Copyright © 2020 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
On June 14, 1919, the “Brooklyn Citizen” reported that six well-known scenic artists were engaged at the Metropolitan Opera for the coming season – Boris Anisfelt, Joseph Urban, Norman Bell-Geddes, James Fox, Willy Pogany and Pieretto Bianco (page 10).
Two weeks earlier, Norman Bell-Geddes was quoted as saying, “The painted scenery is the material, the lighting is the spirit” (New York Tribune, June 1, 1919, page 37). It was now light that gave spirit to the scene, no longer the skill of the scenic artist. This is one of the moments highlighted in many theatre history books, a professed pinnacle moment in American theatre. It signals a departure from the past and the continued evolution of theatre based on a chronological depiction of historical events. What it replaced is often dismissed; there may be only a paragraph or two written about the prior century of American popular entertainment. The painted illusion produced by generations of scenic artists is abandoned for the new stage art. This is a significant moment, especially if we contemplate what was lost.
By 1919, Thomas G. Moses (1856-1934) was sixty-two years old. He had been a scenic artist for over 45 years and founded three scenic studios. In addition to working as his own boss, Moses had also worked for Chicago Studios, New York Studios, and at Sosman & Landis. At Sosman & Landis, he had transitioned from vice-president to president by 1915, first starting with the company in 1880.
Now imagine, you are an extremely skilled and a well-known artist picking up a newspaper. You are reading about the up-and-coming generation of scenic artists. By this point you have trained at least three new generations of artists, possibly four. Many of your one-time paint boys are leading designers in the field. The article that you are reading signals the ending of your era and the demand for a new art form with a new set of scenic skills. You are now lumped in with the “past,” and this past needs to be completely destroyed for the new generation and new art to proceed. The older generation of scenic artists, like Moses, were part of the “establishment,” moreover part of the “problem.” Unlike the generation before you, whose passing was lamented and the skills of the artists fondly recalled, everything that you worked for is now a target. The American theatre industry splintered into factions, with one segment denouncing the significance of another. We no longer lifted each other up, supplementing established skill sets with new technology. Instead, we promoted new art forms by destroying the past, as well as anything perceived as accepted or traditional. This attitude helped usher out the romantic realism on the stage and use of painted illusion, severing connections to the past. It is a fascinating time and one where the new artists explain, ‘If managers would only realize that it is not necessary to spend such large sums on scenery.” This statement took shot at the scenic studios, such as Sosman & Landis. This statement threatened the living wages earned by those who spent decades perfecting their skills.
On June 1, 1919, an article in the “New York Tribune” describes the “new art” in glowing terms and as breaking through the “barbed wire of inertia and stupidity, which always blocks the way of any innovator.” The article continued to explain that young scenic artists are leaping the “trenches of opposition and safely passing through the barrage of ridicule” (page 37). They are labeled the “soldiers of the new art,” and all were “native born Americans.”
The article headline stated, “Mr. Bell-Geddes and Others. The Young American Scene Painter Arrives – Present Activity of the Younger Generation Made Possible by Work of Urban and Anisfeld.” The article provides great historical context for Moses’ career in the 1920s, as he continues to encounter ever-increasing obstacles and the demand for painted scenery diminishes.
Here is the article in its entirety:
“Our singers and actors may not equal those of our past, our composers and dramatists may lack inspiration and vitality, but at least we have our scene painters. In the establishment of a national school of opera or drama this may be beginning hind end foremost, but some beginning is better than none at all. The Metropolitan Opera House, so long the abode of extreme conservatism, has of late years even been taking the lead in the encouragement of what is new in the art of the scenic artist. It has given us Urban, and Paquerau, and Pogany, and Boris Anisfeld, and though we still have the glittering gullibilities of Mario Sala, of Milan, Metropolitan audiences no longer believe that this painter’s ‘Aida’ is a masterpiece of scenic investiture. Whatever may have happened to our ears, our eyes have been opened.
It undoubtedly is Josef Urban to whom we owe managerial recognition of the new art. He broke through the barbed wire of inertia and studpidity which always blocks the way of the innovator, leaped the trenches of opposition, and passed safely through the barrage of ridicule. Behind him came the others, younger men all, who dug in and held their positions, where at last reports they were considering the offer of an armistice. And happy we may be to realize that the youngest of these soldiers of the new art are native born Americans. Robert Edmond Jones, Rollo Peters and Norman Bell-Geddes, Granville parker, Arthur Hopkins and the Russian Ballet have acquainted us with Mr. Jones’s work. Mr. Peters has painted sets for Mrs. Fiske, for Henry Miller, and now for the Theatre Guild; Mr. Bell-Geddes last season made fifteen Broadway theatre productions and one for the Metropolitan. It is indeed these young artists who offer what is most vital and significant in the American theatre to-day. Before them our actors and our playwrights and our composers ought to hang their heads; they have technique, but they also have courage and ideals. In short, they are real. When our Broadway playwright begins to talk of the drama our yawns are uncontrollable; when our actors, though here we will make a few blessed exceptions, speak of acting, we remember we have an engagement at the dentist’s; but when our young scene painters discuss scene painting we sit down and listen.
