figure whose arms had to be tacked on to the
cross. He assembled it, got his wife Inge Morath to pho-
tograph it, and placed the finished picture so promi-
nently in his Connecticut house that, says his close
friend Scott Griffin,29 he must have seen it every day.30
In the photograph, two black crosses, one upright and the other upside
down and hanging at an angle, fill a small plastic bag. In front of both lies
a plastic assembly of molded parts, including body parts for two Christ
figures: two torsos with legs, two heads, two sets of arms, multiple hands
and crowns of thorns, plus pins to hold it all together. A few arms have
come loose and lie at the bottom. The bag hangs in front of what looks
like a window screen and is mostly lit from behind. In a journal entry
from 2000 reproduced on the same page of the Old Vic program, Miller
described the developing script of Resurrection Blues as
the story of the rejection of the sacrifice and the climax
it affords, and with it the rejection of meaning for
human life which can only become apparent through
death. Religion is the worship of death as the hope of
transfiguration; short of death there is nothing but
appearances, and these do not, cannot cohere.31
29 Scott Griffin, along with David Liddimen, produced Resurrection Blues for the
Old Vic in London.
30 Benedict Nightingale, "The Miller's Last Tale," Times (London), 13 February,
2006.
31 Arthur Miller, quoted in The Old Vic: Resurrection Blues (London: The Old Vic,
2006).
ARTHUR Mru..ER's RF.sURREcnoN Bwes
19
Assembled, the do-it-yourself kit might be kitschy or ironic. In pieces, it
remains static and incomplete and yet unimaginably sad. There is no
death, having been no birth, and what remains is merely dismemberment
mixed with potential. Instead of a religious icon, the image offers com-
mercial detritus, stamped out in some factory and cleverly captured on
ftlm.
Miller clearly holds it as a loss that characters in Resu" ection Blues
are all finally unfit to receive Ralph's sacrifice, regardless of whether he is
actually god. If his death might, in Emily's terms, "melt her eyeball"3
2
on
the one hand, Skip holds himself to the other extreme when he asks "but
realistically, who am I to be disgusted?"33 Neither position suggests that
the resurrection would be welcome. Sontag explains Georges Bataille's
view as to why people might want to live with images of pain:
[I]magine extreme suffering as something more than
just suffering, as a kind of transfiguration. It is rooted in
religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice
to exaltation-a view that could not be more alien to a
modern sensibility, which regards suffering as some-
thing that is a mistake or an accident or a crime.
Something to be fixed. Something to be refused.
Something that makes one feel powerless.34
Even Felix, who claims to have the most to gain by it, fails to see Ralph's
potential surrender as a gift. "Short of death there is nothing but appear-
ances,"3S but those who work to manufacture those appearances cannot
settle for less than death. Emily is perfectly willing to deliver a fake cru-
cifixion, but Skip and the money he represents insist on the real thing. At
the play's climax, Skip, in the role of the Pharisee, clings to the language
of legal obligations, as though one could be obliged to die in order to ful-
fill the terms of someone else's contract.
32 Ardmr Miller, Rtsu"ection Blues, 40.
3
3
Ibid., 38.
34 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 99.
35 Arthur Miller, quoted in The Old Vic: Resu"ection Blues.
20
EGERTON
None of the characters in Resurrection Blues succeed at dying
despite Jeanine's claim in the prologue that "[t)he one thing we know for
sure, our treasure that we secretly kiss and adore-is death-death and
dreams, death and dancing, death and laughter."36 Thanks, in one way or
the other, to Ralph, Jeanine earns some sort of recovery from her suici-
dal walk out a third floor window and Felix gets his groove back. All of
this life makes these characters rather adorable in the midst of the satire,
and if embracing life means resisting "the worship of death as the hope
of transfiguration,"
37
so be it. In the 2002 text, Emily tells Jeanine that "a
revolution is a comedian wearing a black veil-you don't know whether
to laugh or run for your life."
38
That, in both its early and final incarna-
tions, is the problem with Resurrection Blues: some of the setup may be
wickedly funny, but as the objects of Miller's critique become less and less
far-fetched, actors and audiences both become confused as to how they
should react. Adoring "death and laughter"39 and laughing on the way tO
the cross are, in the final analysis, not the same thing.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE TEXT
Resurrection Blues has generated a convoluted history within a rel-
atively short span of time. Miller's feelings about the text and its readi-
ness for production seem always to have been ambivalent. Benedict
Nightingale of the Times first discussed the play with Miller in 2000, and
he later reported that Miller turned to the play anew after Inge Morath's
death in 2002. "Even though" Nightingale explains, "Miller felt that
Resurrection Blues needed much more revision, [friends) persuaded him to
become actively involved in a premiere production in Minneapolis."40
Reviews of the first productions were mixed, combining excitement at
the prospect of a major new work by Miller with acknowledgements that
the work remained somehow unbalanced and unfinished. In the New York
Times, Bruce Weber characterized Resurrection Blues as "clearly an ambi-
tious play, not the work of someone sitting on well-deserved laurels or
36 Arthur Resurrection Blues, 2.
37 Arthur Miller, quoted in The Old Vic: Resurrection Blues.
38 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues (Minneapolis: Guthrie Theatre, 2002): 65.
39 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 2.
40 Benedict Nightingale, "The Miller's Last Tale."
ARTHUR MILLER'S RESURRECnON BWB:i 21
reworking his favorite tropes. Mr. Miller's got something stuck in his craw
here, and he's working hard to wedge it out."4I In a similar vein, Michael
Billington opened his review of the 2006 London production by recall-
ing that "in Minneapolis four years ago, it struck me as a sparky, neo-
Shavian satire both on the commercialism of the modern age and its
credulity."
42
While the American productions were generally met with
polite interest rather than critical acclaim, compared to the reception of
the show's London production in 2006, these early notices now sound
like raves.
In Arthur Miller: A Critical Stucjy, Christopher Bigsby includes a
chapter on Resurrection Blues citing a typescript provided him by Miller that
predates even the Guthrie Theatre's 2002 publication.
4
3 Despite three
American productions, publicity for the 2006 Old Vic production, direct-
ed by Robert Altman, emphasized a text heavily revised by Miller before
his death in 2005. The show was even billed in some quarters as Miller's
fmal play despite the world premiere of Finishing the Picture in Chicago in
the fall of 2004. Comparison of the 2002 and 2006 texts, however, clear-
ly show that claims repeated in the British media of "a play some 80 per-
cent different from the original version"4
4
are significantly overstated.
}.filler did cut nearly the entire original third scene, in which Henri takes
Emily to visit his injured daughter, Jeanine, as well as rearranging and
rephrasing many lines throughout the play. However, the 2002 and 2006
texts reveal a play that is substantially unchanged in its characters and its
thematic focus. Beyond the omitted scene three, the significant alter-
ations can be grouped into three major categories: changes in the time-
line that make the plot slightly more believable, Skip's refusal to capitu-
late at the end of the play, and a new prologue delivered by Jeanine.
In two places, Miller rearranges the timelines to make the actions
portrayed more believable to the audience. In the 2002 version, Henri is
the one who delivers the advertisers' offer to Felix, while in the 2006 text,
Felix has already been approached about the broadcast deal when Henri
41 Bruce Weber, "It's Gloves-Off Time for an Angry Arthur Miller."
42 Michael Billington, "G2: 'I Knew We'd Be Put Under a Microscope,"'
Guardian (London), 13 April, 2006.
43 Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller: A Critical Stucfy, 421-36.
44 Benedict Nightingale, "The Miller's Last Tale."
22
EGERTON
comes to dissuade him. This revision solves a logical conundrum-why
should Henri deliver the offer at all if he believes it to be repugnant?-
but it changes little else in the first scene. In a similar fashion, the 2002
version presents Emily and Felix's major scene together after they have
already had sex, where the 2006 text stages the same conversation in the
future tense rather than the past. In the revised version, Emily comes off
as a more strategic player by making Felix take her up to the mountain
villages "where they love this Ralph fellow so."45 This occurs before she
sleeps with him rather than afterwards. The end of the scene shows that
Felix will do anything (including giving up his seventy-five million dollar
payday) to please a woman who can make him feel like a man again-
even before he has a chance to test the strength of her attraction. The last
major change comes in the play's final scene. In the 2002 version, Skip
fmally becomes reconciled to the loss of his broadcast, but in the 2006
text, Miller has him "angri!J walk ouf'46 at the last minute, abandoning the
others in the final tableau as they say goodbye to Ralph (now called
Charley).
In the prologue Miller wrote for the London production and the
final published text, Jeanine sets the stage for the satire by providing
some useful back-story and introducing the principal characters. This
elaborates on a strategy employed by director David Esbjornson in the
Minneapolis premiere when some of this same information was trans-
mitted to the audience by way of what New York Times critic Bruce Weber
called "an exciting tableau"
4
7 ahead of the opening scene. In the final ver-
sion, Schultz's daughter appears in a wheelchair, still visibly hampered by
the injuries she received jumping out of a third-story window. The acuity
of her analysis contrasts with her diminished physical state. Her physical
limitations, not unlike Sylvia Gellburg's paralysis in Miller's 1994 play,
Broken Glass, seem to have freed her mind. Miller uses her to provide tes-
timony about the government's horrific past actions to counterbalance
Felix's own cavalier dismissal of the suffering of others. She also serves
to tie Henri to a country he would have long since abandoned if not for
her persistence, and Henri-the wannabe philosopher Icing- needs tying
45 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 87.
46 Ibid., 112.
47 Bruce Weber, review of Resurrection Blues, by Arthur Miller, directed by David
Esbjornson, Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, "It's Gloves-Off Time for an Angry Arthur
Miller," New York Times, 15 August, 2002.
ARTHUR MILLER'S REsURREC170N BWES 23
down. In the prologue, Jeanine explains, "Papa is so like our country, a
drifting ship heading for where nobody knows."
4
8 For her own part, she
has given up trying to navigate. After having taken part in the revolution,
she is now content to let others act for her as Miller ends her monologue:
"What will happen now, will happen: I am content."
4
9 These significant
changes made by Miller in 2004, however, were overshadowed by addi-
tional cuts and edits made by Altman and his cast in rehearsal early in
2006, resulting in a significantly shorter play in London than the script
promised. In Altman's 2006 London production, Jeanine added one
more line to the prologue: "In comedy, there are no heroes." She is right,
as least as far as this comedy is concerned. None of the actual characters
come anywhere close to being heroic, and by having Jeanine dismiss
heroism so categorically, Altman added an extra dose of pessimism for
anyone who actually expects Ralph to sacrifice himself for his country, or
for anything.
In 1991, Bigsby asked Miller, "When does the re-writing stop? Is
it the last day of rehearsals?" Miller's reply: "When you're sick and tired
of the whole thing. I think Rimbaud said, a work of art is never finished,
it's abandoned."SO Miller may have been forced by his last illness to aban-
don Resurrection Blues prematurely, but that circumstance has left a script
that contains too much rather than too little. Robert Altman's solution to
this problem, however, satisfied almost no one. The Old Vic's claims to
be producing a new text carefully prepared by Miller's hand, clash with
this addition, as well as with Altman's significant cuts, particularly at the
end of the play. Earlier in his career, Miller went on record asserting his
authorship rights and insisting that actors and directors adhere to his
scripts as he wrote them. For instance, in the early 1980s, the Wooster
Group attempted to incorporate significant portions of The Crucible in
their production LS.D. Under the direction of Elizabeth LeCompte, the
Wooster Group's project creates work "constructed as assemblages of
juxtaposed elements" including "radical staging of both modern and
classic texts."5
1
Miller objected to this deconstruction of his text, writing
48 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 2.
4
9 Ibid., 4.
50 Arthur Miller, interview by Christopher Bigsby, "14 October 1991, Olivier
Theatre," Platform Papers No. 7: Arthur Miller (J..,ondon: Royal National Theatre, 1995): 19.
51 The Wooster Group, ~ b o u t the Group,"
ttp:/ / www. thewoostergroup.org/ twg/ about2.html.
24 EGERTON
in the Village Voice in December, 1983: "I don't want my play produced
except in total agreement with the way I wrote it. I'm afraid people might
see [the Wooster Group's] version and not realize I never intended it to
be staged that way."52 As the Guthrie cast rehearsed for the Resurrection
Blues premiere, Miller continued to revise the play53 in contrast to his ear-
lier habit of delivering scripts "virtually complete in every detail.54 Since
Miller did not live to see the 2006 production, we cannot know how he
would have reacted to Altman's changes. But given his record of speak-
ing up when he thought his text was being significantly reworked, he
would not likely have allowed Altman's significant edits to pass unre-
marked.
The run-up to the Old Vic production sparked something of a
media frenzy, in part because of American actor Kevin Spacey's contro-
versial role as the Old Vic's artistic director. London theatres and audi-
ences have reliably proved more hospitable to l\1iller's later plays than
their American counterparts, but the combination of Miller, Spacey,
Altman, and a cast featuring seYeral American actors (Matthew Modine,
Neve Campbell, and Jane Adams) gave the Old Vic production a dis-
tinctly non-English aura. At the same time, according to Jane Edwardes
in Time Out, Altman went out of his way to distance his production from
the earlier American shows, particularly after the Guardian published a
photograph from the Minneapolis premiere, an act which Altman
claimed "took something away from me."ss This followed a rather cheeky
Guardian interview in which Altman said-in the midst of rehearsals-"!
don't know this script. I read this script all the way through once myself
a long time ago. And I've beard it read. I've gone to the auditions. But I
don't know the play."56 The Old Vic closed Resurrection Blues on April 14,
52 Arthur Miller, quoted by Gerald Rabkin, "Is There A Text on This Stage?:
Theatre, Authorship, Interpretation," in &:Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide, edit-
ed by Rebecca Schneider and Gabrielle Cody, 319-31 (London: Routledge, 2002): 321.
53 Rohan Preston, "The Lion in Summer."
54 Harold Clurman, quoted by Gerald Rabkin, "Is There A Text on This Stage?:
Theatre, Authorship, Interpretation," 321.
55 Jane Edwardes, "Theatre: Art for Arthur's Sake," Time Out, 22 February,
2006.
56 Michael Billington, "G2: Culture: 'I Will Attack the Audience." Guardian
(Ltmdon), 1 February, 2006.
ARTHUR MillER'S RESURRECIION BWES 25
2006, a week ahead of schedule, after savage reviews, an early departure
by Jane Adams, and a theatre that was consistently more than half empty.
That same week, Spacey summoned the Guardian's Michael Billington for
an interview during which he defended both his own choices and
Altman's preparation: ''Whatever he may have mischievously said in inter-
views, Robert also knew this play backwards, sideways and forwards."57 If
that is true, it seems that he did not think much of it. Altman's extensive
cuts, including a large chunk of the final scene, left the end of the play in
tatters.
Resurrection Blues was Robert Altman's first theatre effort since
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean in New York in
1982. While Altman is justly famous for his ensemble-based filming tech-
nigue, and received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement during
the run of Resurrection Blues, many reviewers placed blame for the short-
comings of the Old Vic production on Altman's f.tlm methods put to use
in the theatre. Jonathan Croall makes clear that Altman was pushing the
actors to talk over each others' lines: "I don't care what you're saying to
your mother on the phone, Jane," Altman told Jane Adams, "fp]eople
don't have to hear every line."ss Adding to the cast's difficulties was James
Fox's late arrival to the role of Henri just a month before previews began.
Nearly every critic who reviewed the opening of the show in March 2006
considered it dreadfully under-rehearsed. I saw both performances on
March 4 and came away with the same impression.s9 Kevin Spacey and
the Old Vic needed this show to be both a critical and a financial success,
but Altman's production may come to be remembered as a legendary
debacle. It remains to be seen whether the play itself will survive such
critical condemnation in the short run, as no producer seems likely to
bring Resurrection Blues back to a major American theatre any time soon.
In the long run, however, Resurrection Blues ought to outlive the
early hue and cry over the premise, tone, and text. Today, The Crucible
thrives with audiences not familiar with Joe McCarthy and the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, and After the Fall has survived
5? Michael Billington: "G2: 'I Knew We'd Been Put Under a Microscope."
58 Jonathan Croall, "Close Up and Visual: Jonathan Croall Watches a
Hollywood Legend Rehearsing His Star-Studded Company," The Old Vic: Resurrection Blues
(London: The Old Vic, 2006).
5
9
Kare Egerron, review of Resurrection Blues, by Arthur Miller, d.irecred by
Robert Altman, Old Vic Theatre, London, The Arthur Miller ]ournal1. 1 (2006): 105-09.
26 EGERTON
protests that Miller was exploiting the death of Marilyn Monroe. Miller's
plays have almost always originated with an intimate connection to a spe-
cific historical moment. But over his lengthy career, it has become evident
that much of his work outgrows the circumstances of its creation and
nothing pleased him more during his lifetime than this response. The best
example of his may be his account of a Chinese production of Death of
a Salesman. GO It is quite possible that Resurrection Blues may come to signi-
fy a moment in American history when we were particularly prone to "do
bad things" with our television cameras, ""[e]specially when [we] know
they're bad."
61
If, by any stretch of the imagination, Miller's drama might
be part of the reason we will have changed, that would have pleased him,
too. By the time of his death, Miller had been writing plays for seventy
years, and he spent much of that time building his legacy by carefully
guiding the production of his work. From this point onward, that respon-
sibility will pass to the hands of others, but his plays, including Resurrection
Blues, will stand on their own.
60 Arthur Miller, The Salesman in Beijing (New York: Viking, 1984).
61 Arthur Miller, Resurrection Blues, 64.
JOURNAL OF AMERlCAN D RAMA AND THEATRE 18, N0.2 (SPRJNG 2006)
THE DANGERS OF MEMORY IN ARTHUR MILLER'S J CAN'T
REMEMBER .ANYrmNG
SUSAN C. W. ABBOTSON
In his 1987 autobiography, Timebends: A Life, Arthur 11iller tells
us that he based the characters of Leo and Leonora, the two characters
who appear in his one-act play of that same year, I Can't Remember
Atrything, on his old friends Sandy and Louisa Calder-both heavy
drinkers who felt as if they had come from a previous era and were feel-
ing somewhat cut off from the present. According to Miller, the Calders
lived lives of "bohemian acceptance, judging no-one, curious about
everything, but not far beneath the surface was a stubborn and somehow
noble sense of responsibility for the country, a sure instinct for decency
that, in the wildly experimental and super self-indulgent sixties, seemed in
its quality of unpretentious simplicity all but lost to history."l He had
intended for the play to be an expression of his "love for them both."2
However, in Miller's play Leo and Leonora take on a life of their
own which moves them away from Miller's original intention: although
they share similar traits, they are not, finally, as responsible as the Calders
and their lives become something more of a warning than a pleasant
homage. Why this happened gets to the heart of Ivfiller's process as a
playwright and the way he adapts autobiographical material to create an
alternate reality, related to people in his own life to provide a realistic
veneer, but creatively enhanced to underscore his thematic intent. He has
frequently been criticized for presenting plays that are just slices from his
own life; note the furor that sprang up around 1964's After the FaiL Miller
repeatedly insisted that the play was not strict autobiography, as in his
1964 Life article, "With Respect to Her Agony- But with Love," in which
he unequivocally states that Maggie is not Marilyn Monroe, and asks audi-
ences and critics to view the play as a "dramatic statement of a hidden
process which underlies the destructiveness hanging over this age."3
1 Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Ufe (New York: Grove, 1987), 503.
2 Ibid., 503.
3 Arthur Miller, "With Respect to Her Agony- But with Love," Uje, 7
February 1964, 66.
28 ABBOTSON
Lillian Hellman's mocking parody, "Lillian Hellman Asks a Little Respect
for Her Agony: An Eminent Playwright Hallucinates after a Fall Brought
on by a Current Dramatic Hit,"
4
was a typical response to this claim.
Most not only insisted Maggie had to be Monroe, but also that the por-
trait was an insult, and ivfiller's reputation seemed ruined in American
theatre for several decades to follow. But Leo and Leonora are no more
authentically the Calders than After the Falls Maggie was Monroe and
Quentin Miller's alter-ego.s
For Miller playwriting has always been an act of self-discovery
and an effective means of communicating with other people. As a kind
of prophet, a role in which critics have often seen him and with which he
concurs,6 Miller uncovers America's flaws and tries to enlighten people as
to the harsh realities of their existence, in the hope that they might strive
to improve their behavior and lives. With Miller's agreement, Steve
Centola once summed up 1-filler's work as deriving from a "vision that
emphasizes self-determinism and social responsibility and that is opti-
4 Lillian Hellman, "Lillian Hellman Asks a Little Respect for Her Agony: An
Eminent Playwright Hallucinates after a Fall Brought on by a Current Dramatic Hit,"
S h011J May 1964.
