February 21, 1900: Actress Olga Nethersole and several of her colleagues are arrested in New York, for "violating public decency."
Olga Isabella Nethersole was born on January 18, 1866 in London. She first appeared onstage in 1887, and by the 1890s was one of the biggest stars of British stage. In 1900, she came to America, and starred in Sapho, a play by Clyde Fitch. She asked him to write the play, based on the 1884 French novel by Alphonse Daudet, who adapted it for a play. She wanted the play changed so that the story was told from the perspective of the female lead.
Although Fitch was homosexual, and the ancient Greek poet Sappho (believed to have lived from around 630 to 570 BC) is often (but not exclusively) believed by historians to also have been -- the term "lesbian" comes from her home island, Lesbos -- the play Sapho is about a promiscuous heterosexual woman, Fanny LeGrand.
Fanny seduces a naïve man named Jean Gaussin, played by Hamilton Revelle. In the scene that caused the most furor, the two characters ascend a spiral staircase together, presumably toward a bedroom, though that is never shown or stated. In the end, LeGrand leaves Gaussin to reform and marry the father of her child -- who, clearly, was born out of wedlock. This was 1900, the last full year of the Victorian Age.
Nethersole starred in the play, produced it, and directed it. It premiered on February 5, 1900 at Wallack's Theatre, at 29 West 30th Street, just off 5th Avenue. At the time, this area was New York's main theater district.
With New York City's newspapers competing with each other to provide sensationalist headlines, a phenomenon known as "yellow journalism," the hue and cry over the play's alleged immorality reached a fever pitch.
On February 21, the District Attorney for New York County (the Borough of Manhattan), Asa Birch Gardiner, ordered the arrest of Nethersole, Revelle, and the other actors for "violating public decency." It has been speculated that Nethersole was targeted, because she was a woman who dared to be a boss. As I said, it was the end of the Victorian Age, when only Queen Victoria was allowed by male-dominated society to be both a woman and a boss.
The trial began on April 4. It lasted until the next day. It took the jury 15 minutes of deliberation to acquit all defendants. Two days after that, the play reopened, and ran for 83 performances. She would later tour in productions of the play, all over the world, until 1913.
Clyde Fitch died in 1909, from an attack of appendicitis. He had foolishly refused to attend to his symptoms. He was only 44 years old.
Asa Bird Gardiner was born "Gardner," but he added an I to make it look like he was a member of the Gardiner family, one of the founding families of the State of New York. It wasn't his only fraud: He had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the American Civil War, but in 1917, his award was rescinded when it was discovered that there was no documentation for his alleged heroics.
In December 1900, formal charges were brought against him, for "interfering with deputies of the Attorney General in presentation of election cases to the Grand Jury and the prosecution thereof." He chose not to contest the charges, and he was removed from office by the Governor of New York -- Theodore Roosevelt. He never served in public office again, went back to the practice of law, and died in 1919, at 79.
Olga Nethersole would play the title roles, among the most passionate female roles of the time, in adaptations of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen and Alexandre Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias, the role that made Sarah Bernhardt famous. She returned to Britain to serve as a nurse in World War I, for which she received the Royal Red Cross. In 1936, she received a CBE, Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She never married or had children, and died on January 9, 1951, at the age of 84.
There were several Wallack's Theatres, built and operated by the Wallack family. The one on 30th Street opened in 1888, and closed in 1915. An office building is on the site today.
*
February 21, 1900 was a Wednesday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball and football were out of season, basketball barely existed, and the Stanley Cup had been awarded 5 days earlier, when the Montreal Shamrocks beat the Winnipeg Victorias, 5-4 at the Montreal Arena, winning the series, 2 games to 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment