“The Black Crook”—the progenitor of spectacular theater in the United States—opened at Niblo’s Garden, a 3,000-seat New York City playhouse, on September 12, 1866. Whether this American musical can be called the country’s first, “The Black Crook” had an immense impact on the future of popular entertainment in the U.S. Its initial production ran for nearly 500 performances and created a nationwide mania, stimulated by the clergy who railed against its abundant display of female pulchritude.
In his preface to “The Naked Truth!”: An Inside History of The Black Crook (1897), digitized from the holdings of the New York Historical Society and found in American Pamphlets, Joseph Whitton wrote:
It is curious that the history of the Black Crook—the pioneer of the American Spectacular Drama, and greater in tinseled gorgeousness and money-drawing power than any of its followers—should never have been told, or, rather, truthfully told.
Whitton by his own account had a “connection with the financial department of Niblo’s Garden, previous to the production and during the run of the Crook,” which “enables him to know the facts…”
In this pamphlet, he describes Niblo’s as “then considered the most popular of New York’s theaters, and not—what in after years it became—too far downtown for the convenience of amusement-seekers.” His excellent and personal account of the story of the 1866 opening of “The Black Crook” serves as a reference for myriad newspaper accounts that recorded the phenomenon of this spectacular show. He also is adroit at exposing many aspects of New York City’s theater world in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was a cutthroat environment, highly competitive, and graft was common.
The full script of the spectacle can be found in Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900. The edition below was printed in 1867, shortly after “the original magical and spectacular drama” opened at Niblo’s.
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900
From the same early printing of the script, here’s the cast of characters, including “Hertzog—Surnamed the Black Crook, (an Alchymist and Sorcerer).”
From a later edition of the script, published in 1899 and also found in Nineteenth-Century American Drama, here’s how this early extravaganza ends:
Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1820-1900
The first reference to “The Black Crook” in Early American Newspapers is found in the New York Evening Post and is dated September 13, 1866—the day after the show opened. It reads in part: “The great theatrical excitement last evening was about the grand spectacular drama produced here for the first time at Niblo’s Garden.” Because the production was undertaken by William Wheatley,
There was a general confidence that so shrewd and experienced a manager would not make such efforts and outlays of money unless he was sure of accomplishing something very much out of the ordinary line of theatrical business.
Accordingly, the spacious Garden was filled last night from orchestra to gallery, in the aisles and the lobbies—a vast, dense mass of eagerly expectant people. Hundreds were unable to procure seats and went away.
The article includes an enthusiastic review, which begins, “The performance more than equaled the expectation.”
Newspapers
The New York Tribune was a dedicated competitor of the Evening Post. On September 17, 1866, the Tribune published its review which set the tone for scores of subsequent reviews in papers all over the nation when franchised productions arrived in their cities. After writing, “The scenery is magnificent; the ballet is beautiful; the drama is—rubbish,” the reviewer begins his comments on the ticket buyers this way:
American Newspapers
The first notice of an out-of-town production indicates how rapidly the producers began to franchise performances. It is from the Jackson (Michigan) Citizen Patriot on October 12, 1866, less than a month after the show opened in New York City. It reads in full “The Black Crook is meeting with great success at Buffalo, and is destined to have a long run.”
The early evidence of enthusiasm for the show in the press was stimulated by those who spoke or wrote publicly condemning it. It seemed the more they brought down brimstone the more excited people became to see it for themselves. The first and more influential of these was Dr. Charles B. Smyth, “the reformer of the clergy and severe pulpit critic of theatrical immoralities,” whose lecture to a large audience was reported enthusiastically by the New York Herald on November 27, 1866:
The object of Dr. Smyth’s discourses is to expose, and, if possible, put down, one of the grossest immoral productions that ever was put upon the stage. Men go to see it, but they leave the theatre worse in morals than when they entered it.
This is a mere taste of how the show was condemned. The cause of this was essentially the female dancers in the ballet whose gauzy legs were exposed, and who had been specifically selected and imported from decadent France. Dr. Smyth titled his presentation “The Nuisances of New York, particularly the Naked Truth.”
In response to the moral condemnation, much of the press took a wry attitude. The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer reported on November 14, 1866:
The New York Herald, having asserted that there are fifty men to one woman that attend the performance of the Black Crook at Niblo’s, a careful count was kept at the doors of the establishment, one night recently, and, when the audience was all in, it was found to number 1,618 men and 1,045 women.”
