Part 587: A Little Sister of the Rich at the Olympic Music Hall
In 1908, Thomas G. Moses wrote, “We did a show for Murdock at the Olympic – a failure, scenery and play.” Moses was referring to – “A Little Sister of the Rich,” a production that received much criticism.
The Olympic Music Hall opened on November 2, 1908, and “A Little Sister of the Rich” was featured at the close of the vaudeville program that December. It was a satire written by Irving B. Lee that included comedians such as McKay & Cantwell, Gus Weinburg, Catherine Rowe Palmer and some other members of the Olympic Company.
The “Inter Ocean” reported, “The Olympic Music Hall offers the Tom David trio, London bicyclists; the Big City quartet; Miss Elizabeth Murray in negro and Irish songs; Vinie Daly, the dancer, and other vaudeville numbers” (27 Dec 1908, page 34). The other acts included the Four Fords, Mabel Sinclair’s ventriloquism, the musical Amatis, Cora Beach Turner and company in a sketch called ‘A Bluffer Bluffed,” and Frankie La Marche, the Buster Brown girl.
The article continued, “’A Little Sister of the Rich,’ a one act musical entertainment will close the bill, and the Eight Berlin Madcaps, a dancing quartet, have been added to the performers in the play” (27 Dec 1908, page 34). The Moline “Dispatch” added, “A Little Sister to the Rich” includes “a chorus of 37 bewilderingly beautiful girls, gorgeously costumed” (The “Dispatch, Moline,” Illinois, 24 Dec. 1908, page 4).
As indicated by Moses, the show was not well-received by the public. Here is a review of the production in the “Chicago Tribune”(Chicago Tribune, 11 Dec. 1808, page 10):
“The best joke connected with “A Little Sister of the Rich,” a fifty minute musical comedy with which the vaudeville bill in the Olympic music hall has been supplemented, is that it bears absolutely no relation to its attractive title. This joke is on busy Manager Murdock, who permitted the authors of the sketch to sell it to him.
“Reading the title of “A Little Sister” the natural inference of the average citizen would be that the authors had anticipated the dramatization of Joseph Medill Patterson’s widely discussed novel concerning society’s extravagances, physical and financial, which is scheduled for local production in the Grand opera house next month. But evidently Irving B. Lee, who wrote the music hall affair, never heard of either the novel or proposed play.
“‘A Little Sister’ is an empty musical trifle, prettily staged. The scene is a department store and the fringe of a plot deals with a shrewd floorwalker who acts in collusion with a shoplifter. There are six musical numbers, three of them interpolated. Two of the six, “Would You Like to Take Me Home with You?” and “The Old Red, White, and Blue,” both sung by Adele Oswald, an attractive soprano of pleasant voice, are worth hearing. Cathryn Rowe Palmer, an eccentric soubrette of whom much was expected, contribute the toe dancing specialty which she introduced in “The Merry-Go-Round,” and that, added to the new costume lets Cathryn out. Cantwell and McKayes are the comedians. They are good dancers and promise to be amusing comedians when they get their stride and a new set of lines.
“There is no use getting ‘het up’ over ‘A Little Sister of the Rich.’ No manager in the country is more certain to discover the deficiencies in his performances and to correct them that Mr. Murdock. He has worked so far at a disadvantage. On of his principles, Harry Walters, fell ill the day of the dress rehearsal and the author, Mr. Lee, was pressed into service. It will require a lot of pressing to make a comedian of Mr. Lee. Mr. Walters will be back in the cast the last of the week.The vaudeville bill preceding the musical comedy is good, and includes the Four Fords, dancers extraordinary, and the Patty Frank troup of acrobats.”
In February 1909, “Variety” reported “the production was sent over the circuit as a headline act under its present name” (6 Feb 1909, Vol. XIIL, No. 9). I guess they kept trying to make it work.
To be continued…
