I a MATTER for EXPERTS: BROADWAY 1900-1920 and the RISE of the PROFESSIONAL MANAGERIAL CLASS by Michael Schwartz B.A. in English
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A MATTER FOR EXPERTS: BROADWAY 1900-1920 AND THE RISE OF THE PROFESSIONAL MANAGERIAL CLASS by Michael Schwartz B.A. in English, Georgetown University, 1985 M.A. in English, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, 1992 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies University of Pittsburgh 2007 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Michael Schwartz It was defended on November 29, 2007 and approved by Bruce McConachie, PhD, Department Chair Attilio Favorini, PhD, Director of Graduate Studies Lynne Conner, PhD, Associate Professor William Scott, PhD, Assistant Professor Dissertation Director: Bruce McConachie, PhD, Department Chair ii Copyright © by Michael Schwartz 2007 iii A MATTER FOR EXPERTS: BROADWAY 1900-1920 AND THE RISE OF THE PROFESSIONAL MANAGERIAL CLASS Michael Schwartz, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2007 Modern theatrical scholars do not generally hold the first two decades of 20th century American drama in high esteem. The received wisdom regarding most of the era under study is that Broadway was primarily a source of frivolous entertainment that bore little or no relation to the turbulent social forces that were shaping America as well as the outside world. Nevertheless, Broadway during the years 1900-1920 both reflected and impacted upon a particularly significant series of social changes—namely, the formation and rise of the Professional Managerial Class, or PMC. This intermediate class, positioned between the workers and the capitalist owners, found its niche and its identity as mental workers preserving capitalist culture, and this emerging class made significant contributions in shaping the modern Broadway theatre. Broadway, in turn, contributed greatly in shaping PMC class identity. Through an examination of plays, actors, reviews, and audience response of the period, and using the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this document traces both the development of Broadway as a source of modern, “mature” American drama, as well as the development of PMC consciousness and “habitus”— that is, the outward bodily and behavioral display of the unconscious acceptance of class manifestations. In particular, one of the key class problems that both the PMC and Broadway sought to solve was that of “nerves.” Nerves plagued the minds of the theatre-going mental workers, and Broadway practitioners tried various strategies to conquer, or at least temporarily mollify, the nerves of the audience. These strategies included the song and dance of musicals, the iv laughter of comedies and farces, and the therapeutic onstage “talking cures” that reflected the increasing interest in and assimilation of Freudian concepts. By following these symbiotic developments to their climax in the 1920s, the historian discovers that the “birth” of what scholars consider modern American drama is primarily the result of the PMC fulfilling its task of maintaining and preserving capitalist culture. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 THE GROWTH OF BROADWAY, THE EMERGENCE OF THE PMC.......... 26 2.1 BRAVE NEW YORK: NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP................................... 26 2.2 THE SHOW BUSINESS ................................................................................... 28 2.3 WHO WERE THE PMC? ................................................................................ 34 2.4 MEET THE EXPERTS..................................................................................... 50 3.0 THE PROBLEM OF NERVES ................................................................................ 61 3.1 DIM SHADOWS: PRE-PMC CONSCIOUSNESS ........................................ 61 3.2 MODERN MEN AND MODERN NERVES................................................... 68 3.3 GILLETTE AS SHERLOCK HOLMES, SUPER EXPERT........................ 74 3.4 FITCH AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT ..................................... 77 3.5 NEURASTHENICS CAUGHT ON KODAK ................................................. 89 4.0 THE PLAYING FIELD: EMERGING PMC CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS......... 96 4.1 THE FRESHEST KIDS IN TOWN ................................................................. 96 4.2 THE COLLEGE WIDOW.............................................................................. 101 4.3 STRONGHEART ............................................................................................ 107 4.4 BROWN OF HARVARD................................................................................ 114 4.5 SWEEPINGS FROM MUCKRAKES: THE LION AND THE MOUSE . 120 vi 4.6 STRIKERS, GENTLEMEN, AND TOUGHS: THE BOSS ........................ 125 4.7 THE MUSICAL: PRE-POSTMORTEM...................................................... 127 4.8 THE PROVIDENCES OF GOD: THE SULTAN OF SULU...................... 132 4.9 MUSICALS GROW UP FOR A MOMENT: THE PRINCESS SHOWS . 136 5.0 EMERGING PMC HABITUS................................................................................ 149 5.1 COHAN AS SUPER MODEL, POSTIVE AND NEGATIVE..................... 149 5.2 F. W. TAYLOR: A SCIENTIFIC CALL FOR PMC.................................. 163 5.3 LOSING AND MAKING A FORTUNE: BREWSTER’S MILLIONS ..... 168 5.4 GRANT MITCHELL—PMC POSTER BOY .............................................. 171 5.4.1 Humbugging Prelude: Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford ............................ 171 5.4.2 Mitchell on the Rise: It Pays to Advertise ................................................ 173 5.4.3 PMC Apotheosis: A Tailor-Made Man .................................................... 178 5.5 SHOWING A CLASS HOW TO MOVE: THE CASTLES ........................ 183 6.0 CONCLUSION: BUSINESS AS USUAL .............................................................. 192 6.1 CLARENCE: LEADING THE U.S. SAFELY INTO THE 1920S............... 192 6.2 FREUD AND THE PMC ................................................................................ 194 6.3 O’NEILL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CAPITAL ......................................... 196 6.4 OTHER CURES FOR NERVES: A LOOK AT THE 20S .......................... 200 6.5 POSTSCRIPT: THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR-MADE MAN............. 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 213 vii PREFACE This document would not exist without an intensely committed army of support. I would be well beyond remiss if I failed to thank the following: Bruce McConachie, for his wise guidance and supervision; Attilio Favorini and Kathleen George for their continued support and encouragement; Lynne Conner, who found ingenious ways to navigate an old friendship through a new professional relationship; William Scott, who generously offered his own valuable expertise and perspective; and the University of Pittsburgh Department of Theatre Arts— professors, graduate students, and undergraduate theatre majors included. My wife, Kathleen Kerns, provided space, advice, love, and consistent encouragement. Finally, the dissertation is dedicated with great love to my mother and my late father. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION The early 20th century is a problematic era in American theatre. A key critical commonplace is that the work of this era avoided or simply ignored the seismic shifts of the world beyond the Great White Way. A few scholars, however, have shown some appreciation of the pre-1920 years of Broadway. Brenda Murphy, for example, acknowledges the period as one of transition—crucial years for establishing realistic principles in American drama (Murphy 86). John Gassner makes a case for the “sweepings” of Progressive muckraking that “fell” on the early 20th century American stage (Gassner viii), and the controversial feminist heroines of Rachel Crothers have garnered more than cursory interest in the last 25 years. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that Ronald Wainscott’s summation of the period is representative—an era given “short shrift” because “[w]hat is clearly missing in most of the work is a direct assessment of or confrontation with the obvious vicissitudes and tensions of the larger world surrounding the microcosm of the American theatre” (Wainscott, “Plays” 263). In terms of the plays themselves, or the tangible theatrical product that audiences were watching, the argument denying the lasting significance of the first years of 20th century Broadway is a strong one. A cursory reading of surviving scripts reveals a great deal in the way of giddy, airy entertainment, and considerably less in the way of serious thought. The plays that did venture a “confrontation with the obvious vicissitudes and tensions of the larger world” were frequently saddled with melodramatic conventions and tacked-on happy endings. Moreover, 1 dramas and comedies alike were structured and paced in ways that would tax the patience of a 21st century audience used to the speed and economy of television, music videos, and internet- streamed entertainment. There are, nevertheless, alternative ways of understanding and appreciating the years of American theatre around the turn of the last century. The fact that the pre-Eugene O’Neill years still serve as a common mode of periodization for American theatre studies is the result of a myriad of emerging social forces that Broadway responded to and acted upon during the years 1900-1920. My proposition is to examine (and further problematize) this era in terms of class