On December 4, 1866, the Richmond (Virginia) Whig published an excerpt from a letter to the editor which read in part:
The Black Crook is simply a very French ballet. Thirty or forty young women, of fine physique, and dressed in low neck and bare arms, with very short skirts and flesh-colored stockings, which reach very high up….He [Reverend Smythe] has heard a good deal about the Black Crook; so he went to Niblo’s to see for himself. What he saw there no one knows. He saw so many things that nobody else sees, that I am satisfied that for the time being he labored under a fit of hallucination, a temporary madness occasioned by the temptation to which he was subjected.
Newspapers
In another review—this one published in the Daily Constitutionalist of Augusta, Georgia, on February 2, 1867—the correspondent jests that if Mrs. Eve could find herself at Niblo’s, I think that she would feel perfectly at home….I don’t exactly know how to describe the costume, but it reminds me very much of pictures I used to see in Mitchell’s geography, when I was at school, of ‘native Hottentots.’ It is a mighty convenient costume for dancing….No collars or cuffs to be mashed; no sleeves to be ripped; in short, it is so close to nothing that you take a long time to find out the difference; and if you don’t like my description, just come on, buy two tickets, and I will carry you to see it.
American Newspapers
There were examples of nineteenth-century snark such as this from the Memphis Daily Avalanche on February 16, 1867:
One evening, it is true, Niblo’s was shut, but not for lack of an audience, or by any order of the authorities. [The female stars of the ballet] were wanted by a celebrated millionaire for his private theater, and were let out by the proprietor for the night to the owner of the finest mansion on Fifth Avenue where the great world of that fashionable quarter were invited to applaud the unrestricted postures and gambols of the celebrated troupe.
Soon a joke popped up and was repeated in quite a few newspapers. From the Trenton State Gazette on January 14, 1867:
Several of our citizens have been to New York to see the “Black Crook.” One of them says he is convinced of the folly of women spending money for so much dress when they can render themselves so fascinating with very little.
Other jokes followed, such as this one from the Owyhee Avalanche of Silver City, Idaho, on August 10, 1867: “Gris, the ‘Fat contributor,’ says he was asked to write a ‘take off’ on the ‘Black Crook.’ He replied that he couldn’t see anything to take off.”
The newspaper coverage, along with the denunciations of the play by Reverend Smythe and other clergy members, only flamed the interest of the public to see “The Black Crook” for themselves. Speaking of the reverend, on October 4, 1867, the Daily Constitutionalist of Augusta, Georgia, reprinted an article from the Louisville Courier relating to the arrest of two ministers at a performance who were disguised in false beards. They were being hauled off to a judge when one of the clerics that they had been so “excited by the notoriety of the Black Crook, they had visited the theatre to witness its production so that they might be able better to warn their parishioners of its moral tendencies.”
Broadsides and Ephemera
In this post, four Readex products were used to explore the extraordinary impact of “The Black Crook” in the nineteenth-century United States: American Pamphlets, Nineteenth-Century American Drama, Early American Newspapers, and American Broadsides and Ephemera. Although badly written, the play exploded American theatergoers’ expectations and contributed to the evolving art of stagecraft. No doubt the costumes of the ladies of the ballet also broke old barriers.
Humbugs and fol-de-rols!”: Highlights from Nineteenth-Century American Drama
This final release of plays from Nineteenth-Century American Drama includes a devastating assault on Abraham Lincoln, an all-female cast in a courtroom drama meant to ridicule women, and a “Negro sketch in two scenes.”
The Royal Ape. By William Russell Smith (1863)
William Russell Smith was a U.S. congressman from Alabama who served from 1851 to 1857. He subsequently served as a member of the first and second Confederate Congresses. Smith was not the first, nor the last, to describe Lincoln as a simian. He wrote this “dramatic poem” after the Union’s defeat in the Battle of Manassas as the South preferred to call what the North called the First Battle of Bull Run. It is dated January 1, 1863, in anticipation of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Smith’s cast of characters—except two former slaves, two White House maids, and extras including officers, soldiers, citizens, and senators—are all prominent politicians and generals of the time. In following the action of the play, knowledge of the actual events of the time provides some perspective.
Act I, Scene I, occurs in the White House on the eve of the battle which Smith refers to as Manassas. We discover Mrs. Lincoln and her son Robert who would have been age 20. He has just returned from the House of Representatives and describes with gusto a physical fight that had broken out there.