5 This is not the ftrst time Miller intended but failed to write something as a
fairly straight rendition of time and people he once knew (also, noticeably, using the word
"memory" in the title) and 1955's A Memory of Tlvo Mrmdqs was likewise transfigured
from a simple memory into something far more compelling and instructive. For Miller,
memories alone are not enough to make a drama, as the cast of A Memory of Tlvo Mondays
became emblematic of a mode of living, leading quiet but nonetheless worthy lives of
desperation, and Bert the more universal ftgure of the eternal quester rather than a
younger Yersion of Miller.
6 Philip Gelb first asserted MiUer's prophechood during a symposium on Death
of a Salesman in 1958, describing him as a man who "warns us of the possible bitter har-
vest that may be reaped from our present limited way; he calls attention to the moral and
ethical decisions that must be made; and he dramatizes the problem and the need for indi-
viduality and will. These may weU prove to be the ultimate meanings of hope." "Death of
a Salesman: A Symposium," in Conversations IIJith Arthur MiJJer, Matthew Roudane ed.
Qackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987), 27. In an interview with James Martine
Miller describes the "dramatist" as "a sort of prophet ... the leading edge of the audi-
ence," with a vision he needs to relate to that audience. James Martine, Critial Essays on
Arthur Miller (Boston: Hall, 1979), 177. Also, in his 1957 "Introduction co the Colluted
Plays," Miller speaks of the best kind of playwriting to him as being part of a "prophet-
ic theatre," which "is meant to become part of the lives of its audience" and asserts his
intention to write plays which will offer them "an experience which widens their aware-
ness of connection-the fllaments to the past and the future which lie concealed in ' life,"'
in The Theatre Essa;s of Arth11r Miller, Robert A. Martin ed. (New York: Viking, 1978), 128.
THE DANGERS OF M ~ I O R Y 29
rnistic and affirms life by acknowledging man's possibilities in the face of
his limitations and even sometimes in the dramatization of his failures."7
Rather than a quiet homage to two old friends, in Miller's hands I Can't
Remember At!Jthing becomes a stern warning, further reflected in the title
Miller gave to the double bill in which he placed the play, Danger: MemoryfJ
The play begins with Leonora paying one of her regular visits to
her old friend Leo. The two of them discuss the state of their current
lives and recall what it was like before Leonora's husband, Frederick, died.
Unable to reconcile their own different outlooks on life, they quarrel and
Leonora leaves. The play may be "thin," but, as Terry Otten points out,
the text is "by no means simple,"9 and a reading of the play is further
complicated by the existence of two versions, one published by Grove in
1986, and another by the Dramatists Play Service in 1987. This reading is
based on the latter of the published texts, which offers a substantially dif-
ferent ending. Instead of closing fairly amicably as the earlier script does,
this later version has Leo verbally attack Leonora, possibly damaging their
relationship forever. Miller has never commented on the reason for this
change, but it seems likely done to better balance the double-bill on
which it first appeared, and to create a more dramatically effective ending
for the play. It also suits far better the bill's combined title. In Leo's rejec-
tion of his long friendship with Leonora and refusal to accept responsi-
bility for the need she has to keep this relationship going, the danger
comes to light, for while in the companion play, Clara, the central figure
Albert Kroll allows his memories to transfigure his future for the better,
Leo falls into the trap of preferring to remain in the past.
I Can't Remember Af!Jthing deals with Miller's perennial concern
that he learned from Henrik Ibsen-the necessity for people to acknowl-
edge their past as an active part of their current existence. This runs
through All My Sons and the Kellers' selective memory to Miller's final
play Finishing the Picture, which attempts to draw some lessons from the
7 Steve Centola, " 'The Will to Live': An Interview with Arthur Miller," in
Conversations with Arthur Miller, Matthew Roudane ed. Qackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1987), 343.
8 The other play in the double-bill, titled Clara, depicts a father trying to recall
the necessary details to have his daughter's killer arrested, and he finds the memories he
elicits insist that he reevaluate his whole existence.
9 Terry Otten, The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 190.
30 ABBOTSON
characters and events surrounding the ftlming of The Misfits. For Miller,
the past informs the present, and to ignore it is to restrict the present.
The past needs to be accepted since it inevitably contains identity-form-
ing events, and its resonance and influence on current lives must be per-
mitted or face a loss of the identity it helped formulate. Nothing can be
more important to our placing of the past in our lives than the concept
of memor. But as Miller recognizes, memory holds many dangers, some
of which he attempts to illustrate in I Can't Remember Atrything, which
(ironically, given its title), shows the dangers of overindulging in memo-
ries of the past. This concern is one that becomes noticeably more
prominent in Miller's later plays as he too grows older with more memo-
ries. I Can't Remember Atrything appears to initiate this concern, perhaps
made more evident to Miller by his recent stroll down memory lane in
Timebends.
The past, when properly viewed, provides a comforting sense of
continuity and connection. In I Can't Remember Atrything, Leo and Leonora
are encouraged to remember everything they have been in the past to
help them to define who they are in the present. Leo and Leonora flnd a
comfort in their routine companionship, but this is suddenly destroyed
when Leo chooses to change their relationship. His motivation lies buried
in his refusal to accept the real past and his preference for a fake past he
has created in his imagination; this selflsh decision hurts both himself
and his old friend Leonora.IO
A sense of mystery pervades the start of I Can't Remember
Atrything and both readers and audiences are forced to ask numerous
questions. Central among these are: what makes Leo such a recluse, and
why is Leonora so patently self-destructive? The answer, we come to
learn, is not the world that they both try to blame, but themselves and
their own flawed natures. Both construct the present in which they must
live through the way they perceive the past. Neither offers an ideal way to
live, as both have difflculty dealing with the role of the past in their lives
and accepting any real responsibility for their own lives. Both Leo and
Leonora are reclusive to the point of danger. Since the death of
Frederick, who seems to have acted as a catalyst of connection to them
10 Might this even suggest a change in direction in Miller's whole philosophy
worthy of further exploration? In 1949, Willy Loman survives a hostile world by recre-
ating a past we realize is largely imaginary and yet he is deemed a hero. What Miller's con-
demnation of Leo does do, is draw attention to the damage such recreations can cause to
those people to whom one is emotionally connected, and makes us consider the ultimate
effect of a person like Willy's fantasies on his family.
THE DANGERS OF MEMORY 31
both, both have lost touch with the society around them, and neither
improves on this condition by the close of the play. The play shows how
our minds have the power to shape reality and define the identity of the
self, as well as the pitfalls that surround such endeavors.
Contradictions and ambivalences permeate the entire play. For
example, the setting of the play in Leo's kitchen evokes an island apart
from the rest of the world. Leo lives the life of a recluse out on a coun-
try back road, out of the way of the larger society. The line drawings of
dead friends that adorn his kitchen serve as a constant reminder to him
of his past, but also of his bleak future, as their deceased status indicates
the similar death that awaits him. Leo will not let the past be destroyed.
He hangs onto it tenaciously, patching up old objects so as to maintain
their presence, though on the surface allowing people to think that this is
merely his resistance to modern commercialism. But while on the one
hand he surrounds himself with his (idealized) past and seems to with-
draw into it, on the other hand he fights to remain a part of the world.
Both Leo and Leonora are consistently torn between such opposites.
Leo has been described as a man living in "good faith [with] no
illusions about life," a person who is unafraid to "accept his past."
11
Though this is certainly the impression Leo likes to convey, it really is not
true. Leo's whole life is an illusion, based on an idealized past from which
he cannot progress. As Gerald Weales indicates, Leo is obsessed with his
"roseate view of the years in which [Frederick], his partner, was the cen-
ter of their existence."12 He will not allow anything, fmally, to tamper
with his whitewashed memory of Frederick. When Leonora shows an
unwillingness to continue indulging in such memories he grows increas-
ingly upset with her. Centola, basing his reading on the earlier version of
the play, sees Leo's life as "meaningful because he has made it so with his
altruistic behavior."l3 But what if that altruistic behavior is shown to be
a sham, as it is in the revised version of the play?
11
Steve R. Centola, ed. The A chievement of Arthur Mi/ler: N ew Essqys (Dallas:
Contemporary Research, 1995), 137.
12 Gerald Weales, ''A Pair of Survivors: Miller's Danger: Memory!" Commonweal
114 (27 March 1987): 184.
13 Centola, 137.
32 ABBOTSON
Leo has been nice to Leonora purely out of selfish motives, to
try and maintain a link, through her, to his dead friend and leader. Now
that she is refusing to play the game, by refusing to remember, he
attempts to cast her off as an unnecessary burden, telling her she means
"absolutely nothing" to him,
14
despite her evident need for his company
to maintain her own sanity. Marilyn Stasio recognizes that Leonora may
not be as irresponsible as some critics have seen her, and that fault can
be found with Leo. She points out that he "is crotchety because his vague
companion has forgotten all the ritual signposts-the old friendships and
the shared anecdotes of two long lifetimes-that have made their com-
panionship comfortable and secure." Meanwhile, Leonora, "is bewildered
by the way he clings to the familiar rituals and safe past, refusing to
acknowledge what really matters: the eroded quality of their present
lives."
1
S Unlike Leo, Leonora desires to improve her present life rather
than spend the remainder of it hiding in the past-a past that we discover
was not so perfect. Despite Leo's commendations of Frederick, in reali-
ty he was a coarse, loud-mouthed, and unfaithful individual.
Leo is not in the best of health, evidently suffering from arthri-
tis and exuding the feeling that he is just filling in time before his death.
What Otten views as Leo's "active participation in life,"16 underscored by
his constant stage business, seems more an active participation in death.
Leo is unhealthily obsessed with death and dying. He argues with
Leonora over which of them will die first, and surrounds himself with
images of death. The past has become an arena of death for him. What
he needs is a more positive way of dealing with the past that will allow
him, instead, to concentrate on life-which can then allow him a future.
He tries to do this by centering his remembrances on images of food and
parties, but he knows in his heart that this time has passed. He no longer
has Frederick to follow and he feels lost in the modern world. We are
given as Leo's key quality the fact that he is "stubborn," and it is clear that
he has not yet entirely given in to the death impulse. This manifests itself
largely through his connection to Leonora, despite his attempts by the
close of the play to sever that connection.
14 Arthur Miller, Danger: Memory! (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1987),
26.
IS Marilyn Stasio, "Miller at Grips with Memory," New York Post 9 February
1987, in New York Theatre Critics' Review 48 (1987): 346.
16 Otten, 201.
THE DANGERS OF M EMORY 33
The similarity between the characters' names, Leo and Leonora,
suggests that she may be another version of Leo, and she is. Leonora pro-
vides both a contrast and a complement to Leo. Where he is small and
sickly, she is as large and colorful as her wrap, evoking a life she would
like to deny, but cannot escape. Where Leo wants to immerse himself in
his past, but is beginning, reluctantly, to forget certain details,l7 Leonora
pretends to remember nothing, although the memories insist upon
imposing themselves. She declares that she hates crosswords because they
are so trivial, but she really hates them because they force her to remem-
ber things. Extremes, as ever, are bad, and it will be a balance between
these two that :Miler will offer as the best way to live our lives. Otten sug-
gests that "they depend on each other for mutual support,"IB and it is ulti-
mately only through their connection to each other that these two will
survive; alone, each runs the evident (and ultimately selfish) danger of
totally withdrawing from life- Leo into his past, and Leonora into obliv-
lon.
Leonora recognizes her connection to Leo and may believe that
through this connection she can reconnect to others or with hope itself.
She insists that Leo always sees the purpose in things because this is what
she herself so desperately needs to do. She displaces her belief onto her
closest friend so she can remain close without having to feel that it may
betray her. Leo, although a recluse, does resist his impulse to cut himself
off from life, evidenced in his continuation of hope (despite having rec-
ognized and refused to ignore evil in the world). Also, his decision to
leave his organs to the hospital may reaffirm his morbid fascination with
his own impending death, but it is also an act of attrition, fellowship,
involvement, and connection. This seems to counter his current isola-
tion-although he is giving the organs for research work rather than as a
donor. But Leo's explanation that since the world is only a mass of chem-
icals, it need not be judged by human standards, is less true optimism
than a denial of humanity. He needs to maintain connections to his pres-
ent as well as his past, in order to remind him continually of both his own
and others' humanity-part of this may lead to painful realizations, but
such pain will remind him that human beings have feelings and are more
than chemicals. It is only through this more embracing recognition that
17 Leo is growing forgetful, and it is against his will. He forgets little details
here and there: such as setting the table, identifying who called him earlier in the day, and
calculating numbers correctly.
18
Otten, 200.
34 ABBOTSON
his optimism can be honest, just as Leonora's memories will only be hon-
est when they embrace both the past and the present as worthy of her
involvement.
While Leonora, in her despair, is drawn to Leo's apparent opti-
mism, he is drawn, in his sickliness, to her life force. Their connection to
each other keeps them both on the side of life. He forces her to remem-
ber (even as she goads him into remembering for her). She forces him to
hope (even as, or pardy because, she tries to argue him out of his opti-
mism). For a time they sustain each other. Leonora's memories assist Leo
in remembering, as he begins, unwillingly, to forget; Leo's hope assists
Leonora in refusing to fmally give in to the despair she has been strug-
gling against. John Beaufort is quite right to point towards the "depth and
constancy of the old friends' interdependence and mutual support,"19 but
this ignores the fact that Miller also needed to display the depth of their
mutual betrayals. Miller's revision seeks the complexity of real life rela-
tionships rather than unrealistic easy solutions. Despite their connection,
neither Leo nor Leonora can consistendy supply what each so desperate-
ly needs, as both withdraw from that connection when it becomes too
complicated.
Behind the apparendy secure seclusion that surrounds them, Leo
and Leonora are filled with uncertainty and discontent. For Leo, the past
is not enough and for Leonora, the present fails to satisfy. We hear
Leonora cough and swallow as she enters to hint at her suppressed dis-
comfort and both of them seem tense and quarrelsome throughout the
play. Both are under an inordinate amount of strain as they try to make
their lives more comfortable by pursuing the wrong goals. What each
needs to learn is that the past is neither a refuge nor a curse, but an aid
towards ensuring a healthy present and future. The present and future
cannot be avoided. They should be embraced with strength and under-
standing, which the proper acknowledgment of the past can provide.
Leonora drinks too much, a classic symbol of avoidance, but
what is she avoiding? She is attempting to avoid her own life. Telling us
she can no longer even taste food, we get a sense of her cutting herself
off from physical sensations in her attempt to withdraw. When Leo
reminds her of eating bread the week before-symbolically the staff of
life-her self-imposed forgetfulness dissipates a litde and she starts to
remember. Her memories are of her past life and are thus a reminder of
!9 John Beaufort, "Memories I nfuse Two Miller One-Acters," Christian Science
Monitor 11 February 1987, in New York Theatre Critics' Review 48 (1987): 347.
THE DANGERS OF MEMORY 35
life itself, just as they are a part of her current one. It seems that Leonora
is unhappy less from her apparent loss of memory, but more from her
inability to forget entirely. The point is, she does remember, despite her
attempts not to do so. Initially this evidences itself as she recalls trivial
things like the dentist, the plumber and the raccoon. But she continues
(in both versions of the play) to suppress the more personal aspects of
her life, as if she is trying to eradicate herself by eradicating her past.
Both characters' connection to the past is suspect, as in the past
both have been self-admitted heavy-drinkers, which may have led them to
a rather distorted vision of the world, or even led them to have no vision
at all. Both admit that they drank their way through the defining event of
the twentieth century, World War Two, and largely by-passed its concerns.
Thus, they also missed the Holocaust, the twentieth-century specter of
evil. It is, in part, that specter towards which they are now so ambiva-
lent- recognizing its inevitable impact on the world, yet also wishing to
escape from under its shadow. They feel trapped by it, partly because it
lies, as yet, unacknowledged in their forgotten past, and so continually
threatens to reemerge and destroy their potential future-possibly, in the
form of death itself.
Leonora does not want to hear any current, outside news,
because she can no longer cope with its potential horrors. She says that
she wants to die because she feels so useless and unnecessary. Leo and
Leonora have evidently been meeting like this on an escalating basis for
the last ten years-giving Leonora, in particular, the sense of structure in
her life that she needed after her husband's death. But now, Leonora is
consciously trying not to remember anything in order to make her life
seem "imaginary" and fictional (in a sense, utterly unstructured, she is
offering herself to the chaos, as an act not of courage but more of self-
immolation), for such lives are easier to live as they do not require the
same level of involvement. Memory insists upon involvement, and
involvement can be dangerous as it forces one to face up to responsibil-
ities that Leonora appears to be seeking to avoid. To recall is as hard, at
times, as it is dangerous-but it is also necessary. Beaufort sees Leonora
as "a disillusioned idealist,"20 and Steve Centola describes her as "a por-
trait of despair ... a woman who has lost all hope and finds no meaning
in life ... her despondence colors her perspective of everything else and
20 Beaufort, 347.
36
AnBOTSON
even causes her to view America as a society in decline."21 When one
starts to see life as meaningless, then the past also loses its meaning-as
it does for Leonora. Leonora has tried to eradicate her relationship with
the past, for memory insists on involvement of a kind which scares her;
but such involvement is necessary to live fully, and should not be avoid-
ed. Leonora is not just fighting the past, but also the present and future-
she is scared of what will become of her. Leonora has seen the evil
around her, despaired at her ability to make a difference, and given up the
fight.
Leonora recreates the past into something brighter than the
present. She pictures it as a period when she had no real responsibilities.
She tries to convince herself, and Leo, that pre-World War Two was a bet-
ter time-of greater hope, belief, caring, even humanity. But, in truth,
evil had always been in the world and the war did not change things. It
had just been easier to ignore before such events as the Holocaust
occurred. Leo offers us evidence that their past had not been so won-
derful in his description of his father dying drunk and alone in the mines.
Leonora must face the fact that she was content in the past only because
she had severely restricted her view of the world-just as she stayed with
her husband despite all his affairs, by ignoring them. She can no longer
live with such self-imposed limits, as the world insists that she view it
fully.
The picture we are given of Frederick, Leonora's dead husband,
ironically, brims with life: both in his connection to food (bread and sala-
mi) and sexuality (making lascivious jokes and sleeping with many
women). In trying to forget him, Leonora is separating herself from a
potential source of life. Of course, she is also separating herself from a
potential source of pain, which is why she has buried his memory. But to
live a full life necessitates some pain. Leo forces her to remember, and it
is necessary that she does. Frederick had, symbolically, built bridges for a
living and for the living-with his death it has been hard for both Leo
and Leonora to maintain such connections or to build further ones,
which is necessary.
The ability to look to the past and see it in its entirety is what
assists us in finding a footing in the present; there will always be danger
in concentrating too much on either the bad or the good. For a firm foot-
ing, balance is the key. Once Leonora renews her connection to the past
she has tried to eradicate, she may draw strength from it as well as warn-
21 Centola, 137.
THE DANGERS OF MEMORY 37
ing. The "samba" record that her son has sent allows Leonora and Leo
to recall something vital from their past which may help sustain them into
the future-not death or betrayal, but a moment of joy and the com-
radeship of dance. Together, they do an old-fashioned samba to the
record and are strengthened by this moment of close connection- they
even flirt a little to show the sexual vibrancy (life-force) that the dance has
awakened in them. However, this is soon shattered by Leo's banishment
of Leonora at the close of the play.
Although he is present only by report, Lawrence, Leonora's son,
is related to these two in ways beyond his blood-ties and initials-from
what the couple say about him, he too appears to have been searching for
some kind of hope in a disappointing world. He went to an Eastern
retreat and tried to flnd contentment in Buddhist philosophy. He may
have found some direction, as he is now reconnecting with his mother
after three years of silence. He sends her a record, and this time one to
which his mother can actually relate. Due to his youth he has been able
to conduct his search more openly and with greater vigor. He is also less
experienced and less likely to be discouraged by past failure. Leo and
Leonora have a greater struggle due to their age. Leonora is, at least, in
her seventies and Leo in his sixties.22 Living in the youth culture of
America Leonora and Leo are faced with the struggle to remain vital.
