July 8, 1907: The 1st "Ziegfeld Follies"

July 8, 1907: The Follies of 1907 premieres, at the Olympia Theatre, on New York's Broadway. They were the first "Ziegfeld Follies."

Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was a Chicago native, the son of a German immigrant who wanted to bring European classical music to the Midwest. But the son hated it, and, in 1885, 18 years old, ran off to join Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, impressing Cody himself by beating him in a trick-shot contest. Everything Flo Ziegfeld learned about show business, he learned from Buffalo Bill.

In 1896, on a visit to London, he met Anna Held, a French-Polish singer. She took him to the Folies Bergère in Paris, giving him the model for the stage show he wanted to put on in New York. He rewarded her by promising to make her the biggest musical star in America.

She had the face and the body for it.

Sadly, I can't find a recording of her voice.

He kept that promise by casting her as the lead in The Follies of 1907. He took the Paris idea of the sexiest chorus girls he could find, but making them appear as wholesome as possible, so that high-class people would be willing to see them, and willing to be seen while going in to see them. Before radio, let alone television, could begin broadcasting, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was America's greatest entertainment impresario, surpassing even actor, singer, dancer, writer, producer and director George M. Cohan, who nonetheless remained the king of Broadway performers.

Once, onstage, Ziegfeld and Held "married each other." But there was never a legal marriage. By 1909, as most Broadway producers have tended to do, Flo was cheating on her with other actresses in the show. She held out hope that he would drop them all and return to her, but that hope was every bit as futile as that of Flo's friends that he give up gambling. Anna died of myeloma in 1918, only 46 years old. Flo did not attend her funeral, not because of his infidelity, but because he had a fear of funerals.

Having discovered such performers as Anna Held and Billie Burke (whom he married in 1914), raised Fanny Brice from a comedian on New York's Yiddish-language stage to English mainstream stardom, and provided a venue for Bert Williams, the leading black entertainer of the time, Ziegfeld continued to run his various Follies productions until 1931. He died the next year, from pleurisy, at the age of 65. His last words may or may not have been a hallucination: "Curtain! Fast music! Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good! The show looks good!"

In 1936, the film The Great Ziegfeld was made, beginning a trend of composer biographies that lasted well into the 1940s. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture. William Powell played Ziegfeld, Luis Rainer won an Academy Award for playing Anna Held, and Myrna Loy played Billie Burke.

Burke was not only still acting at that point, her most famous role was yet to come: She would go on to play Glinda, "the Good Witch," in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, a film whose color-TV broadcasts ensured that she would be remembered long after Flo Ziegfeld was treated as a relic of a past that, for the most part, wasn't even capture on black & white silent film. She lived on until 1970. Her daughter with Ziegfeld, Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson, became a journalist, living until 2008. She had 4 children, so the Ziegfeld family line continues.

The Olympia Theatre was at 1514 Broadway, at 44th Street. It was demolished in 1935, and retail occupies the space today.

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July 8, 1907 was a Monday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Highlanders beat the Cleveland Naps, 5-4 at League Park in Cleveland. Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, the 2nd baseman and manager for whom the future Indians and Guardians were then named, went 3-for-4 with a walk. The Highlanders became the Yankees in 1913.

* The New York Giants lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at the Polo Grounds. Ed Karger pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* The Brooklyn Superbas lost to the Chicago Cubs, 5-0 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown pitched a 6-hit shutout. The Superbas, named for their former manager, Ned Hanlon, and a popular circus troupe of the era, Hanlon's Superbas, became the Dodgers in 1911.