He says that “Dad” with god-like authority commanded them to cease, and they heeded him. Mary sends Robert to bed, resolving to sit up to await her husband’s return.
⦁ I’ll wait awhile for Lincoln: he’s a bird,
⦁ To quell these tempests with a single word!
⦁ So all his actions do to greatness tend;
⦁ He always plays the hero to the end!
⦁ Happy Republic! Abram at the helm,
⦁ Rebels and rebeldom we’ll overwhelm.
Meanwhile, we are treated to Robert’s multiple dalliances with the maids Kitty and Kate as he arranges to visit each alone later that night. President Lincoln arrives and wastes no time trying to seduce Kate by telling her he has dreamed of her.
⦁ LIN. No flattery at all; I tell you, Kate,
⦁ The dream revealed that I had lost my mate,
⦁ And somehow, or some other how, it seemed
⦁ That, out of Heaven, your face upon me beamed!
Kate, could you love me? [Takes her hand]
⦁ KATE: I already do.
⦁ There’s nobody I love as well as you! [Lincoln kisses her hand.]
⦁ My father taught me to revere gray hairs!
⦁ [Lincoln drops her hand and retires hastily.]
⦁ He’s very easily bluff! He takes a hint
⦁ Almost as easy as taking a pint!
This is the president defined as a womanizer and a drunk.
Two prominent Northern politicos play important roles in the drama: Senator Henry Wilson, considered a Radical Republican, and Representative Alfred Ely of New York who was captured and imprisoned when he was a spectator at Bull Run. The author uses them first to make great claims about the triumph the Union will achieve at the battle, and later, as comic foils when they are captured together and encounter two slaves who rob them and betray them.
Smith’s classical references are evident in the soliloquies of the Southern generals in the battle.
⦁ BEAUREGARD: Gallant Virginians! your arms, to-day,
⦁ Will crowd the records of the old Dominion
⦁ With great historic deeds. Your names shall be
⦁ Themes for the songs of poets. Every rill
⦁ And valley shall be vocal with your praise;
⦁ For classic Greece, with all her battlefields—
⦁ Plataea, Leuctra, Mantinea—here
⦁ Beholds a sister worthy to be a twin
⦁ With her in glory.
Smith uses Wilson and Ely to witness the battle, and their account grows increasingly alarmed as the battle turns toward rebel victory. As our hapless politicians flee, they are captured individually by Sambo and Hercules who, as stock representations of slaves, are ignorant yet sly. Having the slaves capture them is plausible. Having them be cheap characterizations is gratuitous yet fits the purpose of ridiculing the Yankees. Wilson tries to tell Sambo that he is his advocate, saying, “I bring you liberty and equality.”
Smith indulges himself, presenting scenes of errant celebration in the White House before the battle turned. When he wrote this “dramatic poem” in 1863, the Confederacy was in ascendancy. He seems smug. History disabused him. Notably, Smith has Lincoln escape from Washington in a dress, presaging Jefferson Davis at the war’s end.
A Remarkable Case. A Farce in One Act ala Bardell vs. Pickwick.
For female characters only. By Stuyvesant [pseud.] (1899)
The setting is a courtroom.
Mrs. Wiseman reads the indictment:
⦁ Wiseman—(reading from paper) Know all women, by these presents, that Seraphina Standout is hereby arraigned, before this high and august Tribunal, for the high crime and misdemeanor, of openly defying and violating the Fashion Laws, passed in this city…[which] expressly forbids, any citizen of this free and enlightened country, to appear upon the public streets, dressed, or in any way accoutered, save as the said Fashion Laws do permit and allow.
⦁ She, the said Seraphina Standout, upon the seventh day of February [sic], in the year 1897, was beheld upon the most public of the promenades of this city, attired in garments of strange and antique manufacture, whereas, the “Cutaway Coat,” and kitted skirt, being the only robes allowed for streetwear. She is hereby brought to trial by her outraged and insulted countrywomen. [Takes her seat.]
The remarks of Putemdown, counsel for the prosecution, are revealing. After bemoaning that never, in all her professional years, “have I stood up with so much indignation and grief, to plead a case. Despite Seraphina Standout having had every privilege and advantage, she “has repeatedly disregarded the laws made and passed by the wisest women in this country, and shown herself utterly indifferent to the fashion laws of the land.”