Nevertheless, it is something they attempt-just as Miller himself does
by continuing to produce plays despite the critical slump he had been
expenencmg.
Basing his reading on the earlier \ersion, Centola insists that I
Can't Remember Af!Jthing moves toward an epiphany and a positive out-
come for the characters involved. While this is certainly true of its com-
panion play, Clara, it does not apply so clearly to Leo and Leonora given
Miller's revised version. June Schleuter's description of the play as
"autumnal" and "poignant," coupled with her observation that the play-
ers' conversation is "settling always on the decay of American life,"23 sug-
gests a less optimistic reading of the play, but she does not indicate the
vers10n of the play to which she refers. The implication of Miller's
22 Although Miller does not tell us their ages directly, these ages are appropri-
ate- given that Leonora probably married in her late teens or early twenties, was married
for forty-five years, has been a \1\idow for ten, and is twelve years older than Leo. Miller
would have been seventy-one when he wrote this play.
23 June Schleuter, "Miller in the Eighties," in The Cambridge Companion to Arthur
Miller, Christopher Bigsby, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 163.
38 ABBOTSON
revised version is that Leo and Leonora may strive for life, but will not
escape lonely deaths. The earlier Grove version had offered too easy a
solution with its happy resolution, leaving us little to ponder once the
curtain falls. The revision becomes one more piece of evidence regard-
ing Miller's continual concern with his craft. He knew that the ftrst ver-
sion lacked verisimilitude and changed it to produce a far more effective
dramatic close.
The major difference between the two versions of the play, as
stated above, is that the later version includes a major argument between
Leo and Leonora; to ignore this is to read the play wrongly since it dras-
tically changes the play's message. The disagreement begins with Leo ask-
ing Leonora not to visit every day as he declares that she is making his
health suffer. She leaves in umbrage and he seems elated that he has ftnal-
ly curtailed their friendship, stating that he has never cared for Leonora,
but only her deceased husband, Frederick: "Don't you know there's noth-
ing between us?-I did it for him, that's all .... You're nothing to me."24
This assures us that Leo has as many hang-ups and faults as Leonora. He
is certainly not the ideal some critics have described.
Centola initially viewed Leo as a "model of human conduct" in
his ability to face "life's absurdities (aging and death most noticeably) with
courage and the determination not to be defeated in his struggle to give
it meaning," which he does, Centola insists, "by accepting the freedom
and responsibility that every person has to make the most of their
lives."25 Such an assessment becomes decidedly uncertain given Miller's
revised ending. While Weales suggests that Leo and Leonora are "a pair
of survivors who depend on one another for whatever human connec-
tion they have,"26 in the end, that connection seems broken, and largely
through Leo's selfishness. It is Leo's insistence on his false memories
which destroys both their friendship and any chance that either one will
be able to re-engage in a meaningful life.
On learning of the revised ending Centola admitted, "I like the
Dramatists Play Service version better because it resonates with greater
suggestiveness and ambiguity at the play's end-and such openended-
24 Danger: Memory!, 26.
25 Centola, 138.
26 Weales, 184.
THE DANGERS OF MEMORY 39
ness, for me, is simply a more accurate reflection of life's complexity."27
By changing the ending in such a way Miller transforms the play from a
roseate view of old age to a telling commentary on the intricacies and
dangers of life among the elderly. Centola also insists that despite this
bleaker conclusion, hope remains in the play given that the couple are
talking on the phone and still evidently maintaining a slender connection,
however tenuous. "Leo may be telling Leonora that he cannot continue
to see her, but the fact is that he does continue to talk to her-a clear
indication that his action belies his speech."28 In this Centola points to
another interesting truth about Miller's work: however dark the situation
becomes, he always allows for some glimmer of hope to shine through.
Also, we should remember that Leo and Leonora are not real.
They are constructs created to teach a lesson, and having witnessed their
errors we are given the opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes in
real life. That is, by heeding the warning of the play, we might be led to
realize better not only the dangers of memory, but also the importance
of how we perceive the past and allow it to influence our present. Would
the Calders have been flattered or insulted by this theatrical portrait of
two damaged people supposedly based upon them?29 Could they have
even recognized themselves? Indeed, there are aspects of Alexander
Calder's character reported in Timebends that evoke the image of Frederick
rather than of Leo. Or might they have recognized Miller's truer goal, for
which he merely used his memory of them to move toward the goal of
any prophet-to inform whoever will listen through a parable of sorts,
how best to live. It was to offer this kind of revelation, finally, that urged
Miller to continue to write, even during the years when he was critically
out of favor.
27
Steve Centola, ''Notes and Queries," Arthur Miller Society Newsletter 8
(December 2003), 13.
2
8 Ibid., 13.
29 Alexander Calder died in 1976, eleven years before this play was produced. I
have found no record regarding Louisa Calder's status when the play came out, or of any
response had she been alive at the time.
JOUR.t'lAL OF AMERlCAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 18, N0.2 (SPRlNG 2006)
You CAN'T GET A MAN WITH A GuN-BUT You CAN GET AN
AUDIENCE:
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY
VALERIE M. JOYCE
The term legend evokes the sense of a mythic, larger than life per-
sona, and stories surrounding a legendary figure are often more fiction
than fact. Indeed, with enough repetition and retelling, fiction becomes
fact in the mind of popular audiences. Little Annie Oakley, the legendary
cowgirl sharpshooter, the first female star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and
the heroine of the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun, offers just such an
example of fiction transforming into fact.
The persona of Annie Oakley has inspired plays, musicals, films,
television series, and countless fictionalizations and biographies through-
out the twentieth century. These various incarnations have contributed to
the process of transforming the fictions associated with her legend into
the "facts" of her biography. Her intriguing persona still resonates for the
American public as evidenced by the 2006 PBS biography, which exam-
ines her celebrity while maintaining reverence for her mythic status.
Often, the fictionalized aspect of a legend concerns the charac-
ter's accomplishments or skills. This is not the case with Annie Oakley,
for historians do not contest her marksmanship. Neither was she the
"first," "only," or "best" woman to perform as a professional
markswoman. In fact, Oakley biographers Shirl Kasper and Courtney
Riley Cooper note that in the early 1880s, Oakley joined more than a
dozen other fancy shooters in the public shooting arena.
1
Yet her legend
endures, while time and popular culture have forgotten the others. In this
instance, the invented element of the Annie Oakley legend is the aura of
femininity that separated her from her competitors and triggered her rise
to fame and fortune.
Oakley played the coquettish cowgirl in the arena for Buffalo Bill
Cody from 1885-1902, spanning almost two decades of turbulent socie-
tal change as Victorian America progressed into the Modern era. Martha
1
Shirl Kasper, Annie Oakley (Norman: Unhersity of Oklahoma Press, 1992),
12. Kasper's authoritative biography relies on detailed research and does much to remove
itself from the mythology of Oakley, though in my recent discussions with Oakley's
grand-niece Bess Edwards, Edwards contests many of the "facts" presented by Kasper
and presents her own version of the "truth." See also, Courtney Riley Cooper, Annie
Oakley: Woman At Arms (New Y ark: Duffield, 1920), 128-29.
42 JOYCE
Burr, in her study of American cowgirl iconography, argues that the
"icon" of the American cowgirl reflected the transition of gender norms
during this period, establishing a "cultural niche" for female counterparts
in the typically "male sphere of the West."2 The persona of Annie Oakley
was the wildly popular embodiment of this gender role transition. She
was a Victorian anomaly. She was charming, feminine, and famous for
skills that her society considered strictly masculine.
This unusually appealing mix made Annie Oakley a major box-
office draw and the Wild West predominantly featured her image on
posters and advertisements. In her publicity photos, she is always care-
fully posed, mixing the masculine trappings of her career with a distinct-
ly feminine flair. The emphasis on Oakley's feminine image is evident
upon examination of these photos, since great care was taken with every
detail (the style of her hair, the fit of her costume, the presence or
absence of jewelry, props and background scenery, and the direction of
her gaze) in order to evoke the desired effect. However, the identity of
the controlling hand behind the style choices remains a mystery. Did this
reassuring image convey Oakley's convictions and conservative beliefs or
did her publicists carefully orchestrate this image in order to appeal to a
society in gender crisis?3
Though many scholars have investigated Oakley's biography,
especially in connection to its various theatrical incarnations, few have
focused on her visual representation. Yet, I argue that by exploring the
ways in which Oakley deftly combined masculine and feminine imagery
in the hundreds of photos taken of her, scholars may gain insight into
the ways Oakley manipulated her image to present the ideal Victorian
woman engaged in a very unwomanly pastime.
In this article, I focus on photographs of Oakley throughout her
life. I also offer comparative photos of other American cowgirls, to delin-
eate the differences among images that were designed to appeal to the
audience of the Wild West. After Oakley's employment in the Wild West
ended, the viewer marks a discernable change in the representation of
her femininity, which suggests that her publicity team did, in fact, con-
struct her feminine image for publicity purposes.
2 Martha Burr, "The American Cowgirl: History and Iconography, 1860-
Present," Ph.D. Diss. NYU August, 1997.
3 Hisrorians have contested much of the information available about Oakley's
life. Oakley wrote a few articles and an unpublished autobiography in the early 1900s, but
several biographers question whether these perpetuated her own myth. The hundreds of
photographs that were taken during and after her career with the Wild West are the clos-
est an historian can come to facts in the case of Annie Oakley.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 43
Oakley captured the imagination of the American and European
public, and her audiences embraced her feminized image so enthusiasti-
cally that it has become an inseparable part of her legend. Though it is
impossible to define the extent to which Oakley had a hand in her repre-
sentation, the consistency of her presentation and participation in this
image makes it probable that she was at least a willing accomplice, if not
one of the masterminds behind her persona.
DOIN' WHAT COMES NATURALLY
The newspaper reports, historical document, and biographers'
interpretations available on Oakley contain more contradictions than
agreements. There are, however, facts of Oakley's life upon which most
biographers and historians concur. Phoebe Ann Moses was born into a
very poor Quaker family in Darke County, Ohio in 1860.4 Little ''Annie's"
father died when she was very young, and by her teens she began shoot-
ing wild game to eat and sell in order to support the family. Throughout
the late 1870s Annie built a reputation among shopkeepers for her accu-
rate shooting that resulted in a shooting match that would change her life
and begin her professional career as a sharpshooter. s
As a young woman of twenty-one, Damaine Vonada reports,
Annie Moses was "pretty and petite, five feet tall and under a hundred
pounds." This girl with "attractive blue eyes" and "perfect white teeth"
starded marksman Frank Buder at their initial meeting in the spring of
1881.6 He later recalled, "I almost dropped dead when a litde slim girl in
short dresses stepped out to the mark with me."
7
After a year of
4
Kasper, 3-4. There are no birth records for Oakley but both family records
and her death certificate place her birth on August 13, 1860.
5 Ibid., 6, 9. By sixteen, Annie's abilities as a sharpshooter allowed her to even
pay off the lien on her mother's home.
6 Damaine Vonada, "Annie Oakley was More than 'A Crack Shot in Petticoats,"'
Smithsonian 21, (September 1990), 134. Despite great debate about this issue, most sources
state that their fLrst meeting was in a shooting match in the spring of 1881, which she
won. Kasper places Frank Butler at about twenty-four-years old when he met Annie
Moses. Frank had emigrated from Ireland as a boy, worked odd jobs in New York City,
married, and had two children at a very young age. See Kasper, Annie Oak'rJ, 13.
7 Ibid., 139. The root of the debate is twofold, in that Oakley misrepresented
her age in her career, and also it is unclear as to whether Frank Butler was in fact divorced
from his first wife by 1882, an unseemly discussion for the Victorian age. Kasper, Annie
Oak'rJ, 20.
44 JOYCE
courting, the two married in 1882.8
The newlywed couple began touring as fancy shooters on the
variety circuit and Annie adopted the stage name Oakley. Glenda Riley, in
her essay "Peerless Lady Wingshot," relates that the couple built Annie
Oakley's persona around their own "solid family values."9 Butler taught
her all about the art of performing and several new stunts, as well as how
to read and write.1o Soon, he stepped into a managerial role with Oakley
as the star, though he remained part of the performance.
Oakley's natural appeal brought the new team relative success as
a touring act, but despite this, they were poor. Butler was a good manag-
er, though, and with any extra money they earned, Oakley's feminine
image always came first. She recalled him telling her, "Well, Annie, we
have enough this week to buy you a pretty hat."11 Finally, the financial
worries were too great, and they decided to join up with the Sells
Brothers Circus in 1884.
The famous Indian chief Sitting Bull saw Oakley's performance
with the circus in St. Paul, Minnesota. She impressed him so much with
her skillful shooting that he decided to adopt her, giving her an Indian
name that, loosely translated, means "Little Sure Shot."12 Butler saw this
alliance as an opportunity to promote Oakley's connection to the "Wild
West," to appeal to a public that was, as indicated by Riley, "caught some-
where between the disappearing frontier and the emerging machine
age."13 He shrewdly took out an advertisement in the New York Clipper
proclaiming "little Annie's" new friendship with this formidable Indian,
establishing her as the "girl of the Western plains."1
4
Butler's instinct to
craft Oakley's image to appeal to the emotions of a society undergoing
many changes would prove successful and profitable for years to come.
8 Kasper, Annie Oaklty, 23. The couple avoided discussing their wedding date,
possibly to protect Annie's reputation and avoid scandal. For, according to Kasper, it is
possible that Annie left Darke County and began her life on the road with Frank before
they were married, as a marriage certificate that Annie produced late in life establishes that
they were married in Windsor, Canada, on June 20, 1882. See Ibid., 17 and 20.
9 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 98.
10 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 139.
11 Newark (N.J.) Sunday News, 11 May, 1902, quoted in Kasper, Annie Oaklty, 24.
12 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 99.
13 Ibid.
14
Ibid.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 45
The next season, in 1885, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler joined
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West. Buffalo Bill, already a legendary hero him-
self, had organized an enormous outdoor tour of trick shooters, steer
ropers, and Indians who attacked mercilessly before being beaten by the
White man. Cody's extravaganza glorified the Old West and in its travels
spread a lasting impression upon those in the east and Europe by edu-
cating his audience as to the historical significance of the events in the
West. He did so with an authority that was believable, as historian
Jonathan Martin observes, because of its "sense of realism." The Wild
West appeared to the audience to be "a series of original, genuine and
instructive object lessons," played out by real heroes of the western
plains, as if the segments were in no way fictional. IS According to one
biographer, Cody "succeeded in molding the archetypal cowboy as the
archetypal American."t6 Buffalo Bill used this authority and prominence
(with the help of Frank Butler) to create the image of the ideal American
cowgirl in Annie Oakley. She would appeal to all Americans, male or
female: a pretty, white, Protestant girl who had mastered the skills of a
man but who was still a Victorian lady.
SOCIETY IN GENDER CRISIS
Annie Oakley's meteoric rise to fame in the Wild West can, of
course, be attributed to her skill with a gun, but it must also be attributed
to her packaging. Upon seeing an exhibition of her shooting, Nate
Salsbury, the Wild West business manager, greeted Oakley for the first
time with these words, "Fine! Wonderful! Have you got some photo-
graphs with your gun?"t7 Photographs of Oakley with her gun were
staged very carefully throughout her career. She appealed to the Victorian
men in the audience as a woman who did not threaten their masculinity.
This appeal was crucial in this time of social, economic, and industrial
change. The make-up of the nation's work force was swiftly changing
from farming, carpentry, and other traditional manual labor to office or
IS Jonathan D. Martin, '"The Grandest and Most Cosmopolitan Object
Teacher': Btiffo!o Bill's Wild West and the Politics of American Identity, 1883-1899 ," Radical
History Review 66 (1996), 93-94.
16 Albert Stern, "True West," Americana 14 (September/October 1986), 64.
17 Annie Oakley, The Story of My Llfe (n.p.: NEA Service 1926); chapter 6, quot-
ed in Kasper, Annie Oakfry, 38.
46 JOYCE
machine work. For many men, this change caused a "crisis of masculini-
ty ... a worry that the work they did was softening, efferninizing and
devoid of opportunities to prove heroic manliness."18 Buffalo Bill, as a
producer, was well aware of these societal concerns and played to them.
Webster:r New World Dictionary defines "masculine" as "having
qualities regarded as characteristic of men and boys, as strength, vigor,
[and] boldness." The dictionary defines the characteristics of "feminine"
as those of a woman, or, "gentleness, weakness, delicacy, [and] mod-
esty."19 Mary P. Ryan, in Womanhood in America, asserts that specific "sex-
ual stereotypes" and "role divisions" became "firmly imprinted on the
American mind" in the mid-1800s. She attributed much of this to the
popularity of God'!)'j Lac!J:r Book, which glorified the "soft and soothing"
nature of Queen Victoria as the "archetype of femininity."20 One of
God'!J:r writers attributed "purity of mind, simplicity and frankness of
heart, benevolence ... forbearance and self-denial" as the characteristic
endowments of women.21 Bearing in mind both of these definitions,
spanning more than a century, I have assigned the categories of mascu-
line or feminine in the analysis of the photographs in this study.
I base my analysis of Oakley's visual image on a broader survey
of photographs, renderings, and writings of the late Victorian period,
specifically 1870-1894. Analyzing these images helped categorize the par-
ticularly gendered traits in the photographs. I use the comparative binary
of strong or bold traits (masculine) versus traits signaling a weak, gentle,
and delicate nature (feminine). Physical position of the subject, costume,
the position of the gun, and subject's grasp of the gun all offer the view-
er cues as to the subject's gender and nature.
There were five specific aspects I evaluated under the heading of
physical position: the body, the mood conveyed by the pose, and the
placement of the subject's feet, hands, and gaze. I attributed poses con-
veying strength (standing, confident, feet apart, both hands on gun, direct
gaze) as masculine, and I determined that the poses portraying a gentle
or delicate disposition (seated, upright posture, feet together, one hand
18 Martin, "Grandest," 100-01.
19 David B. Guralnick, ed., Websters New World Dictionary (New York: Prentice
Hall Press, 1986): 515, 871.
20 Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975),
113-14.
21 Ibid., 115.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 47
on gun, profile pose or indirect gaze) to be feminine. Similarly, I analyzed
the subject's relationship to the gun. If the subject had a firm grasp of
the gun or held the gun in a manner that would indicate firing the gun
(aimed), comfort with the gun (slung over shoulder), or in some cases a
phallic representation of the gun (erect), I considered these poses as mas-
culine. If, on the contrary, the gun was handled in a delicate manner (in
lap or cradled in arms), aimed awkwardly, or was absent, I suggest this
connotes femininity.
I also categorized the costumes in each photo. In 1878, Mary
Eliza Haweis best summarized the importance of costume, in her work
The Art of Beauty:
In nothing are character and perception so insensibly
but inevitably displayed as in dress, and in taste in dress.
Dress is the second self, a dumb self, yet a most elo-
quent expositer of the person. Dress bears the same
relation to the body as speech does to the brain; and
therefore dress may be called the speech of the body.22
For the women's costumes, the fit of the clothing offers the best
clues to how a woman presented her femininity. In the late nineteenth
century, women still generally wore corsets. As E. Butterick & Co.'s
Summer Catalogue of 1882 states, "Beautiful women are more frequently
known as such by an elegant figure than a pretty face."23 But, in the male-
dominated western arena, performers of both genders generally wore
looser clothes in order to perform the tricks and stunts on horseback or
bicycle.
Other choices involving costumes and accessories are a bit more
intricate, as are the messages each piece conveys. For example, wearing
gloves, in this context, is a masculine not a feminine trait (unlike what a
twentieth-century viewer might imagine). The gloves in the photographs
are heavy and leather. In the nineteenth century, needing these gloves
would denote using a gun, as the shooter would wear gloves to protect
his hands from gunpowder. Likewise, a sash or scarf accessory is not
22 Mary Eliza Haweis, The Art of Beauty (London, 1878), no page, quoted in
Alison Gernshiem, Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survry, (New York:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1981), 66.
