Part 721: Where the Managers Will Swing Hammocks, 1909
Yesterday I explored Thomas G. Moses’ trip to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. He stopped to visit theatrical manager Charles E. Kohl at his summer home, “Brier Cottage.” While researching the background for this story, I came across an interesting wonderful about the summer homes of theatrical managers. It was published in the “Chicago Tribune” on June 13, 1909:
“The call of the wild seems to have a peculiar charm for those engaged in theatrical business. Actors and managers alike are anxious to get back to nature during the brief intervals of leisure that an exacting business permits, particularly in the summer season when the pressure slackens and the charm, of the good old summer is potent.
Chicago managers like their associates in the east, most of whom have summer houses on seashore or mountain are quite given to indulging in the pleasures of country life.
Milward Adams of the Auditorium has a beautiful rustic place I upper Michigan. Will J. Davis has long possessed a big farm called Willowdale, near Elkhart, Ind. where he is always happiest when dispensing hospitality to his friends.
Charles E. Kohl, who, although unassuming to a degree, is the most influential personage in American vaudeville, has one of the show places in Lac La Belle, Oconomowoc, a place which twenty years of liberal expenditure and hard work have developed from the virgin forest into an ideal summer home.
Harry J. Powers long ago selected Geneva lake as the place where, with the aid of his family, he could recuperate during the salad season, when every prospect pleases and only business is vile.
The Hamlins of the Grand opera house have for many seasons enjoyed a lodge in the wilderness of the Adirondacks which possesses ten thousand charms at every turn for the lover of nature.
George Lederer finds the seashore to his taste and F. Wight Neumann, who has blossomed into the dignified estate of operatic impresario, inhabits a Massachusetts cottage when not hunting the coy and elusive sing bird in Europe.
Lyman B. Glover, manager of the Majestic theater, is one of the latest victims of this longing for nature, having purchased last year a valuable vineyard and fruit farm in the heart of the Michigan fruit belt and on the shored of beautiful Eagle lake. Here he may loaf and invite his soul on an occasional summer day. Perhaps living in an atmosphere of illusion sharpens the theatrical appetite for nature’s own charming reality”
To be continued…