Can this have been the first arrest of the fashion police? It would seem that women are in charge of all of the wheels of power, and that one of their greatest interests is in policing their sisters’ fashions. It transpires that Standout, reprimanded by her parents and friends, refuses “to patronize the elegant and elaborate ‘Emporium of Madam Marabile’s Perfumed Perforated Paper Patterns’” Worse, “she declared the said Patterns to be ‘humbugs’ and ‘folderols’” The accused further will not do her hair as ordained nor wear French heels, nor adorn herself as dictated with bangle bracelets. Putemdown brings herself to tears and soon the jury, judge, and audience are weeping.
During the trial, the lawyers and judge have several spats about procedure which would be flagrant violations of the norm but serve to further the misogyny that prevails throughout. Essentially, we are treated to a fight that demeans women. It is amusing that the author slips at least twice during Wiseman’s summation when she refers to counsel for the prosecution with masculine pronouns.
This farce is dated January 1899. In less than 20 years the first all-female jury in U.S. history was seated in Orange County, California, which had voted to permit women to serve in civil cases although they did not have the vote. They were selected by a public prosecutor in an obscenity case against a newspaper editor. The D.A. thought it was a clever ploy because women would naturally recoil at such depravity. They found the editor not guilty.
Unfortunately, for Standout things went the other way. The jury voted guilty “with a recommendation to mercy.” Judge Muddlehead was not moved. Seraphina was sentenced to “six months in solitary confinement.”
The Baby Elephant: A Negro Sketch in Two Scenes. By J. C. Tewart (1875)
J. C. Stewart was the pseudonym that, according to the Library of Congress, was used by “John Stewart Crossy and his son John Hart Crossy, two rotund vaudeville actors who looked very much alike…”
“The Baby Elephant” is a minstrel play distinguished by its two black characters Cuff and Pete who are comic foils. One of the main characters is called Barnum and is based on the real P. T. Barnum who had several setbacks in his career as a showman. As the play opens Rifle, a frustrated suitor for the hand of Mr. Growler’s daughter Rose, and his servant Smithers are plotting another attempt to breech the walls of the Growler house. As they exit Barnum enters and soliloquies.
⦁ BARNUM. Was there ever a man in this world in such hard luck as I am? I’ve been in all sorts of speculations, from the manager of a first-class menagerie to a cork burner of a minstrel show. No matter what I undertake, I fail in everything. My last speculation was that of a Headless Rooster. I’d have got along first-rate if it hadn’t been for Bergh, who had me arrested for cruelty to animals; and this morning, to add to my troubles, my landlady informed me if I didn’t pay my rent I’d have to leave. I’ve not tasted food for 24 hours. Oh! What would I not give for a good square meal?
Growler has been wise to the subterfuges employed by Rifle using Smithers as his clandestine agent. More than once he has ejected Smithers from his house. Barnum witnesses one such ouster and hears Growler expostulate. He proposes to Rifle a scheme to dupe Growler and gain access to the house. Growler is known for keeping a menagerie, which includes a bear, and for being avid for more wildlife acquisitions. Barnum claims to have a baby elephant sequestered nearby and will produce it for $500.
The baby elephant is, in fact, a two-person elephant suit. Fortunately, Growler has lost his glasses and is nearly blind without them.
Much confusion ensues as Rifle, disguised, and Barnum enter the house. Barnum conducts business with Growler, they leave, and they return. This time Rifle and Smithers are wearing the elephant costume. Barnum has the elephant do tricks for Growler. Cuff and Pete get completely twisted up in the proceedings to no good end.
Soon, the two servants set Growler wise to the deceit. Growler demands to know if Rifle is the front or rear of the costume. Upon determining that Smithers was the rear end and therefore must have been the one who kicked him earlier, he offers 25 dollars to anybody who finds him. The final stage directions conclude the play:
⦁ (All look around for Smithers, who is discovered sitting in one of the upper stage boxes. They tell him to come down and he refuses. Growler calls the Policeman on stage and tells him he’ll give him $25 to bring that fellow out of the box. The policeman calls him down, and he refuses. The policeman goes up to the box and is discovered fighting with Smithers in the box. Excitement kept up on stage. The policeman slips out of sight; Smithers throws Dummy Policeman out of the box onto the stage. They pick him up quickly and rush up the stage with him and fan him, etc.) Quick Curtain.