23 Nancy Villa Bryk, ed., E. Butterick & Co. Summer Catalogue in American Dress
Pattern Catalogues 1873-1909 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1988), 182,38.
48 JOYCE
inherently male. However, this would not have been worn by ladies of the
day as daily street wear; it is clearly a theatrical piece suggesting the west-
ern frontier and the cavalry. The women in the western arena did femi-
nize their costumes with trim and ribbons, as well as jewelry and medals,
if they had them.
I assessed the style of the subject's hair and the gender it signi-
fies by social standards of the day as well. According to a study of
Victorian fashion, women's hair was "dressed in plaits or a twist low at
the back, with a fringe, usually curled on the forehead." Men's hair was
"worn uncurled and usually parted down the middle." The moustache
was popular, as was the Vandyke beard, which Buffalo Bill wore through-
out his career.24
In his large hat, leather pants, buffalo skin coat, and flowing hair,
Martin labels Cody the "paragon of American manhood," in his study of
the Wild West. The program for the Wild West describes the star:
Young, sturdy, a remarkable specimen of manly beauty,
with the brain to conceive and the nerve to execute,
Buffalo Bill par excellence is the exemplar of the strong
and unique traits that characterize a true Amencan fron-
tiersman. 25
In Figure 1, Buffalo Bill displays many inherently masculine traits.
Despite his seated position, his pose is casual and confident and he is gaz-
ing directly into the camera. His hair is long and flowing, which was not
typical of men's fashion of the time, but was distinctly western in flavor.
He is wearing gloves, his over-jacket is loose, and his hat and belt buckle
are very large. Finally, the positioning of the gun, erect between his legs,
as well as the whip in his left hand, invites a reading of confident mas-
culinity. In her essay "Shotgun Wedlock: Annie Oakley's Power Politics in
the Wild West," Tracy Davis confirms this reading: "Cody corroborated
the gun's phallic surrogacy with the power invested in masculinized
chivalric characteristics such as strength, honor, and violence in a 'moral'
cause."26
24 Gernsheim, Victorian, 75-77.
25 Blljfalo Bzl/} Wzld West and Congress of Ro11gh Riders of the World, 1893 Program,
6-8, Townshend Walsh Collection, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public
Library, as cited in Martin, "Grandest," 101.
26 Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 142.
Figure 1: Buffalo Bill Cody, 1888
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum
Figure 2: Buffalo Bill, circa 1900
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; P. 69.776
so jOYCE
In Figure 2, Buffalo Bill effuses manliness later in life, as he
stands, confidendy, feet apart, gazing directly into the camera. Both of his
hands firmly grasp the gun that is placed casually over his shoulder. Once
again he has on gloves for shooting and his hair is down, his jacket hang-
ing loosely around his frame. Amy Leslie, when reviewing the Wild West
show in 1893 for the Chicago Tribune, called Cody "the most imposing
man in appearance that America ever grew."27 If this paragon of mas-
culinity was the archetypal cowboy, how did the gendered answer, cow-
girls, fit into the western scene?
While they may not have fit easily into the western frontier, cow-
girls were a natural draw for show business, where anything unusual sells.
May Lillie, one of Annie Oakley's contemporaries, was the wife of
Buffalo Bill's main competitor Pawnee Bill. Though one would never
guess it from Figure 3, May Lillie was educated at Smith College and was,
like Oakley, a product of a Quaker upbringing.zs This imposing image is
typical of the American cowgirl as she was presented in the Victorian age.
The traits of masculinity are hard to miss, as Lillie stands glaring into the
camera, confident and aggressive. Her firm grip on the pistol highlights
her utilitarian gloves. Her precariously perched hat and loose-fitting
blouse also indicate masculinity in their ill-fit and yet, her other hand
planted on her waist is sexually provocative.
Figure 4 represents another "aggressive" cowgirl, Lillian Smith,
the "California Huntress." Smith joined the Wild West in 1886. At fifteen
years of age, she was Oakley's first direct competition, and by all accounts
the relationship was not a friendly one. Audiences and critics never
regarded Smith as highly as Oakley and she only lasted a few years in the
show. Walter Havighurst, one of Annie Oakley's earliest biographers,
described Smith as "a rawboned girl without a trace of grace or magnet-
ism."29 This studio photograph of Smith exhibits many of the masculine
traits in common with the cowboy image of Buffalo Bill, including the
confident stance and grasp of the weapon. However, in this publicity
photo for Buffalo Bill's WzJd West, there are some feminine traits that
become apparent.
27 Chicago Tribune, 1 May, 1893, as cited in JoyS. Kasson, Buffalo Btl/'s Wild West
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 99-101; Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 36.
28 Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 144.
29 Walter Havighurst, Annie Oak/ry of the Wild West (New York: Macmillan,
1954), 71 .
Figure 3: May Lillie, 1908
Counesy of the Ringling Museum of the Circus
Figure 4: Lillian Smith, The California Huntress, 1886, Age 15
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; P69.1588
52 jOYCE
Lillian Smith, a petite girl, aims the gun away from the camera so
that she is in profile (thereby feminine, not threatening the viewer). Her
hair is down and she has on a masculine scarf, but her dress is fitted with
decorative roping down the front and she is not wearing gloves. This
photo, taken during her tenure with the show, displays the early style of
publicity for cowgirls in Buffalo Bill} Wild West, focused mainly on the
western theme of skill and prowess, effectively ignoring Smith's feminin-
ity. When Annie Oakley joined the Wild West in 1885, it could be argued
that Buffalo Bill did not yet realize her potential marketability. Her first
photos with the troupe are much like the previous photo of Lillian Smith,
as evidenced in Figure 5.
This photograph (Figure 5) displays many of the masculine traits
found in the previous photos of western stars, including Oakley's confi-
dent posture while aiming the gun from her shoulder using both gloved
hands and her loose fitting dress with a western sash around her hips.
The stark background and stacked granite around Oakley also contribute
to the harsh, masculine imagery. Finally, the several guns standing up in
this photo further the phallic imagery so popular with her producer
Buffalo Bill.
In this photo, however, the reader notes elements of femininity
bleeding into the aura of Western masculinity. When she appeared on
stage and in photographs, Oakley wore her long chestnut brown hair
down around her shoulders. She is in her late twenties in this photograph,
but her long hair conveys a youthful image. As indicated by Vonada,
Oakley's hairstyle defied Victorian conventions of feminine propriety, as
"[r]espectable women were never seen in public with their hair down in
those days."30 This difference, while eschewing womanhood, under-
scored the childish image she hoped to project. Both Kasper and Riley
argue that the contradiction of a "sweet little girl," who was "innocent
and above reproach" and yet skilled beyond compare appealed to all audi-
ences, "young or old, male or female, conservative minded or progres-
sive."31 Finally, Oakley aims the gun away from the camera and shows off
her medals displayed on her chest like jewelry. While these feminine
touches do much to soften Oakley's appearance, the masculine elements
at play in the photograph override these concessions to femininity.
30 Vonada, ''A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 145.
31 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 98; Kasper, Annie Oaklq, 22.
Figure 5: Annie Oakley, late 1880s
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum
Figure 6: Annie Oakley, late 1880s
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; P.69 .1164
54 JOYCE
Another view, Figure 6 (arguably from the same shoot), has
Oakley again standing confidently, feet apart, arm behind her back, with
a flrm gloved grip on an erect gun: all masculine traits. Her gaze is indi-
rect and soft, adding a touch of femininity, but her body is positioned to
the camera and, as always, her long hair cascades over her shoulders. Her
costume mixes masculine and feminine values; while it is loose fitting,
and characteristically masculine, it is femininely decorated with velvet and
medals and pleated. Though guns surround her, the fact that they come
up to her waist highlight Oakley's petite build.
In the late 1880s, Oakley "characterized the best of the West,"
according to Riley. Her "humble beginnings," and "modesty" only served
to enhance her reception as a skilled horsewoman and a sure shot; and
unlike May Lillie and Lillian Smith, she was congenial, slender, and pret-
ty.32 Soon, Buffalo Bill realized that Oakley's persona of a talented, yet
clean and ladylike cowgirl attracted audience members of all types. Once
they began to capitalize on the appeal of Oakley's Caucasian femininity,
Cody, Butler, and Oakley entered into the heyday of Buffalo Bill's Wild
West.
THE HEGEMONY OF DOMESTICITY
The changing tides of gender constructions during the transition
from the Victorian to the Modern age swept up men and women alike.
Many shows, including Buffalo Bill's Wild West, crossed the country vying
for a piece of the American consumer pie. The key to the market was
publicity, and Buffalo Bill had the best marketing team in "Arizona John"
Burke and Dexter Fellow.33 According to Jonathan Martin, this duo
"helped to lay the groundwork for the consumer-commodity culture."3
4
By its very nature, Buffalo Bi//'s Wild West attracted mainly male
viewers, leaving women as a largely untapped market. In a brilliant mar-
keting maneuver reinforcing the hegemonic relationships of the era,
Burke and Fellow feminized Annie Oakley's image as an American cow-
girl, specifically to attract female audience members. Photos of Oakley
began playing up Victorian ideals, portraying grace and femininity.
32 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 93.
33 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 140.
34 Martin, "Grandest," 120.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY
55
The photograph of Oakley in Figure 7 dates from about 1890.
Though the costume is the same, the tone is affected by both obvious
and subtle changes. She is seated, as if for a formal portrait. Her very
proper pose extends all the way down to her pointed toes, giving her an
air of refinement. This pose also serves to highlight the pearl buttons she
sewed onto her velvet leggings, which she proudly claimed she cut and fit
hersel.35 Her gun is draped across her lap and her hands are delicately
placed on the gun. Her body and gaze are directed away from the cam-
era. She appears to have no connection to the gun; it is just a prop, like a
book or a piece of knitting.
Figure 7: Annie Oakley, ca. 1890
Courresy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; Vincent Mercaldo
Collection P.71.2970
35 Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 42.
56
JOYCE
In Figure 7, Oakley is not wearing gloves, so her delicate hands,
the velvet trim at her wrist, as well as the bracelet she is wearing are in
plain view. Oakley is also wearing earrings, her medals have been moved
to the side far away from the camera, and a ribbon has been placed at her
neckline. Though her hair is down, it is more dramatically placed around
her shoulders. In addition, the scenery has been changed to a scene in
nature instead of hard rocks, and the other weapons are absent. The pub-
licity photos of Oakley became increasingly feminine over time, and in
both her performance and her personal life, she strove to create the
image of the ideal Victorian lady. To bolster this image, she relied on
three mainstays of Victorian culture: her marriage, her behavior (both
on- and off-stage), and her clothing.
Annie Oakley and Frank Butler had forty-five happy years
together, until her death in 1926. Davis notes that the Butlers were the
"only members of the troupe widely known as spouses,"36 and Oakley's
act, as Frank Butler had planned it out in the early 1880s, continued to
promote family values, often including Butler and their dog. She was the
breadwinner, a typically masculine role, and he fulfilled the feminine role
as the assistant. According to Davis's essay, ''Annie Oakley and Her Ideal
Husband of No Importance," Butler's role in the marriage "suggests suf-
fragist wish fulfillment," for he appears to become feminized "by sacri-
ficing his ego for love."37 However, he controlled the money and Oakley's
publicity, augmenting his more traditional position as the man of the
family.
During the act, Butler prepared his wife's guns and tossed the
targets for her to shoot. In one stunt she
laid a shotgun in the dirt about ten feet on the far side
of her gun table. She hurried back around to the other
side of the table and waited for Frank to spring a clay
bird. As he released it from the trap, she ran forward,
hurdled the table, picked up her shotgun, and broke the
bird before it landed.3S
36 Tracy C. Davis, "Annie Oakley and Her Ideal Husband of No Importance,"
in Critical Theory and Peiformance (Ann Arbor, MI: The Michigan Press, 1992), 305.
37 Ibid., 301.
38 Kasper, Annie Oakley, 43.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 57
Oakley regularly performed stunts that imperiled her husband and their
dogs, shooting apples off of the dog's head and a cigarette out of Butler's
mouth. Although he remained in the background, Davis argues that the
audiences were aware that he was her husband and his presence was
"dynamically very important."39
Using her marriage as an important part of the act allied Annie
Oakley with the women in the audience. As Davis points out, she aimed
the gun at her own husband, conveying a sense of "danger but not vio-
lence, and skill at arms but not combat," all of which created an atmos-
phere of excitement without discomfort.
40
Oakley biographer Vonada
reports that at the end of the performance Butler, "stood on the sidelines
while the woman he called his 'little girl' curtsied to the crowds."41
Their roles may have been reversed, but the marriage appeared
to be very strong. Oakley had star billing and earned the highest salary in
the Wild West, while Butler received no billing. Reports say at times she
earned "as much as $1000 per week, which was slightly more than the
President of the United States was making."42 One of the reasons the
marriage worked was that as the star, "she allowed her husband to man-
age her career, her finances and her image of ladylike propriety."43
Annie Oakley's behavior in and out of the Wild West arena also
played a large role in creating the ladylike image that appealed to women
39 Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 146.
40 Davis, "Ideal Husband of No Importance," 307.
41 Vonada, ''A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 140.
42 Ibid., 143.
4
3 Gage, ' 'Why Annie Got Her Gun," 30. Frank's role as manager placed him
in control of Annie's activities and he was very protectiYe of her reputation. They were
always in search of more financial security, so they competed in shooting matches outside
of the Wild West arena. Frank is reported to have stated that, "No women 'W-ith a shady
past or doubtful reputation can ever enter into a contest with Annie Oakley while I am
managing her, as she values her personal reputation far more than her shooting one." See
Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 105. He also continued to compete in trap shoots out-
side of the Wild West arena, allowing his own masculinity to flourish, without ever direct-
ly competing with his wife. This competitive element to Frank's persona, in addition to
Annie's increasingly public image of femininity helped "normalize" the marriage in the
eyes of Victorian American society. See Davis, "Ideal Husband," 307.
58
jOYCE
in the audience.44 For example, she always rode sidesaddle while shooting
in a time when cowgirls in other shows, and even in the Wild West, rode
astride horses. Oakley also chose not to do one of her most difficult
tricks on horseback out of modesty, because it would involve showing
her undergarments in public, which was "not proper for a lady."45
Several Oakley biographers suggest that Annie played the "little
girl" for the audience. Not only was she diminutive in stature, but also she
behaved like a child, dancing, pouting, and flirting. Vonada picks up on
details of her act including cartwheels, handsprings, and tricks while ped-
aling a bicycle, and Riley describes how Oakley skipped into the arena and
athletically leapt over tables.
4
6 If she missed a shot (as she occasionally
did on purpose just to show how difficult her tricks were), she threw a
small tantrum, childishly stamping her foot for the benefit of the crowd.
The New York Sun reported, "She evidently thinks a good deal of her
pout, because she turns to the audience to show it off."47 When Oakley
was successful, she "gave a satisfied little kick." As she finished her ten-
minute act, she would blow kisses to the audience, and throughout her
career she always exited the stage or arena with a "distinctive jumpkick."48
This girlish behavior went over wildly with the crowds, which her
publicity photos highlighted often including the word "Little." Riley also
reports that Cody moved Oakley's act from the middle of the program
to the second spot in the Wild West bill, in order to "help women relax
during the frequent bursts of gunfire." As stated by publicist "Arizona"
44 In the course of her act, Annie performed astonishing stunts. Newspaper
reports recall that "She grabbed a glass ball and threw it up herself, surprising anyone who
thought that women couldn't throw ... Annie picked up her gun, fired and hit it in midair.
Then she tossed up rwo balls at a time, smashed the first, rwirled completely around, and
smashed the other before it hit the ground." Dallas Morning Nell!s, October 12, 1900, quot-
ed in Kasper, Annie Oakley, 43. The act involved several well-chosen stunts, seemingly
reflective of Annie's conservative beliefs. Of course, it is impossible to determine who
actually made these choices, whether it was Frank, Buffalo Bill or Annie herself, but
Annie's enthusiastic participation can only be seen as in support of the image she pre-
sented.
45 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 104.
46 Vonada, ''A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 132.
47 New York Sun, 20 May, 1894, quoted in Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 45.
48 Ibid., 22; Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 103. "It was said that when
[Sitting Bull] became moody and irritable- which was often- Annie could get him to smile
by skipping through the steps of the dance she performed after her act." Louis Pfaller,
"Enemies in '76, Friends in '85: Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill," Prologue: journal if National
Archives 1 no. 2 (1969), 22.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 59
John Burke, "women and children see a harmless woman there, and they
do not get worried."49
Offstage, Annie Oakley presented herself as a model of domes-
ticity for fans and interviewers, despite the fact that she spent most of her
time living in hotel rooms and dressing in tents. When out of the arena,
her publicists claimed that she could be found embroidering or garden-
ing outside her tent in the camp, or entertaining guests "with punch, tea,
cakes and ices."SO She had learned to knit and embroider during her time
at the Darke County Infirmary in her youth,Sl and reporters noted that
she took a sewing machine along on tour and used it to make her cos-
tumes and curtains.s2 She furnished her tent with "a Brussels carpet, a
rocking chair, and a parlor table ... with her guns lining the walls."S3 Riley
argues that this behavior signaled to female audience members and the
public at large that, "although independent and perhaps employed,
[women] could still be domestic."S4
Oakley is quoted in 1888 as having stated, "To be considered a
lady has always been my highest ambition." Fittingly, she also claimed that
embroidery was her favorite pastime, destitute children were her favorite
charity, and the Bible was her favorite book.SS The photograph in Figure
8 was taken in 1893 as Oakley sat outside of her tent, reading. Reading
was one of her proudest accomplishments, a skill Butler had taught her
early in their marriage along with a battery of other performance "tricks."
The image of a lady reading leisurely fit right into the persona the couple
wanted to convey.
All signs of masculinity have vanished in Figure 8. Oakley is seat-
ed almost completely in profile, in a rocking chair, wearing a Victorian
confection, including corset, full length skirt and ruffles. Her hair is
49 New York Times, 7 April, 1901, quoted in Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot,"
103; Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 41.
50 Ibid., 105.
5! Ibid., 95.
52 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats,"132.
53 Riley, " Peerless Lady Wingshot," 105.
54 Ibid.
55 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 144.
60 JOYCE
down, as it always is, but in this pose it is beautifully combed back and
held with a bow. This subtle change enhances her Caucasian femininity
and her youthful appearance. In 1893, Annie Oakley would have been
thirty-three years old, but in this photo, she appears to be in her late
teens. Her gaze is lowered, intent upon her reading, and she is surround-
ed by her garden and all of the comforts of home. The trappings of gar-
den and book and the "moment of leisure" she embodies convey a sense
of class consciousness as well. This is one of the only photos of Oakley
where she is not directly in contact with a gun; in fact, her guns are placed
almost out of sight with another part of her act, her bicycle. "From her
fancy parasol to her high button shoes, .Mrs. Frank Butler," Vonada
reports, strove to portray "the model of propriety."S6 Her guests found
her to be a charming hostess. Her performance clothing echoes this same
attention to feminine detail.
Annie Oakley's costumes in the Wild West helped complete the
feminized image of the western girl that appealed to American men and
women. In the arena, she could not wear everyday Victorian clothing (as
she does in Figure 8), but, as the years went by, her costumes became
more fitted and flattering. Publicists boasted that the domestic, feminine
Annie designed and made her own costumes (usually out of durable tan
fabric)_57 As Davis states, Oakley's clothes announced that she was "fem-
inine yet serious," and "a disciple of western pragmatism and pioneer
work ethics," all the while "perpetuating show business traditions."SS
These show business traditions were reflected in the fancy embroidery
that covered her costumes and the fringe that accented her every move-
ment.
Annie Oakley's insistence on wearing skirts exemplified her fem-
ininity even if, according to Kasper, "it meant some inconvenience."S9
Victorian clothing styles and expectations were changing, but she hated
bloomers and refused to wear more fashionable pants ('r split skirts,60 so
56 Ibid. It is interesting to note the use of Oakley's married name in the descrip-
tion of this domestic setting. Biographers and scholars (including Vonada) most often
refer to Oakley as simply "Annie," automatically relegating her to the diminutive. She is
almost never referred to as "Mrs. Frank Butler," as Vonada does in this statement, but
apparently when she is spruced up she gets a title bump as well.
57 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 103.
58 Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 142.
59 Kasper, Annie Oakley, 49.
60 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wingshot," 103.
