USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 50
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When Mr. Jordan's three years were up, the opera proceeded, not without signs of staggering, bereft of that support. Through the season of 1913-14 it maintained itself. Perhaps it could have gone on indefinitely had it not been for the war. But the war arrived, and with it the downfall of our eherished enterprise. The next season brought to the vast hall - too big for most pur- poses - the Jewett Players, in Shakespeare. Then to many spectators it was revealed, to their amazement, that Romeo and Juliet need not be elderly and corpulent. The Russian Ballet came in 1916 and the Metropolitan Opera Company. Again the next year the Metropolitan favored us; so did Sarah Bernhardt; so did others. The season of 1918 boasted both the New York and the Chicago troupes; but 1919 was given over, while the house was not closed, to variety. In subsequent years the Chieago outfit has favored us; and other opcratic companies, German and Russian, but mainly Italian, have done their bit. Theatrical stars, French and German, have helped to keep the house open.
If we could not pay for a Boston opera, could we, after the demise of the Museum, maintain a stock company of aetors of the first quality? For a while we did. Mr. Henry Jewett it was who created the Copley Square Theater, on Dartmouth street, in 1915. And a right good band of artists he got together, and a right good set of plays he put before us for some ten years. The company changed from time to time, but not too rapidly; if we lost some of the best, such as Wingfield, we gained such a star as Clive. While we were treated to a con- siderable variety of authors, the management came to make rather a specialty of Shaw, whom its actors did particularly well. Twenty of Shaw's picees were given. I fancy, however, that the high-water mark of the Copley was reached in its performance of Milne's "Truth About Blayds," in 1924. Even before this there had been troubles. The house closed in 1921, but was moved to Stuart strect, enlarged, and rcopened in 1922. Then fell misfortune - financial difficultics, disbanding; ultimate rescue and restoration under the leadership of E. E. Clive. This was in 1925. Since then the Copley, with a faithful though neither exuberantly youthful nor overnumerous public, has offered long runs of amusing comedies, mainly English, with an adequate and excellently managed company. Mystery pieces have of late been the favorites. In November,
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1930, even these had ceased to attract paying audiences and Mr. Clive and his company removed to Worcester. On December 26 the theater reopened with a new stock company under the managcinent of F. C. Strickland and it has had varying fortunes since.
Mr. Jewett meanwhile, all undaunted, had stepped forward with a new enterprise. Having interested a considerable number of wealthy drama-lovers, he put up a fine building opposite Symphony Hall, and, in consideration of the cducative value of a liberal sprinkling of classics, he obtained for the Repertory Theater exemption from taxation. The plays indeed were good, both the old and the new; but of the acting, in general, the most that can be said was that it was earnest and well meant. The opening in 1925 was seemingly auspicious: "The Rivals," with Jewett himself and Francis Wilson. Among the subsequent offerings may be recalled "The Beaux' Stratagem," "Much Ado About Noth- ing," "The Lady from the Sea," "R. U. R.," "The Swan." Attractive though the titles were, the audiences fell away. Strikes ensued. By the end of 1929 the brief career of the Repertory was closed, though one hopes not forever. At present, not the play but the moving picture is the thing.
Since the "movies" have to so great an extent supplanted the spoken drama, we must not leave our subject without saying a word of them, although they have no particular connection with Boston, having the same citizenship everywhere. What a broad citizenship it is! Yet their whole history covers only about half our period. Their ancestors were those none too reputable penny-in-the-slot machines which stood in rows in unused shops and doorways. A real moving picture, though, was exhibited as a curiosity in an office opposite Clark's Hotel about 1902, and a regular show arrived about 1905 on Wash- ington strect, not far froin the Globe; it took the form of an old coach in which the public sat, watching the landscape slide by. One suggestion for it doubtless came from the "diorama," a motionless but very lifelike panorama, partly in relief, which the spectator viewed from a sheltered cupola or the like. There was once a popular "City of Jerusalem." And on Tremont street, for some time, one read the suggestive title "Custer's Last Charge, formerly Battle of Gettysburg."
The Pathé Company in France made the first films. Dreadful things they were, too, - jerky, flashy, cye-destroying. No wonder the public for some years regarded the film as a "chaser," when it formed the latter part of a variety show. It was like singing "Home, Sweet Home" at a concert. No sooner did the snapping, hitching picture appear than all the people reached for their hats. American companies, not much better, entered into the competition: Lubin, Edison, Essanay, Biograph, General Film. Lubin had a roof studio on Arch street, Philadelphia, where he photographed variety acts, while in his German- town garden he reproduced sham prize fights. All the early exhibits were of one rcel.
It was Mr. Mark, of the firm of Mark and Wagner, slot-machine operators in Philadelphia, who opened the first real motion picture theater in our town, the Comique in Scollay square. That was in 1906 and the place closed only a few years ago. It held about three hundred and fifty, the price was ten cents, and the show lasted half an hour. From five hundred to one thousand was .