* A doubleheader was split at the 3rd and final version of the South End Grounds in Boston. The Boston Doves won the opener, 2-0. Vivan "Vive" Lindaman pitched a 4-hit shutout. The Cincinnati Reds won the nightcap, 4-0. Roy Hitt pitched a 7-hit shutout. The Doves were named for their owner, George Dovey. In 1912, they became the Boston Braves.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Sam Leever pitched an 8-hit shutout. Honus Wagner went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-2 at South Side Park in Chicago. Charles "Chief" Bender was the winning pitcher.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Americans, 6-5 in 14 innings at Bennett Park in Detroit. Ty Cobb went 4-for-5, and Sam Crawford went 4-for-6. The Americans became the Red Sox the next season.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Washington Senators, 3-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

February 18, 1903: "In Dahomey" Launches Bert Williams

Bert Williams (left) and George Walker

February 18, 1903: In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy premieres at the New York Theatre. It was the 1st full-length musical play written and played by black people to be performed at a major Broadway theater. It subsequently had successful tours of America and Britain.

The music was written by Will Marion Cook, who helped establish the cakewalk as a major American dance phenomenon in 1898. The lyrics were written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, then America's premier living black poet. The book was written by Jesse A. Shipp, an established actor.

The play is a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement. Dahomey was a West African kingdom that lasted from around 1600 until 1904. (I'm presuming that the musical had nothing to do with its fall.) It was annexed into French West Africa, gained independence as the Republic of Dahomey in 1960, and was renamed Benin in 1975.

The show's stars were Bert Williams and George Walker, both already stars on America's vaudeville circuit. Regrettably, they were often forced to do stereotypical roles, and were even asked, as black men, to wear blackface, to appear darker-skinned. With this show, black creators had full control, and Williams and Walker were able to recite the words and sing the lyrics they wanted, their way. Even then, the term "represent the race" was used, and Williams and Walker were both said to be doing so.

In 1910, Booker T. Washington wrote of Williams: "He has done more for our race than I have. He has smiled his way into people's hearts; I have been obliged to fight my way."

But sad fates awaited. Paul Laurence Dunbar fell victim to tuberculosis. Like many Americans, he was advised to seek mountain air to help him with his breathing. Like dentist turned Wild West gunman John "Doc" Holliday, he went to Colorado. He was no more successful than Holliday, and died in 1906, only 33 years old.

Walker fell victim to syphilis, and died in 1911, only 37 years old. Williams became identified with his 1905 recording of the song "Nobody," and began to wish he'd never sung it. He once wrote, in a published essay:

People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white. I answer... most emphatically, "No." How do I know what I might be if I were a white man? I might be a sandhog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day. I might be a streetcar conductor at $12 or $15 a week. There is many a white man less fortunate and less well-equipped than I am. In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient... in America.

Walker handled the business side of things, and, without him, Williams struggled. In 1910, Florenz Ziegfeld made him the 1st black performer in his Follies, where he was renowned for his partnership with white comedian Leon Errol. By 1917, the Follies were also featuring Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields, all of whom would become much bigger stars thanks to motion pictures following their switch to "talkies."

The manpower drain of World War I curtailed Williams' stage career, but he remained one of the biggest sellers of records. On February 27, 1922, during a performance in Detroit, he collapsed onstage. As with several other performers to whom this happened, at first, the audience didn't realize it wasn't part of the act. Helped to his dressing room, he said, "That's a nice way to die. They was laughing when I made my last exit."

He was taken back to New York, and died 5 days later, on March 4, 1922, at his home, at 2309 7th Avenue (now Adam clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.), between 135th and 136th Streets in Harlem, of pneumonia. There were no antibiotics in those days. He was only 47.

Over 2,000 people attended his funeral, but Errol was the only white pallbearer. Fields said, "Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever met, and the saddest man I ever knew."

Jesse A. Shipp lived on until 1934; Will Marion Cook, until 1944; Leon Errol, until 1951.

The New York Theatre, at 1514 Broadway at 44th Street, opened in 1895, and became known as the Olympia Theatre. In 1907, it became the original home of the Ziegfeld Follies. It was demolished in 1935, and retail has been on the site ever since, including New York City's last Toys "R" Us store, open from 2001 to 2015.

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February 18, 1903 was a  Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. Basketball barely existed. Hockey's Stanley Cup Playoffs were in progress, but no games were scheduled for this day. The Ottawa Hockey Club, forerunners of the original Ottawa Senators, went on to win the Cup.