Figure 8: Annie Oakley seated in front of dressing tent at Chicago World's Fair, ca
1893. Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; P.69.73
Figure 9: Annie Oakley, 1893, Age 33
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; Vincent Mercaldo
Collection; P71.361.1
62 jOYCE
she "designed her own special skirt with hook and grommets after she
took up the sport of cycling."
61
Vonada describes Oakley's skirts as much
shorter than the conservative Victorian norm. They were a "risque"
knee-length in order to allow Oakley to jump tables and ride her bike in
the show.62 To compensate for this deviation, by the 1890s she began to
design clothes that were more fitted and flattering, even incorporating
bodices with boning, creating a very Victorian silhouette-note the stark
changes in tone of the costume in Figure 9.
In Figure 9, Oakley's pose is proper with her arms gently cradling
the gun, like a baby or a bouquet. Her stance is passive, rather than
aggressive, her gaze is indirect, and once again she has almost no con-
nection to the gun. The dress she is wearing has a minimized version of
the Victorian "!eg-o-mutton" sleeve and the cinched waistline echoes the
late-Victorian hourglass silhouette. Her dark gloves fade into her skirt,
and her hair, though down, is once again arranged upon her shoulders to
soften her look. There is ribbon trim and a brooch at her neckline, and
she is wearing earrings. In this particular shot, there is a good view of the
accessory that was part of her every costume, the silver star on her hat.
This, in the words of Kasper, was a "mark of her showmanship," a part
of the very appealing package.63
Many other cowgirls tried to emulate Annie Oakley's image with
varying degrees of success. One in particular, Lucille Mulhall, remarkably
similar to Oakley in appearance and dress, did so very successfully.64 The
New York World lauded "Little Miss Mulhall" as the ideal cowgirl, who
weighs only 90 pounds, can break a bronco, lasso and
brand a steer and shoot a coyote at 500 yards. She can
also play Chopin, quote Browning, construe Virgil, and
make mayonnaise dressing.6s
The New York Worlds description encompasses all the traditional female
accomplishments and by listing them last, seems to give them greater sig-
nificance than Mulhall's other talents; they "compensate" for her other
attributes.
61 Gage, ''Why Annie Got Her Gun," 30.
62 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 145.
63 Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 45.
64 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wings hot," 105.
65 New York World, 7 July, 1900, quoted in Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 145.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY
63
According to Riley, Annie Oakley's domesticated image "fit in
well with Cody's purposes," which were to "reassure female viewers and
calm their fears," and ultimately to sell more tickets. Cody proudly boast-
ed that "ladies and children can attend my exhibition with perfect safety
and comfort."66 Although there are no records available accounting for
audience makeup, Martin infers that a large percentage of the audience
was female by 1895, as more than half of the advertisements in the Wild
programs at this time "were directed exclusively at women."67
PRESERVING THE IMAGE
The careful transformation of Annie Oakley's image from rough
and tumble sharpshooter to charming American cowgirl was financially
lucrative for Buffalo Bill and for the Butlers. Yet, the question remains,
was this legend the "real" Annie Oakley, or was her publicized persona
devised as a way to fascinate the conservative Victorian society? There is
photographic and factual evidence to suggest that the real Annie Oakley
was, in fact, not as feminized as her popular image and that Oakley and
Butler purposely perpetuated many misperceptions and contradictions to
protect that marketable image.
Biographers have discovered several facts that shed light on the
great lengths to which Oakley and Butler went to preserve her youthful
feminille image. Butler and Oakley often discarded or hid facts that did
not fit into her image. At least two incidents confirm that the couple lied
outright to preserve Oakley's image. The first happened in 1886, around
the time of her rising popularity, and the same season that fifteen-year-
old Lillian Frances Smith, "The California Huntress" (see Figure 4,
above) joined Buffalo Wild West. Smith boasted about her prowess to
the rest of the troupe, implying she would replace Oakley as the star of
the show. Oakley, then twenty-six, began to lie about her date of birth,
subtracting six years from her real age.68 She maintained a youthful
66 Riley, "Peerless Lady Wings hot," 103.
67 Martin, "Grandest," 114.
68 Kasper, Annie Oaklry, 61. This claim was also addressed on the Annie Oakley
Foundation website ("\ww.ormiston.com/annieoakley/tales.html] which is run by Bess
Edwards, Oakley's grand-niece. The article titled "Tall Tales" was accessed April 5, 2001
at 6:30 p.m., but the article has since been removed and The Annie Oakley Foundation
new web address is (www.annieoakleyfoundation.org].
64 JOYCE
appearance well into her forties and this lie has confused many of the
"biographical" accounts of her life, as she stuck to this fabrication even
under oath in court.69 The lie became so ingrained in her persona that on
her tombstone there is no date of birth.7
The second incident that biographers have contested was the tall
tale Butler offered to explain Oakley's suddenly white hair and the subse-
quent end of her career in the Wild West. On October 29, 1901, there was
a terrible train collision, which killed five stock cars of animals from the
show. No person from the show was injured. Butler, however, reported
that Annie Oakley was so traumatized by the accident and the deaths of
the animals in the wreck that her hair turned white within seventeen
hours.
71
The lie about the train accident is now widely accepted as an
attempt to protect Oakley's "modesty." The idea of her feeling the ani-
mals' pain so acutely must have also appealed to her feminine image.72
Sadly, Annie Oakley never again performed with the Wild West. The rev-
elation of her white hair meant she had lost a key ingredient to her
appeal, her youthful appearance.
Delving into her later life, there is also photographic evidence to
indicate that Oakley's image was really a carefully arranged construction
of ladylike Victorian ideals rather than an accurate representation of
Oakley's beliefs. In the hundreds of photographs taken during Oakley's
employment in the Wild West, it is rare to find her in an intimidating or
even masculine pose. Her studio photographs rarely show her holding
69 Phil Reisman, "Annie Oakley Libel Case Revisited," 120. The libelous state-
ments had indicated that Oakley was "not lawful or pure ... and that she was unfeminine."
She won the suit against forty-four out of forty-six newspapers, winning judgments rang-
ing from $500 to $27,500. According to Tracy Davis, the win was important, "not only
for her pride and dignity or the reputation of her marriage, but also for the personifica-
tion she gave to feminized power." Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock," 154.
70 Kasper, Annie Oakley, 61.
71 Ibid., 165. The number of hours varies in different reports. This story was
not true. Annie's hair turned white later in the year during a visit to an Arkansas Hot
Springs resort. She was around forty years old. An undated clipping of an article from the
Chicago Dai!J News in Annie's scrapbooks reveals that Annie's attendant forgot her, and
after about forty minutes, she fainted in her hot bath. "When released, (her] bonny, imper-
ishable brown hair had turned white clear to her crown, her face and hands were speck-
Jed with dark brown patches and one side of her back was blistered." See "Annie Oakley's
Hot Bath," Sporting Lzfe, quoting Amy Lesli, n.d., Annie Oakley Scrapbooks 1896-1901; and
Amy Leslie, "Plays and Players," Chicago Dai!J News, n.d., Annie Oakley Scrapbooks 1902-8,
quoted in Kasper, Annie Oakley, 167; wv>'w.ormiston.com/annieoakley/tales.html.
72
Ibid., 168.
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 65
the gun as if she knew how to use it; for example, Figures 1 0 and 11 are
staged photos of her famous "trick shots." In Figure 10, she is on her
bike; in Figure 11 she is seen with her back to the camera, aiming by look-
ing into a mirror. In both of these photos she is using the gun, but the
audience perceives this skillful shooting as entertainment and in no way
threatening.
The Wild Westf advertisements and lithograph posters also play
on her gentle, feminine image. Many ads consisted of smaller images of
Oakley using her guns with her back to the audience or shooting some-
thing delicate like glass balls that have been thrown in the air. Most often
these images are behind a larger image of Oakley posing prettily with her
medals or nimbly leaping over a table (and in the process showing a bit
Figure 10: Annie Oakley shooting from a bike, 1894
Courtesy of the Garst Museum
Figure 11: Annie Oakley Mirror Shot, ca. 1893.
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; Vincent Mercaldo
Collection; P 71.356.1
Figure 12: Oakley on horseback, 1924, Age 64
Courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming; P.69 .1593
MARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY 67
Figure 13: Oakley at the range, 1918, Age 56.
Courtesy of Walter C. Snyder, Historian of the Ithaca Gun Company
of ankle). There are candid photos of Oakley from this period practicing
her tricks in the arena or performing. But these photos were not taken for
advertising purposes and are often taken from a distance. When consid-
ering the hundreds of photographs taken of Annie Oakley during her
seventeen years starring in the Wild West Show, the predominance of a
feminine image in her publicity cannot be mistaken as accidental; this
image sold tickets.
In contrast, photographs of Oakley taken and released after
1902, when she had left the Wild West Show, primarily show her in action,
displaying perceivably masculine traits. In Figures 12 and 13, Annie
Oakley's characteristic nods to femininity are absent. Figure 12 was likely
a publicity or souvenir shot, but masculine details have now emerged. Her
clothing is loose, her hair is swept up under the hat, and she is riding
astride the horse, something she had adamantly refused to do in the show.
Similar masculine traits can be seen in Figure 13, where Oakley, in a long,
dark, plain dress, aims the gun just over the camera, as if in action. From
68 JOYCE
these photos, it can be concluded that she no longer had to mask her own
spirit for the profitability of her imageJ3
"Annie Oakley was not pretty,"
74
exclaimed one disappointed
newspaper reporter, upon meeting Oakley late in her career. He had
imagined the famous cowgirl, who, for decades, had been presented as
"wholesome" and "the essence of femininity" entirely differentlyJS Her
attractiveness was a certain kind of feminini ty that appealed to an audi-
ence in search of a youthful, white American heroine. Audiences knew
her as the pretty girl who could handle a "potent symbol of manhood,"
while leading a domesticated life "as prim and circumspect as that of any
middle-class housewife." To her audience, "she was provocative, appeal-
ing and reassuring, all at once."76 Annie Oakley's fans must have echoed
that exclamation of disappointment often in her later years, when the
carefully managed image could finally be dropped.
The argument presented in this study is not offered in an effort
to prove that Annie Oakley was not a lady. Indeed, it is entirely Likely that
she was in every way a lady, and she truly may have had many of the fem-
inine impulses and interests that the press and her colleagues attributed
to her throughout the course of her career. Over time, the fictions and
facts of Oakley's life story have become entangled and the hybrid is the
legend that remains. This legend of a strong, skilled woman with ladylike
refinement has inspired millions of young women to reach beyond their
prescribed roles in life.
Today, trailers for television specials, dust jackets for biographies,
and websites detailing Oakley's life and legacy tout her as a "good role
73 Of the fifty-six photos on the Annie OakJey Foundation's website (taken
between 1875 and 1926), forty-seven feature feminine traits whereas only nine display pri-
marily masculine traits. One of the greatest determinants in the gendered meaning of the
picture is the presence or absence of a gun. An interesting note is that four of the five
photographs of OakJey aiming the gun, as if iJ1 action, were taken after her employment
in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. This confirms the assertion that Annie's image was intention-
ally feminized to appeal to the Wild West audience.
74 Bert Laub, "Wild West Show," American Heritage 47 (September 1996), 30.
75 Vonada, "A Crack Shot in Petticoats," 145.
7
6 Ibid.
]'.fARKETING ANNIE OAKLEY
69
model" and a "trailblazer" for women in entertainment and sports.77
These claims are accurate, but they are not the entirety of her legacy. She
and her husband worked diligently to construct a unique character that
appealed to a society in gender crisis. Annie Oakley became a legend as a
result of the public persona and corresponding images that glorified the
feminization of a pretty, young, white American. Those images created a
product that sold millions of tickets for Buffalo Bill's Wild West and paid
Oakley and Butler very well. And importantly, by deconstructing the
mechanism that created this legend it is not my intention to invalidate her
achievements or what it still represents. Rather, this study recognizes that,
in addition to all of her other merits, she was also a marketing genius.78
77 PBS and A&E presented television specials on Oakley's life in 2006.
Oakley biographies appear on the Annie Oakley Foundation website
[www.AnnieOakleyFoundation.org), the Darke County, OH website [www.visitdarke-
county.org), the Garst Museum website [www.garstmuseum.org], as well as the Buffalo
Bill Historical Center's website [www.bbhc.org).
78 I would like to thank Heidi Taylor, Steve Friesen, Elizabeth Holmes, Penny
Perry, and Walter C. Snyder for their gracious and enthusiastic efforts in making the inclu-
sion of the photos in this essay possible.
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE 18, N0.2 (SPRING 2006)
"SERVING THE PURPOSE AMPLY":
THE HANLON BROTHERS' LB VOYAGE EN SUISSE 1
MARKCOSDON
The Hanlon Brothers' Le Vqyage en Suisse was one of the most
popular plays to appear on the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-cen-
tury American stage. Following an early career which saw them emerge as
the world's foremost demonstrators of aerial and gymnastic specialties,
the Hanlons turned their attentions to the production of evening-long
pantomimes in the 1870s.
2
Borrowing heavily from English pantomime
and the French fterie, the six Hanlon Brothers evolved a unique theatrical
style which combined breath-taking acrobatics with trick scenery, novel
illusions, and wild, often violent, knockabout comedy. Lasting fame came
in 1879 when they unveiled Le ~ a g e en Suisse at Paris's Theatre des
Varietes. In essence, Le Vqyage en Suisse was pure visual spectacle-a
diversion in which an audience could lose itself for several hours. After
Le Vqyage en Suisse made its United States premiere in 1881, the Hanlon
Brothers toured the production through 1901, at which point they sold
production rights to companies of pantomimists who kept versions of
the play before American audiences through 1913.
Despite the popular appeal of Le Vqyage en Suisse, there has been
a remarkable dearth of scholarship surrounding the long-lived produc-
tion.3 In this article, I discuss how this seemingly forgotten work made its
1
I wish to express my particular thanks to Heather Nathans, Bob Vorlicky, and
the Journal of American Drama and Theatre's anonymous readers, each of whom comment-
ed substantively on this essay. Versions of this piece were read at recent meetings of the
American Theatre and Drama Society, the American Society for Theatre Research, and
the Mid-America Theatre Conference. The members of the recent colloquy "Le jeu du
hors-texte: transparence et opacite de Ia pantomime," held in Toulouse, France, helped
clarifY the international ramifications of nineteenth-century copyright law and physical
performance.
2
See Mark Cosdon, "Prepping for Pantomime: The Hanlon Brothers' Fame
and Tragedy, 1833-1870, "Theatre History Studies (2000): 67- 104.
3
There are just two book-length studies of the Hanlon Brothers. In 1880,
Richard Lesclide produced a ghost-written tome entitled Memoires et Pantomimes des Hires
Hanlon-Lees (Paris: Reverchon et Vollet, 1880). Lesclide's work ends just prior to the
Hanlons' return to the United States. In 1988, John McKinven published The Hanlon
Brothers: Their Amazing Acrobatics, Pantomimes, and Stage Spectacles (Glenwood, IL: David
Meyer Magic Books, 1998). Unfortunately, McKinven recounts virtually everything
72
(OSDON
way to the American stage, where it enjoyed critical acclaim for more than
three decades. Le en first trip to the States was, in many
ways, as complex as the Hanlons' choreographed routines. After the
play's Paris premiere, American audiences eagerly anticipated the 1881
New York debut, but lengthy litigation threatened both the production
and the Hanlons' creative and intellectual property. This article explores
the production's complex history, as well as the Hanlons' extraordinary
contribution to the development of American pantomime and popular
entertainment. The essay is divided into three parts. In the first part, I
explore how the Hanlons transformed the traditional forms of acrobat-
ics and pantomime into a new genre that prompted Emile Zola to herald
them as pioneers of the new naturalism. In the second section, I chart
the development of the Hanlons' revolutionary production, Le V01age en
Suisse, and the legal furor it generated across the Atlantic. In the final sec-
tion, I suggest the impact of the production in the United States and its
legacy for American popular entertainment.
EARLY PEREGRINATIONS, ZAMPILLAEROSTATION, AND L'ECHELLE
P:ERILEUSE
The Hanlon Brothers rose to prominence in America with their
sensational and often dangerous stunts-routines they developed while
growing up in the provincial English theatre circuit. The Hanlon
Brothers' parents were struggling actors in Northern England. Thomas
Hanlon Senior was of Irish descent. For a time he trained for the clergy
before retreating to Wales and becoming a strolling player. In Wales,
Hanlon Senior met and married Ellen Hughes, a Welsh actress. Within a
matter of years, the two had relocated to Manchester. In this northern
city, Thomas Hanlon Senior was employed for a time as manager of the
Theatre Royal, Manchester, and the Queen's Theatre. The couple had five
surviving sons-Thomas (b. 1833), George (b. 1835), William (b. 1839),
Alfred (b. 1842), and Edward (b. 1845). A sixth son, Frederick (b. 1848),
was adopted into the family.4
Lesclide wrote some hundred years earlier, uncoving little fresh material. His sparse com-
mentary and analysis adds little to our understanding of the Hanlons Brothers' Le Vryage
en Suisse, Fantasma, and Superba. However, McKinven's book is lavishly illustrated.
4 There has been a great deal of confusion over the Hanlons' correct birth
dates, much of it fueled by the brothers themselves, who tended to exaggerate their youth.
The years given here were kindly supplied by the Cathedral of Manchester, England. As
their boys were baptized, the Hanlons' parents supplied dates of birth for each child.
These records were subsequently placed in the church's archives.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 73
Long before achieving fame as pantomimists, the six Hanlon
Brothers were world-renowned for their daring aerial and gymnastic rou-
tines. Before they reached the age of ten, George, William, and Alfred
completed three tours of the world with the acrobat John Lees. Upon
Lees' death in 1855, the six brothers regrouped in Manchester and
formed a variety company featuring their daredevil specialties. Through
the 1860s, the family was the world's foremost demonstrators of incred-
ible physical stunts, traveling with a variety company in their employ.
While France's Jules Leotard is generally credited with being the inventor
of the trapeze (in addition to lending his name to the tight-fitting gar-
ments he typically wore), American audiences never felt he was on a par
with William Hanlon. In the United States, William Hanlon was the
supreme exhibitor of aerial skill.
The company unveiled William's act, Zampillaerostation, in
December 1861 at New York's Academy of Music. At the back of the
auditorium, a standing place was erected, about fifty feet above the
ground. On a cue from the orchestra, William would leap from his plat-
form onto the first trapeze, subsequently completing a somersault in
between each of the three trapezes, his act concluding with him landing
on the stage platform. Surely, the excitement and danger of the piece
were shared by the audience, for the acrobatics occurred just above their
heads. Hence, the spectators seated below the athlete became vicarious
participants in the thrill and danger of a trapeze demonstration.
It was unquestionably the most surprising, graceful and
perfect acrobatic feat ever attempted. At the conclusion
of the feat the applause that greeted the daring per-
former was terrific, and he and his brothers retired in a
whirlwind of approbation. This act required more nerve
and science combined than any other. The feat was
thrilling to behold, and only the grace with which it was
done and the apparent ease and certainty with which
William caught the different trapeze bars made the feat
pleasing. s
During this early part of the Hanlon Brothers' career, William
was clearly the troupe's star, but the other family members had their own
daring specialties, including carpet acrobatics and gymnastic stunts.
5 Ne1v York Clipper, 16 December, 1861.
74 COS DON
However, oldest brother Thomas's act, l'Echelle Perileuse, was deemed
equally as daring as William's Zampillaerostation. L'Echelle Perileuse was
an aerial act in which a ladder-like device, similar to the monkey bars on
a child's jungle gym, was hung from the theatre's proscenium. Unlike the
trapeze, l'Echelle Perileuse was a fixed device with a series of sturdy bars
on which the athlete could throw and turn his body. Here, Thomas
enthralled audiences, hurtling from end-to-end of the apparatus, in a rou-
tine that probably looked something like that of a modern day gymnast
on the uneven bars, performing a series of leaps, catches, swings, and
poses, pausing occasionally to hang by the nape of his neck, his toes, and
his knees. Sadly, a tragedy would lead to a permanent change in the
Hanlon Brothers' repertoire.