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the length of its film in feet. Soon appeared the Unique Theater (now the Stuart) on Washington street, run by Mr. Washburn; also the Star, under Mr. Campbell, in Scollay square, at present called the Scollay Square Rialto. Mr. Campbell writes: "During the first year and a half that I managed this theater, very often we used to open at nine in the morning to a capacity house and run shows as short as twelve minutes' duration, after which we would pass people out through a rear exit and there would be more than enough people waiting to fill the house again. This would continue until we closed at eleven o'clock at night." The house held three hundred and sixty-five.
Not many years after, the Old South opened on Washington street opposite Milk; and the Pastime, also on Washington, over the old Clark's Hotel; and the Washington, still running on the same street; and the Scenic Temple in the old church on Berkeley street. It was at the Star, above mentioned, that two- reel pictures, of Pathé make, were first shown, about 1908. "All of our shows in those days," says Mr. Campbell, "used to run a full week; that is, we would rent about three reels for a full week and would show any part of the same according to the amount of business done. The shows naturally ran from a minimum of twelve minutes to a maximum of about forty-five minutes. As more theaters opened, the shows commenced to increase in length, until at last we were presenting shows of an hour's duration." From three to five reels came to be a common length after the formation (not much later) of the Famous Players Company to make pictures of well-known plays and books.
Varied has been the career of the ancient Music Hall, where we used to hear our Symphony concerts before the erection of Symphony Hall. Since leaving that highly respectable career, it has changed its name as frequently as a popular divorcée: Music Hall, Boston Music Hall, Empire Theater, American Music Hall, Orpheum Theater, Loew's Orpheum Theater. Before 1900, as Music Hall, it witnessed fights, wrestling inatches and sundry public events. Then, in 1900, renamed Boston Music Hall and operated by Rollin Allen (owner of the Castle Square), it offered variety, with a single reel at the end. Under the subsequent management of William Morris, who took it in 1905, it was devoted to strictly high-class vaudeville; two years later Percy Williams took it and rechristened it the Orpheum. As such it was bought in 1910 by Marcus Loew, who then had only one theater, in Brooklyn; these two houses formed the nucleus of a circuit which at his death comprised three hundred. By Mr. Loew a new type was started - vaudeville alternating with single reel films at a low price; and the venture prospered.
Another house in Boston was founded by Mr. Loew. Everyone knows, since 1922, Loew's State Theater on Massachusetts avenue; it opened as a picture establishment, but from 1925 to 1930 it combined screen and stage. Again, since April, 1930, it has been all screen; the new policy started with Greta Garbo in "Anna Christie." In 1928 it gave its first sound picture, "Dancing Daughters," and "Fox Movietone News." Successful "talkies" have since been given in various places. One remembers "Disraeli" and "The Vagabond King."
Several theaters have passed from stage to screen, - the Park and the Repertory with no change of name. The St. James, after having been taken
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over by the Keith-Albee concern in 1927, was in 1929 acquired by the Publix interests and dedicated, under the name of Uptown Theater, to films. The old Boston before its destruction, bought by Paul Keith, was given over to pictures, then to screen and vaudeville combined. Tremont Temple has become a "movie house." Palatial new houses have been constructed. One hardly needs to mention the Keith Memorial and the Metropolitan.
Even the staunch and stable playhouses, moreover, have their occasional lapses into reels. One recalls, at the Tremont, "Neptune's Daughter" (Annette Kellerman's first venture when she emerged from Revere Beach) and "Orphans of the Storm"; at the Colonial, "Ben Hur" and "The King of Kings." Where did we see "Down to the Sea in Ships" and "The Covered Wagon"? "Cabiria," I know, was at Tremont Temple, a good show, all the better for really literary titles by D'Annunzio; there, too, was "The Lost World"; so were those extraor- dinary military pictures loaned by the Italian government during the war, showing, among other things, the transport of men and artillery from peak to peak by cable. Even the Harvard Club has recently advertised a moving picture show.
To Scollay square, first Boston cradle of the "movie," let us turn in the moment of its triumphs. There, in a flourishing Italian establishment, the New Palace Theater, occupying the site of the old Palace, the Palm Garden and the Nickelodeon, one may now enjoy a film "tutta parlata." And that very spot, according to a commemorative tablet, saw the birth of the telephone, on June 2, 1875, thirty years before the advent of the cinematograph.
Does the story of these fifty years teach a moral? Possibly; but we should doubtless be happier not to trace it. The half-century has been a good old half-century, while it lasted, for our home town. It has taught us Wagner and Gilbert and Sullivan, it has revealed Ibsen and Shaw; grave and gay in whole- some equipoise. It has revealed to us Shakespeare from new angles in the performance of those splendid Italians, Salvini and Novelli, of the incomparable Stratford Players, of our own Jane Cowl. It has witnessed the last efforts of two very great and very diversely endowed actresses, Bernhardt and Duse, to say nothing of the sprightly Réjane. To the enterprise of Mimi Aguglia it has opened hospitable though not over-capacious doors; it has welcomed from New York sundry German and Yiddish troupes, which have left their mark. It has afforded us the privilege of admiring chez nous the artistry of Constant Coquelin in pieces ranging from "Tartuffe" to "Les Surprises du Divorce." More important even than the advent of famous foreigners has been the emergence of our native colored race, as in "Porgy," or as in "Emperor Jones," which gave the highly gifted Charles Gilpin the opportunity of his lifetime. Shall we gloriously end this era, or gloriously begin another, by admitting "The Green Pastures"? *
* EDITORIAL NOTE .- The Pulitzer prize play of 1930, by Marc C. Connelly, which deals with religious conceptions among the colored people.
