I take a brief break from the “Tales of a Scenic Artist and Scholar” storyline as I travel to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the book release (“The Santa Fe Scottish Rite Temple: Freemasonry, Architecture and Theatre”). For the next three weeks, I will post about historic theaters that we visit on our journey. Yesterday, we visited the Omaha Scottish Rite. We are now on our way to the Hastings Scottish Rite and the Minden Opera House, landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming, tonight. I’ll keep you posted as I start the short series: Travels of a Scenic Artist and Scholar. Here is the first installment. Pictures of the Omaha Scottish Rite were posted yesterday.
Travels of a Scenic Artist and Scholar: Omaha Scottish Rite. June 15, 2018
We were able examine all of the backdrops at the Scottish Rite Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska, yesterday morning. The current Omaha Scottish Rite building constructed in 1914 at 20th and Douglas Streets, with the first Scottish Rite Reunion in the space being held that fall. It is now using scenery purchased from the Valley of Kansas City (Kansas) in 1996 for $40,000. This current scenery dates from the 1950s and will be described at the end.
In 1914, the “Omaha Daily Bee” described, “The new Scottish Rite Cathedral is a three-story structure, with high basement, built of Bedford granite, with imposing Ionic columns and porticos. The auditorium on the second and third floors where the initiations will take place, is an attractive modern theater, with a stage 30×40 feet and a seating capacity of about 1,000. It is tinted in cream and pink decorated panels and has all the arrangements for lighting, stage settings and precautions against fire, of the most up to the minute theater. It has a wardrobe and paraphernalia room adjoining” (1 Nov. 1914, page 25). No mention was made of the company that was providing the stage settings – VERY odd and unlike the opening of any other Scottish Rite in the country at the time.
M. C. Lilley subcontracted the 1914 set of scenery for Omaha to Sosman & Landis in Chicago during 1914. Thomas G. Moses confirmed this in his diary that year recording, “Some new Masonic work for Omaha.” Sosman and Landis had also created an earlier set for the Valley of Omaha to use at their previous space. During 1914, Sosman & Landis were creating Scottish Rite scenery for Grand Forks, ND, that “furnished a lot of work for the boys.” They also started the Pittsburgh Scottish Rite scenery collection of 100 drops. Regarding that project, Moses wrote that the job “will keep us busy for a long time.”
This was also the same year that Joseph S. Sosman passed away on August 7,, 1914, and the board of directors elected Moses as the company’s new president. He recorded, “On the 10th, a stockholders meeting was called and I was elected president of the Sosman and Landis Company. Arthur Sosman was elected vice-president and P. Lester Landis, secretary and treasurer. It is very strange to me that I had never given this change of the business a thought. I had never thought of Sosman dying.”
This is a horrible turn of events forever changed the fate of the studio; it placed a scenic artist in charge of a scenic studio that specialized in Scottish Rite scenery without any Scottish Rite Mason on staff. Sosman had been the driving force for years, as he was a well-respected Scottish Rite Mason in Chicago, a member of the Oriental Consistory. There was a new problem; Moses was not yet a Mason who understood how to navigate the Fraternity, or manage all of the necessary administrative duties at the studio that Sosman knew so well. Moses was, after all, primarily a scenic artist, stage mechanic, and designer.
Yet there was one other complication in 1914 that I just discoveredwhile reading “The Omaha Valley Scottish Rite Freemasonry, 1867-2014” by Wm. Larry Jacobsen. This book was a parting gift in Omaha, given to me by our wonderful guide Micah Evans. Interestingly, there was a misunderstanding on who was responsible for the structural work necessary to support the scenic drops. Part of the standard procedure for Scottish Rite scenery installations at that time was that they were suspended from “Brown’s special system.” This was named after the M C. Lilley western sales representative and Scottish Rite Mason, Bestor G. Brown. It would be atypical that someone, or any company, besides M. C. Lilley or Sosman & Landis would install 1914 stage machinery to accept their painted scenery.
Furthermore, Jacobsen writes that “M. C. Lilley suffered further anguish when the Omaha Valley reduced the number of drops to 34 from its original 80 because of the price” (page 44). This number, however, obviously increased as there are sixty line sets today. Jacobsen also explains that “after numerous communications, a general agreement was reached in January 1915 and the scene drops were ready for the Spring 1915 Reunion.” To NOT have the scenery for the opening of a building that cost a quarter million dollars instead of the anticipated 60,000 must have been embarrassing. The entire endeavor was incredibly over budget and would have been quite a scandal.
Fast forward to 1996 when the Valley of Kansas City put it’s building on the market and moved to a new location. They had a set of scenery produced by the Great Western Stage Equipment Company of Kansas City from the 1950s. I had discovered this sale while researching Scottish Rite compositions for my doctoral dissertation; the entire set of backdrops was posted online at the time. $140, 000 was spent to remove the drops from Kansas City, transport them to Omaha, and install the new drops.
So, what I was able to add to this Great Western Stage Equipment Company acquisition story was the specific artist who painted the drops. You see, in 1989, I processed the scenery designs for the Great Western Stage Equipment Company collection at the University of Minnesota Performing Arts archives. Like the Atlanta Scottish Rite, the scenic artist responsible for the Omaha Scottish right was Maj. Don Carlos DuBois (pronounced “due-boys”).
DuBois is unique, as he signed many of his backdrops – sometimes in a cute little beetle logo, and always with the date. He was also reprimanded in writing by his superiors to not put the names of living people on painted gravestones in the 30th degree catacombs drop. Clearly they couldn’t take a joke.
Images for several of the backdrops and were posted yesterday on my public FB page Dry Pigment. I will upload some later, as I am having internet issues on the road.
To be continued…