In August 1865, the troupe played Wood's Opera House in
Cincinnati, Ohio, allegedly to the largest audiences ever enjoyed by any
star or company in that city. Near the conclusion of his l'Echelle
Perileuse Thomas fell, piercing his head on one of the theatre's footlight
burners. Although he miraculously survived the mishap, the blow would
have lasting effects on the gymnast. Over the next several years, Thomas
tried repeatedly to retu.rn to his aerial demonstrations but never fully
recovered his former abilities. Although Thomas continued touring with
his brothers, he gradually began to suffer fits of insanity. In April 1868,
he abrupdy withdrew from the company. Days later, he was hospitalized
in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania institution.
Soon after his institutionalization, Thomas Hanlon committed
suicide in what the Philadelphia Times later termed "a most singular man-
ner and one which would be possible for no one save a skilled acrobat."6
By repeatedly throwing half-somersaults, he managed to land each time
with his head striking a heavy iron stove pipe in the floor of the room.
His brother George sadly noted, "They found him spread out on the
floor, his skull entirely broken."7 Although a doctor tried to mend
Thomas's shattered skull, he was unsuccessful. Thomas Hanlon was thir-
ty-two.
Thomas's death cast a lingering shadow over the troupe. William
Hanlon recalled, "This dreadful event ... brought about a change in the
direction of our work. Our parents especially pushed us to this-partie-
6 "A Family of Gymnasts," Philadelphia Times, 24 February, 1884.
7 [Lesclide], Mimoim et Pantomimes des Freres Hanlon-Lees, 97. All translations in
this essay are my own.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 75
ularly our mother who had just barely survived the death of our oldest
brother."S Gradually, the Hanlons began to focus their attentions on the
production of pantomime spectacles. William noted, "It seemed possible
to us to give pantomime a bigger part in our shows. At the request of my
brothers I busied myself with this, assisted by Alfred who is the musical
composer of the troupe."9 In the late 1860s, the Hanlons developed a
number of short pantomimes that were politely reviewed by the
American press. However, they were never taken seriously. At this period
in their career, the Hanlons were merely flirting with pantomime, trying
to meld their acrobatic skills with silent clowning. They lacked the physi-
cal resources and, more importandy, the requisite support from the
American public to allow them to devote fully their attentions to a new
endeavor. Ultimately, this support would come in a foreign country,
France, away from the American public's gaze and demand for the
thrilling gymnastic and aerial stunts that had characterized their career to
this point.
PANTOMIME COMEDY, THE EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE, AND A
CHANGE IN VENUE
When the Hanlon Brothers moved to pantomime comedy, they
successfully merged two diverse pantomime traditions-that of France
and that of the United States. In France, pantomime was near-synony-
mous with Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796-1846). Deburau made his first
appearance as Pierrot in an 1819 production of Arlequin Midecin. Keeping
with stage traditions, Deburau dressed himself in a comically over-sized
costume. For his performance, the mime wore a large buttoned-down
white shirt, the sleeves of which extended beyond his hands, and white
pants that flowed beyond his ankles. His face, enfarine, emerged comi-
cally from the white folds of fabric surrounding his neck. Deburau con-
tinued to play Pierrot in subsequent pantomimes, and by the early 1820s
he had established himself as the leading attraction at the Theatre des
Funambules.
Deburau reimagined the character of Pierrot, refocusing French
pantomime away from Arlequin. Deburau became the main attraction at
the Funambules, and it was primarily through him that this minor theatre
became the center of Parisian pantomime. Deburau's Pierrot mystified
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
76 COSDON
the audience with his erratic, capricious behavior. His famous grimaces
embodied, "Beaumarchais's Figaro, the commedia character Pagliaccio, and
the street kid of the Temple Quarter."IO More importantly, the character's
utter lack of conscience freed him from all deliberation or regret.
Foolhardy and gluttonous, Pierrot quickly spent and consumed any for-
tune, food, or drink he was lucky enough to encounter. After 1846,
Deburau's son Charles performed as Pierrot at the Thefttre des
Funambules, relinquishing the role to Paul Legrand in the 1850s. As
played by Legrand, Pierrot evolved from a careless simpleton into the
now-familiar, exaggeratedly sentimental, ever-yearning romantic victim.
11
The United States' pantomime tradition was strongly influenced
by the French stage, but with a greater emphasis on acrobatics. Beginning
in 1836 and continuing across three decades, the Ravels-an extended
family of French performers-popularized in the United States what
became known as the "Italian style" of pantomime, a form which
employed very little dialogue. Rather, the Ravels' pantos-inclucling]ocko,
or the Brazilian Ape (1825), The Green Monster (1839), and Mazulme, or The
Black Raven if the Tombs (1842)-were escapist, conjuring fairylands and
distant worlds. Typically, these pieces featured two young lovers who
overcame a series of obstacles in order to achieve marital bliss. However,
"[t]he plot was never too important in such productions, for there were
so many tricks, transformations and general tomfoolery mixed with
charming dances that the audience merely enjoyed the fun and wonder of
it."
12
When the Hanlons returned to the United States in 1881 with Le
~ a g e en Suisse, numerous critics likened the brothers to the Ravels, one
scribe noting, "There has been nothing since the days of the Ravels to
rival the performance now being given by the Hanlons at the Park
Theatre."l
3
10 Paul Hugounet, Mime et Pierrots: Notes et Documents Inidits pour servir a /'histoire
de Ia Pantomime (Paris: Librai.rie Fischbacher, 1889), 90.
II Robert Storey has admirably detailed this phenomenon in his books Pierrots
on the Stage of Desire: Nineteenth-Century French Literary Artists and the Comic Pantomime
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985) and Pierro!: A Cntical History of a Mask
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). Of course, Jean-Gaspard Deburau and
the Theatre des Funambules were immortalized in Marcel Carne's 1945 fUm Les Enfants
du Paradis.
12 Mary Grace Swift, Belles and Beaux on Their Toes: Dm1cing Stars in Young America
(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980), 231.
13 "Le Voyage en Suisse," New York Express, 13 September, 1881.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 77
By the time the Ravels retired in 1866, George L. Fox had
emerged as the United States' leading proponent of pantomime comedy.
Reputedly the funniest performer of his era, Fox took the traditional
clown figure of English pantomime and placed him in a macabre urban
setting filled with savagely brutal slapstick comedy. The result was his
beloved character Humpty Dumpty. In addition to the "normal"
fisticuffs of pantomime, Fox's Humpty Dumpty mixed in brickyard
fights, hot metal irons, and anything else that could be hurled at or bashed
across a would-be adversary. And like the Hanlons' mischief-makers
some years later, the targets of Fox's comeuppance were typically author-
ity figures-police officers being a particular favorite. Before his untime-
ly death in 1877, Fox racked-up over 1,200 performances as the schem-
ing clown Humpty Dumpty.t4
Through the 1870s, the Hanlons merged these several pan-
tomime traditions, developing a style that was inimitably their own. To
distinguish themselves from rival European companies using the sur-
name Hanlon (and hoping to trade-on the family's fame), the Hanlon
Brothers rechristened themselves the Hanlon-Lees, in homage to their
one-time mentor John Lees. At the invitation of manager Leon Sari, the
Hanlon-Lees took up residence at Paris's Folies-Bergere. Here, the fami-
ly unveiled a series of startlingly macabre, dream-like pantomimes replete
with slapstick pratfalls, which catapulted the brothers to national and
international fame. In doing so, the Hanlons set the precedent for what
would become their stock-in-trade for the duration of their career.
"Hardly coherent by most dramatic standards, the skits that the
Hanlons proceeded to develop seem to have gained their hold by little
more than their mad, nightmarish power and sheer physical talents,"
1
5
physical talents no doubt perfected during their childhoods. The Hanlons
were melding their acrobatic stunts onto loosely concocted scenarios.
George Hanlon remembered, ''We played several pantomimes, among
other things Le Frater de Village, which complemented our evening-long
performances."tG Le Frater de Village (The Village Barber) was typical of the
Hanlons' repertoire during this period. In this long-lived pantomime, a
1
4
For a book-length study of Fox, see: Laurence Senelick, The Age and Stage of
George L Fox, 1825-1877 (Iowa City, IA: Universiry of Iowa Press, 2000).
15 Storey, Pierrols on the Stage of Desire, 184.
16 [Lesclide), Memoires et Pantomimes des Frires Hanlon-Lees, 93.
78 CosooN
thwarted Pierrot-suitor arrives at the home of his beloved Colombine,
determined to obtain her hand in marriage. Unfortunately, Colombine's
parents are "as stubborn as a three-day's beard,"17 wanting her to marry
a rich, young gallant. Hence, Pierrot dunks them in a bath tub, meticu-
lously lathering up the obstinate parents with shaving cream. Still refus-
ing to bend, the parents are decapitated by Pierrot, the demon barber.
This mad-cap, farcical style has led one modern writer to call their pan-
tomimes "the fantasias of a fermented unconscious."18 Other pantos in
the Hanlons' repertoire included, Les Cascades du Diable, Une Soiree en Habit
Noir, Viande et Farine, Le Dentiste, and Pierro! Terrible, making them the rage
of Paris.
19
A Parisian reporter alludes to the inherent violence of the
Hanlon Brothers' pantomimes:
All was action: slaps, kicks, boxing of ears, and dishev-
elled runs on and off the stage. The actors fought with
red-hot irons, jumped through closed windows, disap-
peared through walls, thrashed without mercy or pity
the unfortunate policeman, and finally disputed with a
great deal of slaps and fighting the hand of a Jenny, a
Mary, or any pretty girl whatsoever. On the first night
they executed a boxing scene with such scrupulous real-
ism that one of the champions received square in his
face such a tremendous blow that blood sprang freely
from the poor actor's bruised nose.zo
The Hanlon Brothers remained at Sari's Folies-Bergere through much of
the 1870s, thrilling audiences with the clever fusion of pantomime and
acrobatic stunts they called "Nights of Fun with the Hanlon-Lees." In
doing so, they attracted a host of Paris's most distinguished literary lurni-
naries-Theophile Gautier, Theodore de Banville, Gustave Flaubert,
1
7
Thomas Walton, "'Entortilationists:' The Hanlon-Lees in Literature and
Art," Life and Letters Todqy 29 (April1941): 28.
18 Storey, Pierrols on the Stage of Desire, 184.
19 These pantos and others are detailed in Lesclide's Mimoires et Pantomimes des
Frires Hanlon-Lees.
20 Jules Clarctie, Le Soir, February 3, 1873.
THE l-!ANLON BROTHERS 79
Edmond de Goncourt, J. -K. Huysmans, Paul Verlaine, Paul Margueritte,
and Emile Zola, all of whom wrote glowingly of the Hanlon Brothers'
talents.
21
With startling acrobatics, violent slapstick comedy, and an innate
desire to subvert authority, Parisians viewed them as "the cynic philoso-
phers of the fin de siicle, the unconscious prophets of the crash of civi-
lization."22 Most important among these writers was Emile Zola. Zola
was captivated by the Hanlons' pantomime Pierrots, praising them for
their libidinous, cruel, and self-centered natures. In his seminal work Le
Naturafisme au Theatre, he marveled that the Hanlons were "[r]eveling in
broken limbs and battered bodies, triumphing in the apotheosis of vice
and crime in the teeth of outraged morality." For Zola, the Hanlons rep-
resented the quintessence of naturalism. Zola found the Hanlons' utter
truthfulness startling, remarking:
I wonder what outburst of indignation would greet a
work by one of us naturalist novelists if we carried our
satire of man in conflict with his passions to such an
extreme. We certainly do not go so far in our cold-
blooded analyses, yet even now we are often violently
attacked. Obviously truth may be shown but not spo-
ken. Therefore, let us all make pantomimes.23
Ultimately, Zola was astonished by the dream-like revelations of savage
emotions that characterized the Hanlons' pantomimes, characteristics
which he so desperately wanted to bring to literature.
The success of their engagement at the Folies-Bergere demon-
strated that the Hanlons could continue to draw audiences with pan-
tomime, even while playing down the daring gymnastic and aerial stunts
upon which they had built their reputation. As William Hanlon explained
several years later, "Why continue to risk our lives in the tours, doing the
things we had been doing for so long, when we had found a new and tri-
21 See Storey's two fille books Pierrots on the Stage of Desire: Nineteenth-Century
French Literary Artists and the Comic Pantomime and Pierro!: A Cn'ticaf History of a Mask.
22 David Leslie Murray, Scenes and Silhouettes (London: Jonathan Cape, 1926),
129.
23 Emile Zola, Le Naturafisme au Theatre (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1881), 327-34.
80
Coso oN
umphant road?"24 The foolhardy physical demonstrations that had
marked the first part of their career had been left behind.
Lasting fame came to the Hanlons in 1878 when Paris hosted the
Exposition Universelle. Determined to shed memories of the devastating
Franco-Prussian War, the French government pressed forward with its
plans to host an unrivaled international fair showcasing the country's
resurgence. The 1878 exposition hosted nearly 53,000 exhibits on 192
acres, and attracted more than 16 million visitors.2s In the bustling city
replete with tourists, the Hanlon Brothers were the main theatrical draw.
A contemporary author instructed, "There's no getting around it. You
must go to the Folies-Bergere to look for the biggest success of the the-
atrical season of the Exposition."
2
6 Despite the temptations of the ongo-
ing Exposition Universelle, "spectators arrived from the five parts of the
globe to witness these celebrated gymnasts. They stood out from the
numerous curiosities of the time."27
Their fame brought them attention and offers from across Paris,
including a stint at the Theatre des Varietes and the opportunity to cre-
ate a new production with vaudeville writers Ernest Blum and Raoul
Tache. The proposed collaboration presented numerous challenges. The
brothers were unaccustomed to working with a team of authors. Most of
their pantomimes had either been adapted from pre-existing works-
those of Jean-Gaspard Deburau and his son Charles in particular; or,
their pantomimes were constructed by the brothers after a great deal of
improvisation, fine-tuning, and experimentation. Likewise, although
Blum and Tache were accomplished vaudeville writers with a string of
hits to their credit, they had never worked on a pantomime.
2
4
Arnold Mortier, Les Soirees Parisiennes de 1878 par un Monsieur de I'Orchestre
(Paris: E. Dentu, 1879), 264.
25 See Erik Mattie, Worlds Fairs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural, 1998).
26 Mortier, Les Soirees Parisiennes de 1878 par un Monsieur de i'Orchestre, 260.
27 [Lesclide], Memoires et Pantomimes des Freres Hanlon-Lees, 172. The brothers
never forgot the economic rewards that could be realized during world fairs and exposi-
tions. Once they relocated to America, they performed in Chicago during the 1893
Columbian Exposition and in St. Louis during the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
In addition, they tended to schedule their seasons to take advantage of state fairs playing
in the Midwest. Typically, the larger cities in the nation's heartland hosted their state fairs
in September, shortly before the traditional theatre season's opening. Hence, the Hanlon
Brothers returned repeatedly to Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Milwaukee over the course of
their career, determined to take advantage of the crowds.
THE I-iANLON BROTHERS 81
Many of the preliminary rehearsals were held in Raoul Tache's
home office, a small cramped space in which to work. Here, the five
Hanlon Brothers gathered with the two authors, determined to construct
a script that best-demonstrated their talents. Blum and Toche were
regaled with a series of improvisations that demonstrated the potentials
of the art form. Ernest Blum recalled a particularly comic, salient inci-
dent from their rehearsals. The Hanlons decided that they needed to scale
a mountain in a scene. George, who spoke the best French of the broth-
ers, told the author, "Imagine that we are on a mountain. Do you have a
mountain in your apartment?" Afraid of what lunacy was to come next,
Toche timidly responded, "No." George sprang up and grabbed a table;
William placed an armchair on top of the table; Alfred tossed a chair
onto the top. "Voila!" roared George, gesturing to the freshly construct-
ed "mountain." Moments later, he and William demonstrated how they
might scale the newly formed mountain, utilizing pantomimed ropes, bil-
lets, and crampons. But when the two brothers reached the top of their
freshly constructed "mountain," the armchair toppled over, bringing the
chair and two startled actors with it. An embarrassed George and William
lay sprawled about the floor, with a broken table between them. The
room erupted into laughter. Blum concluded, "If Le Vqyage en Suisse had
had one more act, ... there wouldn't have been a piece of furniture left
in Tache's apartment!"28 But the Hanlons knew a good gag when they
saw one. Being tossed from a great height would be one of the staple rou-
tines in their Le Vqyage en Suisse, with the mountain being replaced by a
stagecoach.
Le Vqyage en Suisse was significantly different than the Hanlons'
earlier repertoire of pantomimes. Previously, the brothers had been
acclaimed for the dream-like fantasias of their artistic world, where any-
thing could and did happen. However, with Le Vqyage en Suisse the
Hanlons resolved that this new pantomime would be set "in our time."
Hence, everything within this new pantomime must be possible, exclud-
ing "all that is not able to appear absolutely plausible."29 But the Hanlons'
trademark Pierrots would be omnipresent, reacting to and obeying their
every perverse desire, regardless of propriety or consequence. Writing in
his preface to the Hanlons' Mimoires, Theodore de Banville remarked:
28 Arnold Morcier, Les Soirees Parisiennes de 1879 par un Monsieur de I'Orchestre
(Paris: E. Dentu, 1880), 228-9.
29
Ibid., 299.
82
All things considered, if ever anyone deserved the name
of Realist, it would be the Hanlon-Lees alone, for only
they have reproduced life with that ravenous and sense-
less intensity without which it does not resemble itself. 3D
CosDoN
A great deal of litigation surrounded Le VtzYage en Suisse during its
remarkably long life on the stages of Europe and the United States. Rival
managers and theatre companies enviously viewed the financial rewards
that the vehicle brought to the Hanlon Brothers. Several competitors
went so far as to plagiarize Le VtzYage en Suisse, offering clandestine pro-
ductions seeking to capitalize on the Hanlons' formula for success. Some
borrowed the storyline, others lifted stage devices, and one in particular
unapologetically lifted the entire plot. Hence, perhaps the family's single
most important business decision came on March 11, 1879 when the
Hanlons purchased sole performing rights for Le VtzYage en Suisse in
France and all other countries from Blum and Toche, the piece's original
authors.31 Interestingly, the Hanlons purchased rights to the show sever-
al months before they began rehearsals and long before it was apparent
just how potentially lucrative the play would prove. Business acumen
aside, as owners of the production the Hanlon Brothers in future years
would enjoy handsome royalties tendered by other companies seeking to
stage Le VtzYage en Suisse.
LE VOYAGE EN SUISSE VERSUS PoUR PRENDRE CONGE
After months of rehearsal, Le VtzYage en Suisse finally opened on
August 30, 1879 at Paris's Theatre des Varietes. Quickly, it became what
clown historian John Towsen has called
30 Theodore de Banville, "Preface," in [Lesclide], Memoires et Pantomimes des
rnres Hanlon-Lees, 12. In 1948, Richard Southern published a somewhat stilted translation
of de Banville's introduction. See Richard Southern, "Theodore de Banville and the
Hanlon-Lees Troupe," Theatre Notebook 2 Guly-September 1948): 70-75.
31 From an unidentified British newspaper clipping entitled "Le Voyage en
Suisse: Theatrical Copyright." The clipping is part of the "Le Vqyage en Suisse Programme
File" at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts. Interestingly, the article was published in approximately 1891 when the Lauri Family
was suing the Renad Brothers over the right to perform The Swiss Express, the newly reti-
tled and updated version of Le V qyage en Suisse, in the British Isles.
THE HANLON BROTHERS
one of the most significant productions in the history of
popular entertainment, for in it a wide range of circus
techniques, stage music, and dazzling scenic trickwork
was incorporated into a dramatic context and per-
formed by a group of the world's most talented acro-
bats, jugglers, and clowns.32
83
The plot of Le Vqyage en Suisse was a mere frame on which to
hang the Hanlons' signature comic horseplay and stage machinery. Le
Vqyage en Suisse follows the antics of a young lover whose fiancee is sud-
denly snatched away by a lecherous older man to Switzerland. The five
Hanlon brothers played comic servants, determined to keep the older
man from the young woman's bedroom. Le Vqyage en Suisse featured
rough and tumble skirmishes, demolished train cars, and wrecked hotel
furnishings as backdrops for the troupe's falls, rumblings, somersaults,
and leaps.