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SCIENCE AND INVENTION
By KENNETH L. MARK
The title of this chapter, "Science and Invention," * is much more appropriate as applied to conditions in the year 1880 than it is to those of 1930. Although today we certainly have inventions in the popular meaning of the word, these inventions mostly are the outcome of the deliberate application of pure seience to the problems of industry, rather than the happy but somewhat fortuitous results of new combinations of empirical practice. The difference between the phrases, "Science and Invention" and "Pure and Applied Science," therefore, epitomizes one of the most significant and important changes of the past fifty years. The basie cause of this revolution is the enormous growth of the research laboratory, both the laboratories supported by our universities and technical schools and those maintained by the great industrial corporations, such as the General Electric, the American Telephone and Telegraph, the United States Steel, the General Motors and many others. If we must use the word "invention," it may be truly said that the greatest invention of the past fifty years is organized research. Hence in dealing with the subject of the contribution of Boston to Science and Invention, first consideration must be given to the important advances in research which have been made in this city and to the Bostonians who have inade important contributions to the inerease of organized knowledge and its application.
Just as a vagueness exists in the distinction between pure science and applied seience, the one merging into the other, so the kind of work done in the two types of research laboratories, those of the universities and those of the industries, is not exelusively theoretical in the former and practical in the latter. Yet, in general, the problems studied at the universities are more fundamental than those attacked by the industries and the latter depend for their solutions upon the results previously arrived at in the foriner. It would seem quite fitting, therefore, to begin with a review of the advanees in seience in our local academic institutions, of which Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are the most important.
At Harvard in 1880 research was in its infancy. To be sure, the histories of the various departments of seience show that some feeble beginnings had been made in the previous ten years. Nevertheless the department of physics, for example, was still under the guidance of Professor Lovering, originally a student of divinity, of whom it is said that he seemed to have felt no more called upon to extend the domain of physics than as a preacher he would have felt obliged to add a chapter to the Bible. From the department of chemistry, also, had appeared less than a dozen contributions to the advancement of knowledge in this field, and one of these papers, by Professor H. B. Hill, was
* Engineering and medicine are not included in this survey, since a separate chapter is devoted to each of these subjects.
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only the second publieation in organic chemistry to be made in America. The natural seienees were in no more advanced state, although the name of Louis Agassiz had previously added great prestige to Harvard as a seat of learning.
It is thus evident that the very important place which Harvard occupies in the world of science today has been a growth almost completely eonfined to the past fifty years.
The Astronomical Observatory had attained, it is true, at the beginning of this period more of an international reputation than had, perhaps, the other departments of seienee. When, in 1877, Edward C. Piekering was appointed director of the observatory, the positions and mnotions of a great number of stars had been determined with reasonable aeeuraey and an extension of this difficult investigation was urgently needed. Fortunately the art and seience of photography had at about this time become sufficiently advaneed to take a leading part in astronomical research and to modify profoundly many of its methods. Pickering, who was already distinguished as a physieist, took immediate advantage of this method of investigation and soon won for himself and for the observatory an international reputation for his researches in stellar photometry and spectroscopy. The photography of the heavens has been continuously earried on ever sinee, now for some fifty years, and an unrivaled collection of celestial photographs, containing more than 200,000 glass plates, has been aeeumulated. The interpretation of these vast data has been in the hands of a distinguished corps of astronomers, ineluding Professor W. H. Pickering, brother of Professor E. C. Piekering, Professor S. I. Bailey, Mrs. Williamina P. Fleming and Miss Annie J. Cannon. Braneh observatories have been established in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1921 Dr. Harlow Shapley sueeeeded Piekering, who had died in 1919, as director, and has continued to maintain the high seientifie reputation of the observatory.
Another observatory, the Blue Hill Meteorologieal Observatory, beeame a department of the university soon after it was built by Abbott Lawrence Rotch in 1884. Roteh was the first director and held the position until his death in 1912. He made seientifie contributions of importanee to our knowledge of the weather and was the recognized leading authority in America in this field. The studies of the upper air made at the Blue Hill by means of kites attraeted special attention. It is of interest that the flights of the kites were often observed by Professor S. P. Langley and by Mr. Orville Wright. The purpose of the observatory has always been that of an institution for earrying on research in meteorology rather than a eenter from which to make daily predietions of the weather. The high seientifie standing of the observatory has been sueeessfully maintained by the present director, Alexander G. McAdie.
In 1880 the seience of physies had not yet reached by nearly a quarter of a century that speetaeular revolution which was inaugurated by the discovery of "X-rays" and which turned the attention of the physieists of the world to a study of these rays and similar phenomena, a study which has resulted in the "radio" of today. Yet during the last quarter of the nineteenth century much valuable investigation along the well-established lines was carried on in the department at Harvard by a group of young men who had been studying in Germany and who had brought with them the spirit of research. Very little
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