The career of Mr. Bell-Geddes is of interest in this connection. It shows how these young men originally were enthusiastic amateurs, whose interest gradually deepened until they virtually were forced into the theatre. Mr. Geddes, whose painting of the scenery of ‘Legend’ at the Metropolitan at once brought him into prominence, was born in Detroit, and attended for a very short while art schools in Cleveland and Chicago. He then took up the portrait painting and magazine illustrating, in which work he was exceedingly successful. At that time, however, he also wrote a play, but, finding it of a type unsuited to the average theatre stage, her determined to make a study of the theatre. In furtherance of this plan, he obtained access to the stage of one of the Detroit theatre, where he studied all that went on, and where he studied all that went on, and where he helped the stage hands and electricians. He also constructed in his studio a stage of his own, on which he made experiments in all sorts of appliances, especially in the matter of lighting. After leaving Detroit he lived for two years in Los Angeles, where he designed the scenery for a stock company and further improved his knowledge of practical stage conditions. His first work in the East was in designing the last act set of ‘Shanewis’ at the Metropolitan Opera House, after which the Broadway managers seized upon him. It is only in his set of ‘The Legend’,’ however, that New York has as yet allowed him even to moderately full sway, but in the coming production at the Metropolitan of Henry Hadley’s new opera, ‘Cleopatra’s Night,’ he hopes to show Metropolitan audiences what he is capable of accomplishing. Meanwhile he has finished designs for settings of ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ and of ‘King Lear,’ and is about to set to work on another play. It is these settings and those which he made for a stock company in Milwaukee last summer, of which he and Robert Edmond Jones were directors, which he hopes will be considered his, rather than the work he has done for Broadway managers.
‘We young chaps ought to be tremendously grateful to such men as Josef Urban and Boris Anisfeld,’ said Mr. Geddes recently. ‘These men with world-wide reputations have opened the door through which we youngsters, who are in the developing stage, can pass. Without them, our enthusiasm and whatever merit we may express probably would have been powerless to break down the innate conservativism of the average American manager. But those men have opened the eyes both of the public and of the managers, and so we now are able to get an opportunity of being seen. Of course, we often have to compromise, and of course the average Broadway show gives little scope for imagination, but, at least, we get in our hand.’
Mr. Geddes believes that lighting counts for more than painting in the modern history.
‘The painted scenery is the material, the lighting is the spirit,’ is the way he puts it. ‘There is no need of modern scenery being so horribly expensive. With proper lighting it is possible to do almost anything, the only trouble being that the lights are no only arranged scientifically in most of our theatres. With a triad of any color or combination of colors can be obtained and extraordinary effects in intensifying the mood can be produced be merely intensifying the lights.
‘The science of color is definite, yet the average stage manager knows nothing of it, save in the barest outline in Europe Adolph Appia has perhaps gone further in this respect that any other manager, though Reinhardt has absorbed and applied the ideas of others. Gordon Craig was of use as a path breaker, but he writes and talks rather than carries out his ideas. In America Belasco makes the height of the old idea, and because of his thoroughness and care he deserves high credit. Arthur Hopkins has been extraordinarily open to the new art and other managers, and, of course, Signor Gatti-Casazza, are showing increasing interest in it all.
‘If managers would only realize that it is not necessary to spend such large sums on scenery., the new ideas would travel more quickly even then at present. Let me give an instance; Edward Sheldon’s ‘Garden of Paradise,’ was only given several years ago at the Century Theatre with scenery costing $54,000. The play was a failure. Last summer we gave it is Milwaukee with the cheapest sort of scenery and yet, by the use of proper lighting the settings were of a beauty, which, I believe, was equal to the Urban sets at the Century. Moreover, our production was the greatest success of what lighting can do. The scene in the foyer with the Trilby singing in the theatre was accomplished by the simplest means, yet we produced the atmosphere and by a gradual intensifying f the lights brought the mood to such a vibrancy that the audience went wild.
‘I firmly believe that the proscenium arch destroys much of the illusion of reality and have patented plans for a theatre in which the present stage is replaced by a dome within which sets may be placed and lowered into the basement, where they are run off on a truck and another set immediately raised into its place. There is no curtain, the scenes being totally obliterated by the use of lights. Moreover, in this theatre I have produced three auditoriums, the largest of which seats three hundred people more than the Century Theatre without the use of a gallery, while the seat furthest in the van is the same distance from the stage as the last row if the Metropolitan Opera House. In this theatre each row of seats is an aisle, the auditorium entering and leaving parallel to the stage. Indeed, the theatre has illimitable possibilities of improvement. Managers are naturally conservative, but once they see the practicability of new ideas they will adopt them. It simply takes time to make them see it.’
This tonic note of restrained optimism is what the American theatre, be it dramatic or operatic, sorely needs. Our young scenic artists are furnishing it. If only our playwrights and our actors – well, our own Mr. Brown has referred to our ‘Ostermoor school of drama.’ In opera we have had the ‘Pipe of Desire,’ ‘The Canternury Pilgrims,’ ‘The Legend,’ and ‘The Temple Dancer,’ if only our composers – well, as least we have our singers.”
To be continued…