Audiences were amazed by the scenic effects-a stage coach that
collapsed, scattering its occupants onto the stage; a full-scale train with
moving wheels that suddenly exploded ; a man crashing through two ceil-
ings and landing unscathed on a banquet table. Seemingly impossible bits
of physical comedy were included, too-crashes, tumbles, fist-fights-all
stunts learned in their early days as champion gymnasts. The company
even found time to juggle the entire contents of a sumptuous feast-
knives, forks, plates, crystal, and fowl. A frequently singled-out bit was
the drunken act, in which two of the servants stole a Frenchman's bottle
and proceeded to imbibe the contents. The comic results included one of
the clown's thrusting a lit candle down the throat of the other, with his
partner retaliating by throwing him through a mirror.
The Hanlons played the production for nearly four months in
the French capital, before transferring to Brussels' Galeries Saint-Hubert
for fifty consecutive nights. Subsequently, on March 27, 1880 Le V qyage en
Suisse opened at London's Gaiety. As they had experienced on the
European continent, the Hanlons enjoyed a rousing success playing Le
Vqyage en Suisse before appreciative English audiences. John Hollingshead,
manager of the Gaiety, remembered:
32 John H. Towsen, Clowns (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1976), 181.
Throughout his otherwise fine essay on the Hanlon Brothers, Towsen mysteriously ren-
ders the title of the play as A Trip to Switzerland. However, in English speaking countries
the Hanlons always toured the play under its initial French title, Le Vo/age en Suisse.
Act one. As the distraught young lover is consoled, the Hanlon Brothers arrive via
stagecoach. Le Vryage en Suisse-The Arrival. (Author's Collection).
Act one. A collection of gags puncmating the end of the act-the overturned stage-
coach, the robbing of a Frenchman's bottle, and gymnastic and ladder routines through
a second-story window. Le Vryage en Suisse-The Upset. (Author's Collection).
Act two. Twenty-five minutes of non-stop belly laughs in, atop, and below a cut-away
of a Pullman train car speeding its way through Switzerland. As the lecherous older man
attempts to consummate his marriage, the Hanlon Brothers construct increasingly elab-
orate means to halt the proceedings. When determined Swiss border agents intervene,
the clowns' tussle eventually takes them to the top of the car, after several berths are
completely destroyed. One unfortunate lackey is pitched onto the tracks. With the train's
wheels and gears grinding away, he holds on and manages to rejoin the fracas.
Le Vi!Jiage en Suisse-The Pullman Car. (Author's Collection).
Act two's concluding tableau. The lovers are briefly reunited stage-center.
Le Vi!Jiage en Suisse-The Train Collapses. (Author's Collection).
A wedding banquet is convened. The party's guests juggle the contents of the feast. To
prevent the married couple from retiring to their bed chamber, the clowns pose as wait-
ers and disrupt the proceedings. Le Vqyage en Suim- Falling through the Ceiling.
(Author's Collection).
A compendium of scenes illustrating the extraordinary physical comedy that punctuat-
ed Le Voyage en Suisse's third act. The lackeys have been drinking steadily. A gend'arme
arrives, determined to arrest the lackeys for the havoc they created on the train. A chase
ensues during which the hotel's contents are completely trashed, in a melee of slapstick
comedy. Le Vqyage en Sut!se-FinaleRigi-Kulrn Hotel. (Author's Collection).
THE HANLON BROTHERS
The Hanlon-Lees at the Gaiety revived the taste for
pure pantomime mixed with ingenious mechanical tricks
that would have opened poor old Grimaldi's eyes with
envy and astonishment. Omnibuses that turn over on
the stage, spilling their passengers in every direction;
Pullman cars that blow up with a comic explosion; and
ceilings that allow footmen to fall through them on to a
dinner table were not invented at the opening of the
century.33
87
As early as April 1880, American journalists were heralding the
fact that the Hanlons' Le VIZ!'age en Suisse would open in the United States
the following theatrical season under the management of Morris
Simmonds and T. Allston Brown. The Spirit of the Times boasted, "As we
predicted the Hanlon-Lees have made as great a success in London as in
Paris .... Simmonds has a fortune in this piece."34 Simmonds and Brown
even filed for an American copyright with the Library of Congress for Le
V01age en Suisse on July 10, 1880, while the Hanlon Brothers remained in
England.
Immediately after Le V01age en Suisse closed its inaugural London
run in the summer of 1880, the Hanlons embarked on a tour of Great
Britain, performing in Bishopsgate, Liverpool, Bradford, and
Manchester. Hollingshead successfully wooed them back to London for
the December 1880 holiday season, where they played the Imperial
Theatre. In the spring of 1881, the company moved once again to the
provinces, playing engagements in Bradford, Nottingham, Liverpool,
Glasgow, and Edinburgh.35 Yet while the Hanlons enjoyed their fantastic
successes across Europe, rwo American showmen plotted how to pirate
Le Vqyage for profit before its official American debut.
33 John Hollingshead, Afy Lzjelime (London: Sampson Low, Marston &
Company, 1895), vol. 2, 168. George Hanlon met his wife, Helena, while performing at
the Gaiety. At the age of fifteen, she was a member of John Hollingshead's Gaiety
Theatre Company. See: "Mrs. Hanlon Dies After Operation," an unidentified newspaper
clipping on file at the Harvard Theatre Collection, Cambridge, MA.
34 Spirit if the Times [New York], 24 April, 1880. In fact, the Spirit if the Times
reported that Morris Simmonds had sailed for London to begin negotiations in its issue
of March 27, 1880.
35 Relevant playbills from the Hanlons tour of the English provinces are on ftle
in the "Le VV'age en Suisse Programme File" at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
88 COS DON
Those showmen, William A. Mestayer and John P. Smith,
opened an unusual production at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's Walnut
Street Theatre on February 28,1881. Entitled Pour Prendre Conge, or, Seeing
Switzerland, the piece was allegedly authored by Mestayer and managed by
Smith. Previously, Smith had operated an Uncle o m ~ Cabin company that
played primarily on the Eastern seaboard. Hence, his new production was
a radical departure from his earlier theatrical offerings. Pour Prendre Conge
had the sparsest of plots: A party of tourists travels to Switzerland. The
group includes a young artist named Tom and a villain named Titmouse,
both of whom are rivals for the hand of a beautiful young woman named
Constance. The action is supplied primarily by two servants who play
tricks on the travelers. Mestayer hired the Daly Brothers-William and
Thomas-a pair of popular low comedians to play the servants, along-
side a second-rate company of pantomimists. A pre-opening publicity
blurb published in the Philadelphia Press promised that the new pan-
tomimic comedy was "replete with novel stage effects, produced by
ingenious mechanical devices."36 However, that evening befuddled audi-
ence members literally watched a train-wreck of a production unfold
before them. The Philadelphia North American opined that Mestayer's play
was
[a] ridiculous piece with the ridiculous title of Pour
Prendre Conge .... It proved to be a foolish farrago of
nonsense, absurd with out being funny; vulgar and yet
not smart; ridiculous, and still dull; boisterous but not
enlivening .... It is exasperating in its silliness, and peo-
ple who paid their money to see it must have felt that
they had been imposed upon .... The flrst scene is pret-
ty and the lateral view of a parlor car in motion is not
badly contrived. Notwithstanding two long waits, during
which a miserably feeble orchestra discoursed a melan-
choly apology for music, the curtain fell before ten
o'clock, and judging from the alacrity with which they
departed, the spectators were glad of itY
36 "Pour Prendre Conge," Philadelphia Press, 28 February, 1881.
37 "Pour Prendre Conge," [Philadelphia] North American, 1 March, 1881.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 89
Underwhelming critical reception aside, Pour Prendre Conge would
become an especially important test-case for copyright law. In an era
without significant copyright protection for dramatic authors, the subse-
quent litigation surrounding Pour Prendre Conge helped usher in protec-
tions for foreign artists, particularly those whose stock-in-trade sur-
rounded physical performance, scenic splendor, and technical innovation.
This was sparked by the machinations surrounding Gilbert and Sullivan's
H.M.S. Pinafore. Staged in London in 1878, Pinafore spurred pirated ver-
sions which appeared soon after in the United States. When Gilbert and
Sullivan came to New York in 1879 to stage "the authentic version" of
H.M.S. Pinafore, the production had a reasonably short run, Americans'
appetites having been sated by rival knock-off companies.38 The
Hanlons' States-side manager T. Allston Brown was determined to pre-
vent a similar fate from occurring with Le Vqyage en Suisse.
Clued to the nature of the piece, Brown attended Pour Prendre
Conge's opening performance. Nearly seven months before the Hanlons'
proposed return to America, Colonel Brown watched the production,
perhaps sharing the horror of the first night audience. Although Pour
Prendre Conge lacked the Hanlons' supreme physical talents, some years
later Brown noted that Mestayer's "new' ' play was "identical in business,
mechanical effects and characters with that of 'Le Voyage en Suisse' .. . .
A more deliberate steal I have never heard of."39 Immediately, Colonel
Brown acted to halt the pirated play before it deadened any potential
draw for his upcoming fall attraction. For the Hanlon Brothers, Pour
Prendre Conge threatened to derail the family's return to America. Playing
extended engagements in London and the English provinces, the
Hanlons were not scheduled to bring their Le Vqyage en Suisse to America
until September 1881, by which time the rival show would have dulled the
audience's appetite for the production and, ironically, might have made
the Hanlons seem like the imitators.
With theatrical newspapers in the United States reporting the
foreign triumphs of Le Vqyage en Suisse in Paris, Brussels, and Great
Britain, Brown suspected that John P. Smith had sent his emissary
William A. Mestayer to London in order to copy the Hanlon Brothers'
vehicle. But Mestayer need not have gone any further than Washington,
38 See Michael Ainger, Gilbert and S11llivan: A D11al Biograpfry (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
39 T. Allston Brown, "The Theatre in America," New York Clipper, 19 March,
1892, 20.
90 COS DON
DC for an account of the play, complete with elaborate illustrations of its
workings. An early version of the play was registered with the Lbrary of
Congress. Crucially, on July 10, 1880, Colonel Brown and his partner
Morris Simmonds registered a copyright of the pantomime on behalf of
the troupe. As part of the process of securing a patent, a version of a
newly authored script had to be added to the Lbrary of Congress's col-
lection. Had he traveled to the Lbrary of Congress, Mestayer could have
easily perused the pantomime script of Le Vqyage en Suisse on file at the
national library. Curiously, perhaps in a misguided bid to lend his play
legitimacy, Mestayer also copyrighted his Pour Prendre Conge, the patent
being issued on February 4, 1881-nearly seven months after Simmonds
and Brown's filing.40
Although a stray Philadelphia paper praised Pour Prendre Conge, 41
the resounding critical response was negative. Several astute critics point-
ed out that the production pillaged the Hanlons' Le Vqyage en Suisse, which
had yet to make its United States premiere. (Perhaps these newspapers
had been cued by T. Allston Brown. Early in his career Colonel Brown
had been employed as the New York Philadelphia-based dramatic
reviewer. In all likelihood, he still had more than a few associates work-
ing in the city.) But despite the maelstrom it had created along the banks
of the Delaware River, Pour Prendre Conge moved from Philadelphia to
Haverly's Brooklyn Theatre after a week's engagement. Here, Colonel
Brown commenced legal action, with the assistance of attorney Abe
Hummel. Brown attempted to have the rogue play enjoined before it
4
0 See Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870-1916
(Washington, DC: General Publishing Office, 1918). The version of Le en Suisse
that Simmonds and Brown copyrighted in 1880 is on file at the Library of Congress, com-
plete with illustrations on boards. Perhaps stung by the litigation surrounding Le
en Suisse, the Hanlons copyrighted numerous scripts over the course of their career, many
of which went unperformed. Sadly, only a handful of these texts are still available at the
Library of Congress-where the Hanlons had entrusted them for preservation and doc-
umentation over a century ago. Perhaps most agonizing of all: the Hanlons registered
subsequent versions of Le en Suisse, along with such performed pieces as Fantasma,
Superba, A live!J Legary, and The NaboM Fortune; or, The Adventures of a Sealed Packet. All
have since been purged, along with Pour Prendre Cong!, and countless other nineteenth cen-
tury playscripts. According to employees of the Library of Congress's Manuscript
Division, in the early 1980s those scripts that were deemed to be "not of interest" were
thrown away! Mysteriously, none of these deaccessioned holdings were even microfilmed
by the nation's repository.
41
In its review of March 1, 1881, the Philadelphia Inquirer called the production
"a clever piece of nonsense and full of capital fun."
THE HANLON BROTHERS 91
could open, appearing before a Brooklyn Judge on March 11. A Judge
Donohue initially agreed that the play should not be allowed to open.
However, a second judge modified the injunction, giving clearance for
Smith and his company.42
Under the management of John P. Smith Pour Prendre Conge
transferred to the Brooklyn Theatre, where it opened on March 14. One
writer remembered that it was "no glittering host."43 Meanwhile, in a
Brooklyn, New York courtroom Colonel Brown appealed a second time
for an injunction against Pour Prendre Conge. Arguing before Judge
Lawrence, Brown and Hummel pleaded that Pour Prendre Conge was a pla-
giarized version of Brown's coming attraction Le V qyage en Suisse. To
strengthen his case, Colonel Brown produced copies of both plays,
including a fresh version of Le Vqyage en Suisse that had been copyrighted
recently by George and William Hanlon.44 After perusing the pantomime
scripts (no easy task!), Judge Lawrence concluded:
Having examined the papers in this case, I am of the
opinion that the injunction should be continued .... The
resemblance between the plaintiffs' play and that of the
defendants, in cast, incident and character, is too strik-
ing to have been the result of accident. ... I think the
plaintiffs are entitled to the relief they seek. Motion to
continue injunction granted with costs.45
The stolen production had been halted, at least temporarily. Smith was
ordered to pay damages totaling $1500, a penalty which he promptly
appealed.
42 "Enjoining a Play," Truth [Brooklyn], 12 March, 1881.
43 George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1939), vol. XI, 80.
44 According to Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States, 1870-1916,
George and William Hanlon were awarded a copyright for 1....c VIZ)Iage en Suisse on March
15, 1881. Regrettably this version is no longer extant, in all likelihood purged in the early
1980s by the space-pressed Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress. A docu-
ment from the Library of Congress, signifying the registration of the script, is contained
in Edward Hanlon's scrapbook on ftle at the Boston Public Library, Rare Books and
Manuscripts.
45 New York Sun, 15 March, 1881.
92 COSDON
At the Brooklyn Theatre's Wednesday matinee, the curtain was
brought down midway through the first act of Pour Prendre Congi, or, Seeing
Switzerland. Fittingly, the stage coach had just collapsed when the per-
formance was halted. Displaying a great deal of temerity, manager John
P. Smith stepped before the drop curtain and announced:
Ladies and gendemen, I regret very much that we have
been served with an injunction, preventing our per-
formance this afternoon. It is the most outrageous piece
of business ever perpetrated in this country. I feel satis-
fied that I shall win this case, for right must be success-
ful in the end. The ground upon which we stand is solid.
They may try their pettifogging schemes against us, but
they will not succeed. They don't dare to come to
Brooklyn. If they do, we will give them more law than
they want. You can have your money back, or tickets for
a performance, which we shall give you this evening.46
A variety company was hastily assembled to fill out the Brooklyn
Theatre's weekly schedule.
Believing that the legal troubles had been put behind them, on
March 19, 1881 attorney Abe Hummel sent a telegraph to the Hanlons,
who were touring the British provinces. Hummel's wire stated, "Glorious
victory judge Lawrence just granted injunction long decision in our
favor-Abe Hummel."
47
Regrettably, Hummel was a bit premature in his
assertions.
Brazenly disregarding the Brooklyn court's orders, William P.
Smith brought Pour Prendre Conge to Boston, where the company opened
at the Boston Theatre on March 21, 1881. The production was originally
scheduled to play Boston's Globe Theatre. However, when manager John
Stetson was notified of the production's infringement on Le en
Suisse, he withdrew from the engagement. The Boston press was merci-
less in their reviews of the Boston Theatre production. The Boston
critic remarked:
46 John P. Smith, cited in T. Allston Brown, "The Theatre in America," New
York Clipper, 19 March, 1892, 20.
47 The original telegram, dated March 19, 1881 can be found in Edward
Hanlon's scrapbook, on file at the Boston Public Library's Rare Books and Reference
Department.
THE HANLON BROTHERS
To describe the hodge-podge presented at the Boston
Theatre last evening as silly nonsense would give it a dig-
nity that it does not possess. It is impossible to convey
in terms of intelligible and decorous English any ade-
quate idea of the utter inanity and vacuity of the piece
that has acquired a little notoriety on the stage and a
great deal in the courts under the high-sounding title of
"Pour Prendre Conge."48
93
Naturally, Colonel Brown attempted to halt the Boston Theatre
production. Regrettably the Massachusetts courts were more slow-mov-
ing than those in New York; Pour Prendre Conge held the stage through its
week-long run, "closing forever on the evening of March 26."49
However, the subsequent decision by a Boston judge, Judge Nelson,
sought to halt all future productions of the pirated play. Explaining his
decision, Judge Nelson stated:
That which gives the play [Pour Prendre Conge] its charac-
ters, its general plot and scheme, and general effect, I
think is so very near the plaintiffs' play [Le Vqyage en
Suzsse]that it would be rather an outrage upon the rights
of these foreign artists [the Hanlon Brothers] when they
come over here to find the public in possession of a play
so evidently and avowedly written in imitation of it, and
written to imitate it as closely as possible. I think the imi-
tation is so near that it is a substantial infringement of
the title which the plaintiffs have in this play of "Le
Voyage en Suisse," and an injunction will issue in con-
formity with the prayer in the plaintiffs' bill.so
The recalcitrant John P. Smith was smacked with a second fine of $1500
by the New England judge. Living up to his middle name-Penurious-
Smith subsequently pleaded before a second judge that his penalty should
48 "'Pour Prendre Conge' at the Boston," Boston Globe, 22 March, 1881.
49 Eugene Tompkins, The History of the Boston Theatre, 1854-1901 (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908), 280.
so Judge Nelson, cited in T. Allston Brown, "The Theatre in America;' New
York Clipper, 19 March, 1892,. 20.
94 COSO ON
be reduced. This time, Smith was successful, having his fine reduced to
$700.51 But his legal troubles had not ended. When Smith returned to
New York, he was arrested for contempt of court and fined $731. Upon
his release, the New York Clipper noted: "Not satisfied yet, the doughty
manager took the case to the Court of Appeals at Albany, and once more
lost his case."sz Finally, the unpleasant court battles were put to rest.
Judging from the universal success that the Hanlons enjoyed
when they finally brought Le Vqyage en Suisse to America, the renegade
Pour Prendre Conge, or, Seeing Switzerland had little effect on their box office
appeal. Colonel Brown and his attorney Abe Hummel had acted fast
enough to curtail any damage to Brown's treasured piece. One critic
warned, "Those who see 'Le Voyage en Suisse' will not fail to observe
that certain of its motives and effects have been anticipated within the
past year by various local performers, who, no doubt, took a hint from its
success abroad."53 But it seems that audiences were eager to see the true
Hanlons in their signature piece, not a company of hacks. Perhaps to
reassure audiences, newspaper advertisements in the United States fre-
quently included Le Vqyage en Suisse's tagline, 'We are all here," alongside
illustrations of the over-turned stagecoach.
However, the Hanlons learned a valuable lesson from the expe-
rience. From this point forward, they consistently copyrighted scripts
they had written or purchased, hoping to discourage would-be plagiarists.
In addition, as new theatrical mechanisms and devices were invented,
William in particular would file quickly for the attendant rights with the
United States Patent Office. Because of their growing popularity with
American audiences, the Hanlon Brothers frequently found their plays,
routines, and technological innovations imitated and copied by rival the-
atre companies and managers. As a result, the Hanlons became quite liti-
gious, quick to obtain the services of a lawyer when they felt their rights
had been infringed upon. Over the next forty years, they would end up in
numerous courtroom squabbles.
51 New York Clipper, 7 January, 1882, 795.
52 T. Allston Brown, "The Theatre in America," New York Clipper, 19 March,
1892,20.
53 An untitled clipping from the New York Tribune hand-dated April 11, 1881.
The article is on ftle at the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 95
VOYAGE TO AMERICA-THE NEW YoRK DEBUT, FAU.1881
In August 1881, the Hanlons returned to America. Having been
away from the United States for over eleven years, there was a great deal
of interest in these five brothers who had thrilled European audiences.
Bringing with them their "Parisian absurdity" Le Vqyage en u i s s ~ a radi-
cal departure from acrobatic and gymnastic stunts, their previous fields
of specialization- the Hanlon Brothers' return was awaited most eager-
ly. Alfred, William, Edward, and Frederick arrived in late August on the
steamer Algeria. George remained behind in England, supervising the
loading of the company's scenery, properties, and costumes. Colonel T.
Allston Brown remembered, "The entire outfit- properties, tricks,
scenery, and all the mechanical arrangements, were brought from
Europe."S4 George Hanlon followed his brothers ten days later on the
Spain.
The New York Clipper, the nineteenth-century's leading theatrical
journal, had always been an unwavering ally of the Hanlon Brothers. The
paper had published favorable press coverage and detailed listings of the
troupe's acrobatic and aerial routines during the Hanlons' initial tours of
the United States through the 1860s. Now that the family was embarking
on a new endeavor-the production of pantomime comedy-the paper
would become a primary source of encouragement. Understanding the
importance of continuing to foster this relationship, the Hanlon Brothers
paid a visit to the Clipper's office a day after their arrival from England.
It was like old times when, on Thursday of last week
these gentlemanly and artistic performers visited THE
CLIPPER office to announce their arrival the previous
day .... Time has dealt gently with the elder members of
the troupe, while the younger ones have developed from
boyhood into maturity; and all are the same neat and
refined artists that they were when their acrobatic and
other performances, then new to us, created such an
excitement in the new world .... When they were last
here they were all single; now they are all married and
their wives and children accompany them to the United
54 T. Allston Brown, A History of the N ew York Stage (New York: Benjamin
BJorn, Inc., 1905), vol. III, 204.
96
States, and will travel with them in their tour .... We
bespeak for the Hanlon-Lees a cordial welcome. In their
specialties they are unrivaled, and their plays have been
written so as to enable them to display their extraordi-
nary agility, etc.ss
COSDON
No doubt, the mutual affections between the brothers and the staff of
the trade paper were solidified by the fact that the Hanlons' states-side
manager T. Allston Brown had once been employed by the Clipper, first
as its Philadelphia correspondent and subsequently as the paper's dra-
matic editor, a post he held for nine years. Hence, it is little wonder that
the Hanlons were featured prominently on the cover of the theatrical
profession's leading newspaper on two separate occasions during the fall
of 1881, neatly coinciding with the New York premiere of their show Le
Vqyage en Suisse. 56 For the duration of the Hanlons' career, the New York
Clipper proved to be a faithful confederate.
The company was initially slated to open at New York's Park Street
Theatre on Saturday, September 10, 1881. However, the troupe encoun-
tered several unforeseen setbacks, forcing them to push Le V qyage en
Suisse's eagerly awaited premiere to the following Monday, September 12.
The delay was warranted, because it virtually guaranteed a smooth open-
ing night. As the New York Times opined, "The machinery worked
smoothly and the entertainment was completely a success, first because
of the merit of the performers and secondly because sufficient rehearsals
had insured rapid action."57 First, the properties, costumes, scenery, and
mechanical arrangements had to be unpacked and reconstructed. As well,
a new backstage crew of fifty Americans needed to be trained before the
pantomime could be staged.
55 New York Clipper, 3 September, 1881, 386.
56 The Ne111 York Clipper's edition of September 10, 1881 featured an illustration
of Le ~ a g e en Suisse's Pullman car, complete with depictions of the rooftop chase and
the poor soul caught below the moving car. Interestingly, this is the exact board illustra-
tion included in the version of Le ~ a g e en Suisse registered at the Library of Congress
by Morris Simmonds and T. Allston Brown in 1880. Illustrations of the Hanlon Brothers
were also featured on the New York Clipper November 5, 1881, along with a lengthy biog-
raphy of the family.
57 "The Hanlon-Lees," New York Clipper, 13 September, 1881, 5.
THE HANLON BROTHERS 97
However, besides worrying about production and technical con-
cerns, the Hanlons were also dealing with a minor company shake-up.
The English actor H. Reeves Smith had come to America with the com-
pany, slated to play the role of the spurned lover, Frank Maguire.
Unfortunately, as the company approached the opening performance,
Smith injured himself and had to be replaced. Scrambling, the Hanlon
Brothers quickly cast Nelson Decker. According to Colonel T. Allston
Brown, Decker was the only American in the debut.SS
Each time the Hanlon Brothers brought Le Vqyage en Suisse to a
new country, they hired a writer to adapt the production to local tastes
and sensibilities. In 1881 when the brothers crossed the Atlantic Ocean
to bring Le Vqyage en Suisse to the United States, they hired comic play-
wright Henry Pettitt to give the play an ''American" flavor. Previously,
Henry Pettitt had composed The Nabob's Fortune for the Hanlons, a pan-
tomime that the troupe premiered in the summer of 1881 while still tour-
ing Great Britain with Le Vqyage en Suisse. In August 1881, Pettitt accom-
panied the Hanlons' troupe to the United States.s9
The "new" version of Le Vqyage en Suisse that Pettitt composed
for American audiences was not so different from its European prede-
cessors. Pettitt's alterations were mostly cosmetic, changing names, occu-
pations, and nationalities for a few of the characters. Both Pettitt and the
Hanlons must have assumed that large portions of the production (most
notably the physical action) would "translate" into any language or locale.
The American debut of the Hanlon Brothers' Le Vqyage en Suisse
was staged at Abbey's Park Street Theatre. Owned by Henry Edwin
Abbey, the playhouse was renowned for hosting international stars like
the Hanlon Brothers. Because of his success in attracting touring foreign
artists, Abbey became known as "The Napoleon of the Managers." A
handsomely appointed auditorium, Abbey's Park Street Theatre was
patronized by well-to-do audiences eager to see premiere attractions.60
The Hanlons' tenure at the famed Abbey's Park Street Theatre lasted for
nearly three months.
58 T. Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage (New York: Benjamin
BJorn, Inc., 1905), vol. Il , 205.
59 N11JV York Clipper; August 7,1881. After the New York debut Pettitt remained
in North America, composing a series of popular comedies and opera burlesques that
played to enthusiastic audiences in both England and the United States, including Faust
Up to Date (1889), Cam1en Up to Date (1890), the imaginatively titled An Up to Date Sporting
Drama, Entitled The Prodigal Daughter (1892), and Blue-Eyed Susan (1892).
60 See Mary C. Henderson, The City and the Theatre: New York Plqyhouses from
Bowling Green to Times Square (Clifton, NJ: James T. White, 1973).
l ..
r .L 'M ---;-oo-;:
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.5MI.!. !ll'f
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(tit...\:\ I'
t..l \ HI;.,
t'J'IW . 1
.... --
1111!, ... -...
--
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--,-.-..
EliT UtTAUUNT
A playbill from Abbey's New Park Theatre, New York, for the week of October 15, 1881.
Le Vtryage en Suisse--Playbill from Abbey's Park Theatre. (Author's Collection).
In the seaside town of Cohasset, Massachusetts, the Hanlons constructed a scenic studio
to perfect their stage wizardry and gags. Featuring a fully functioning trapped stage and
fly-space, the studio had no seating for an audience. Each summer, the Hanlons' compa-
ny would convene for a month of rehearsal, before being sent out on the road. The stu-
dio was demolished in 1915. Hanlons Scenic Studio, Cohasset, Massachusetts.
THE HANLON BROTHERS
99
However, Abbey's Park Street Theatre was not known solely for
its touring international stars. Beginning in 1877, the theatre was also the
principal home of William H. Crane and Stuart Robson, co-stars of a
number of American domestic comedies. Interestingly, both Crane and
Robson owned homes in the sleepy New England seaside resort of
Cohasset, Massachusetts. At the time, Cohasset was populated in the
summer by a veritable who's-who of late-nineteenth century actors,
including Crane, Robson, Lawrence Barrett, Charles Thorne, Edwin
Booth, Joseph Jefferson, and William Warren.61 Cohasset's charms even-
tually lured the Hanlons too, perhaps encouraged by Crane and Robson,
co-tenants of Abbey's Park Street Theatre. At the conclusion of Le
V01age en Suisse's first tour in 1883, the Hanlon Brothers spent the sum-
mer in the small idyllic town on Massachusetts' South Shore. By the late
1880s, the Hanlons were calling Cohasset, and the United States, their
home.
Following the September 12, 1881 United States' premiere of Le
V01age en Suisse, the Hanlon Brothers were showered with critical praise.
For nearly two years, the family's comic pantomime had been heralded in
the theatrical profession's leading newspapers as it played Western
Europe's leading playhouses. Finally, American audiences could view the
production. Almost unanimously, they praised this pantomime that
would hold the stage for nearly thirty years. The New York Times' rave was
characteristic of the acclaim bestowed on the production: ''Their contor-
tions were greeted with unstinted applause and laughter."62
A theatrical legend had been reclaimed. After all, the Hanlon
Brothers had been away from the United States for over eleven years.
Still, with some gentle prompting from the press, audiences recalled the
phenomenal brothers who once had been the leading progenitors of
acrobatic and aerial displays. Now, this same family had moved into a new
field of broadly theatrical specialization. The sensational three acts of Le
V01age en Suisse were characterized by a series of spectacular acrobatic
feats by the Hanlon Brothers, feats which were undoubtedly perfected
during their childhood spent learning such stunts. As a Philadelphia jour-
nalist noted, "The piece as is clear, was constructed simply to display the
skill of the agile gymnasts and pantomimists and it serves the purpose
61 Edith B. Williams, "The Actors' Colony in Cohasset," Theatre Maga'{jne
(November 1909): 162-65.
6
2
"The Hanlon-Lees," New York Times, 13 September, 1881, 5.
100
COSDON
amply."G3 Interestingly, American critics seemed to take the violence of
the piece for granted, not theorizing it in the way that European critics
had done. Whether this was because the rough-and-tumble new country
appreciated artists who were as prone to solving problems with the same
kind of "direct" behavior as many of the young nation's most celebrated
real-life and fictional heroes, or whether it was because American audi-
ences were more entranced by the spectacle than its social implications is
difficult to determine. But it is interesting to note that Zola's "cynical
philosophers" seem to have represented only carefree enjoyment to the
American spectators who embraced them so enthusiastically.
The Hanlon Brothers' Le ~ a g e en Suisse would continue serving
"the purpose amply" for the next three decades, alongside their long-
lived fairy pantomimes Fantasma (1884) and Superba (1890). Plot in these
productions, like the early film comedy they prefigure, was secondary, in
favor of the Hanlons' unique combination of macabre pantomime, side-
splitting comedy, breathtaking physical dexterity, and technological wiz-
ardry. This successful formula and its derivatives were seen throughout
early twentieth-century fllm, the epitome being Buster Keaton (who as a
child toured alongside his family in a vaudeville company managed by the
Hanlon Brothers), Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops, and the Marx
Brothers. It is perhaps in these inheritors of the Hanlon tradition that
contemporary historians see the brothers' legacy not only of extraordi-
nary stunts, but of cynicism, subversion, and parody. For their many
innovations and influences, the Hanlons truly were "the Edisons of pan-
tomime."64
63 North American [Philadelphia], 21 February, 1882, 1.
64 Jules Claretie, La Vie a Paris 1881 (Paris: Victor Harvard, 1882), 358.
CONTRIBUTORS
SusAN C. W. ABBOTSON is Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode
Island College, and her most recent book, Masterpieces of 20th Century
American Drama came out from Greenwood Press last Fall. She is also the
author of Thematic Guzde to Modern Drama (2003), Student Companion to
Arthur Miller (2000), and Understanding Death of a S aleman (1999) co-
authored with Brenda Murphy. She is currently working on A Critical
Companion to Arthur Miller for Fact on File.
MARK COSDON is an Assistant Professor m the Department of
Communication Arts and Theatre at Allegheny College. His work has
been published in Theatre History Studies, Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre
Research International, and Theatre InSight. He is completing a biography of
the Hanlon Brothers titled The Edisons of Pantomime: The Hanlon Brothers,
1833-1931. In 2007-08, Codson will serve as conference planner for the
American Theatre and Drama Society.
KATHERINE E. EGERTON is an Assistant Professor in the Department
of English, Theatre, Communication at Berea College. She is currently
working on a book about the interactions of gender and illness in Arthur
Miller's later plays, from After the Fall (1964) to Finishing the Picture (2004).
VALERIE M. JOYCE is an Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Villanova
University and Delaware County Community College, where she directs
and teaches Acting, Modern Drama, and Voice Enhancement. She
received her M.A. in Theatre from Villanova and is a Ph.D. candidate in
Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College
Park. She has presented at numerous conferences, including the
American Society for Theatre Research, the Society of Early
Arnericanists, the Popular and American Culture Association, and the
Marquette University's Women and Creativity Conference.
H EATHER S. NATHANS is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Theatre at the University of Maryland, where she is also Associate
Director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts
and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. She is the
author of Earfy American Theatre form the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into
the Hands of the People (CUP 2003) and the forthcoming Slavery and
Sentiment on the American Stage, 1787-1861: Lifting the Veil of Black (CUP).
Nathans is the incoming Vice President of the American Theatre and
Drama Society.
102
ROBERT VORLICKY teaches drama, theory, and performance at the Tisch
School of the Arts, New York University. He is the Director of Theatre
Studies in the Department of Drama, and Affiliated Faculty of Arts and
Science in the Department of English and the Department of Social and
Cultural Analysis. Vorlicky served as President of the American Theatre
and Drama Society from 1999-2002.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
THE HElRS OF
MOLIERE
fOUR fRENCH COMEDIES Of THE
17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES
@ TJ..Ahoent-MbsdeciJ..o-
@ D.ot.ou.cl..: The Coacett.cl c-..t
@ La 0.......0.. The f...la!oaehle Prejudice
@ l..a1)& n.. frieacl olli>e r....-
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
MARVIN C ARLSON
The Heirs of
Moliere
Translated and Edited by:
Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four
representative French comedies of
the period from the death of Moliere
to the French Revolution: Regnard's
The Absent-Minded Lover,
Destouches's The Conceited Count,
La Chaussee's The Fashionable
Prejudice, and Laya's The Friend of
the Laws.
Translated in a poetic form that
seeks to capture the wit and spirit of
the originals, these four plays
suggest something of the range of
the Moliere inheritance, from
comedy of character through the
highly popular sentimental comedy
of the mid eighteenth century, to
comedy that employs the Moliere
tradition for more contemporary
political ends.
In addition to their humor, these comedies provide fascinating social documents that
show changing ideas about such perennial social concerns as class, gender, and
politics through the turbulent century that ended in the revolutions that gave birth to
the modem era.
USA $20.00 plus shipping $3.00 USA, $6.00 International
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MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
DA

Cu o
Pixerecourt:
Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by:
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&
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This volume contains four of
Pixerecourt's most important
melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon,
or Jafar and Zaida, The Dog of
Montatgis, or The Forest of Bondy,
Christopher Columbus, or The
Discovery of the New World, and
A lice, or The Scottish Gravediggers,
as well as Charles Nodier's
"Introduction" to the 1843 Collected
Edition of Pixerecourt's plays and
the two theoretical essays by the
playwright, "Melodrama," and
"Final Reflections on Melodrama."
"Pixerecourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with its most stunning effects, and
brought the classic situations of fairground comedy up-to-date. He determined the
structure of a popular theatre which was to last through the 19th century ...
Pixerecourt determined that scenery, music, dance, lighting and the very movements
of his actors should no longer be left to chance but made integral parts of his play."
Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
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MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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Witkiewicz: Seven Plays
Translated and Edited
by Daniel Gerould
This volume contains seven of
Witkiewicz's most important
plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor
Brainiowicz, Gyubal Wahazar,
The Anonymous Work, The
Cuttlefish, Dainty Shapes and
Hairy Apes, and The Beelzebub
Sonata, as well as two of his
theoretical essays, "Theoretical
Introduction" and "A Few Words
about the Role of the Actor in the
Theatre of Pure Form."
Witkiewicz . . . takes up and
continues the vein of dream and
grotesque fantasy exemplified by
the late Strindberg or by
Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surrealists and
Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpeices of the dramatists of the
absurd-Beckett, Jones co, Genet, Arrabal- of the late nineteen forties and the
nineteen fifties. It is high time that this major playwright should become better
known in the English-speaking world.
Martin Esslin
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New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
The Arab Oedipus:
THE ARAB OEDIPUS
Four Plays
Editor
Marvin Carlson
Translators
Marvin Carlson
Dalia Basiouny
William Maynard Hutchins
Pierre Cachia
Desmond O'Grady
Admer Gouryh
With Introductions By:
Marvin Carlson, Tawfiq Al-Hakim,
& Dalia Basiouny
This volume contains four plays based on the
Oedipus legend by four leading dramatists of the
.. -1 Arab world: Tawfiq Al-Hakim's King Oedipus, Ali
Ahmad Bakathir's The Tragedy of Oedipus, Ali
Salim's The Comedy of Oedipus, and Walid
'-------";......_ _ _._ ..... Ik:hlasi's Oedipus.
The volume also includes Al-Hakim's preface to his Oedipus, on the subject of Arabic tragedy, a
preface on translating Bakathir by Dalia Basiouny, and a general introduction by Marvin Carlson.
An awareness of the rich tradition of modem Arabic theatre has only recently begun to be felt by the
Western theatre community, and we hope that this collection will contribute to that awareness.
USA $20.00 plus shipping $3.00 USA, $6.00 International
Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to:
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail checks or money orders to:
Circulation Manager
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Comedy:
A Bibliography
Editor
Meghan Duffy
Senior Editor
Daniel Gerould
Initiated by
Stuart Baker, Michael Early,
& David Nicolson
This bibliography is intended for scholars,
teachers, students, artists, and general
readers interested in the theory and
practice of comedy. It is a concise
bibliography, focusing exclusively on
drama, theatre, and performance, and
includes only published works written
in English or appearing in English
translation.
Comedy is designed to supplement older, existing bibliographies by including new areas
of research in the theory and practice of comedy and by listing the large number of new
studies that have appeared in the past quarter of a century.
USA $10.00 plus shipping $3.00 USA, $6.00 International
Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to:
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail checks or money orders to:
Circulation Manager
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Contemporary Theatre in Egypt contains the proceedings of a Symposium
on this subject held at the CUNY Graduate Center in February of 1999
along with the first English translations of three short plays by leading
Egyptian playwrights who spoke at the Symposium, Alfred Farag, Gamal
Maqsoud, and Lenin El -Ramley. It concludes with a bibliography of
English translations and secondary articles on the theatre in
Egypt since 1955.
(USA $12.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $12.00 plus $6.00 shipping)
Zeami and the No Theatre in the World, edited by Benito Ortolani and
Samuel Leiter, contains the proceedings of the "Zeami and the No
Theatre in the World Symposium" held in New York City in October 1997
in conjunction with the "Japanese Theatre in the World" exhibit at the
Japan Society. The book contains an introduction and fifteen essays,
organized into sections on "Zearni's Theories and Aesthetics," uZeami
and Drama," "Zeami and Acting," and "Zeami and the World. "
(USA $15.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $15.00 plus $6.00 shipping)
Four Works for tile Theatre by Hugo Claus contains translations of four
plays by the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch language theatre, poetry,
and prose. Flemish by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some
ninety plays, novels, and collections of poetry. The plays collected here with
an introducti on by David Willinger include The Temptation, Friday,
Serenade, and The Hair of the Dog.
(USA $15.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $15.00 plus $6.00 shipping)
Theatre Research Resources /tr New York City is the most comprehensive
catalogue of New York City research faci lities available to theatre scholars.
Within the indexed volume, each facility is briefly described including an
outline of its holdings and practical matters such as hours of operation. Most
entries include electronic contact information and web sites. The listings are
grouped as follows: Libraries, Museums, and Historical Societies; University
and College Libraries; Ethnic and Language Associations; Theatre Companies
and Acting Schools; and Film and Other.
(USA $5.00 plus $3.00 shipping. Foreign $5.00 plus $6.00 shipping)
Please make payments in U.S. Dollars payable to: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.
Mail checks or money orders to:
Circulation Manager
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth A venue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Visit our web-site at: web.gc.cuny.edulmestcl
Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868